Five Equal Angels
by Hieda no Akyuu
Summary: Alternate retelling of the original manga. With more than just tutoring skills at his disposal, Uesugi Fuutarou is hired to guide the Quintuplets to graduation, but this time there is more to it than just tutoring and more at stake than simply avoiding academic failure.
1. Place to Start

**Author's Note:**

**Go Toubun no Hanayome is a special manga/anime to me because it's the first manga in about a decade that's managed to captivate me enough to sit down and binge all the chapters that were available in a single night. I'm not trying to argue "Quints Best Manga Evar" or project any such extreme opinions; rather, I hold this manga in very high regard because it's taken me back to some of the more nostalgic times when I was younger, back to the years when I was first discovering manga and anime in my degenerate path to becoming a filthy weeb.**

**I hold this manga in such high regard, in fact, that here I am, now starting a fanfiction about it.**

**Which is strange, because my usual "resume" of fanfictions, most too long or unfinished, couldn't be further from Quints from a genre perspective, but I guess that just goes to show you how much a simple harem manga done right can change a person. But that's for another time.**

**For the viewers' convenience on whether or not they want to bother spending the time to read this, I'd like to outline a few things that I intend for this fanfic:**

**The plot will include magic. Given my past history with other fanfics, you can say that this was going to be a given, but even I don't want magic to be the main focus of this particular fanfic. At most it'll be used as a plot device here and there, or so I intend - I hope that upon actually writing out this fic, it will stay as more of a background issue rather than a forefront one so that the fic itself can focus on the girls and Fuutarou and their interactions with each other and the rest of the cast, which is what made the original manga so magical in the first place.**

**This fic will for the most part follow the original manga's plot, but there will be key differences in how the events in the manga are portrayed or how they turn out. Naturally, certain characters will also be changed to possibly be different from how they're portrayed in the source material. Whether or not these changes live up to the manga's quality/standards is for you to decide.**

**On a related note, while this fic will try to follow the original manga's plot, some key plot points, devices, and identities will be revealed much, much sooner than they were in the manga. So if you haven't read the manga yet in its entirety so far for some strange reason, please do so before reading this fic, otherwise this fic might spoil the actual manga for you. Why are you even looking up fanfictions for this manga before you even caught up with the original, anyway.**

**And finally, this fanfic will have a noticeably more mature undertone. While it's also not my intention to turn this fic into a lemon in disguise, the direction I do intend to take this fic will inevitably run into some themes that the original manga may not touch upon, themes that are certainly more on the sensitive side of things. As such, this could take the fic in a direction that readers may not agree with, as if my decision to include magic in some form into this fic wasn't already a big enough turn-off to begin with.**

**Thanks for your understanding in advance.**

* * *

Warmth.

And golden light. Blurred by the windowpane, bleeding through from the late afternoon sky outside.

Such a rare luxury, and so little time to enjoy it, Fuutarou thinks to himself. Though, even as he says this, he himself is standing off to the side, outside of the mellow, gentle touch of the thick, golden sunlight that pours into the room and the wooden floor beneath his feet.

Leaning against the wall next to the sliding window door, Uesugi Fuutarou stands with his arms folded and his eyes closed. He's not sleeping, though, and he isn't trying to, either, as much as he's been teased for being able to fall fast asleep either standing up or sitting down on a park bench.

Apart from the warmth of the dreamily intoxicating late afternoon sunlight, it's also a rare luxury for Fuutarou to have any semblance of time alone, time that he has all to himself. "Busy" would be underselling all the things that have been happening lately, but perhaps everything that has happened thus far was only to be expected.

And speaking of so little time, the past three years have rocketed by in a flash, now that he briefly dwells on it. He'd already gotten the sense of how fast time was flying by, but it's only now, now that he's finally got this precious little bit of time to himself, which he should be using more productively rather than for self-reflection, that he realizes just how fast everything has happened.

Of course time would speed by during the years that he's had the most fun in his life. And the bad news is that he doesn't foresee it slowing down any time soon.

Then again, if that's how it is, is it really bad news by this point?

On his left ring finger sits a very painfully plain wedding band. Even to this day, his sense of extreme frugality lingers, despite the obvious fact that he can afford to shed such frugality now.

But yet, it's not something he wants to shed so soon. Certainly this is the beginning of a new chapter in his life, but there's nothing that says that he ought to rush into it. Though, to be fair, when he told this to his father, he simply laughed in his face for having such a contradictory thought. He's finally growing up, Fuutarou remembers his father telling him a bit begrudgingly at the wedding party. So maybe he really ought to barge into his new married life like a wrecking ball.

On second thought, that's still not a good idea, he'd get slapped silly for it.

Embarrassing wedding stories aside, Fuutarou doesn't want to shed that aspect of himself so soon. A plain wedding ring, so painfully plain that it almost made his father-in-law disown him on the spot for how pathetically plain it was, is the perfect memento to himself of how things used to be. After all, everybody has to start somewhere, and things had to be a certain way in the past for things to be another way in the present, or even the future.

Plain. Cheap. Aggressive. Menacing. Dull. Just like the ring he bears, Fuutarou is fully aware that he himself has not changed much since then. All of the mirrors in the house would agree with him on this sentiment, and all of the Fuutarou's that live in them would also agree. But eventually he, too, will have to change, if only even slightly.

And that is where the ring he bears plays its role. When times change, when people change, when situations change, so long as he keeps it safe and dear to his heart, just like how he'd placed it at the wedding, this ring will not. The whole world may change, but this one ring will not. Fuutarou will see to it that it won't.

For it encapsulates everything that has happened in his life up until now, a special culmination of thoughts, emotions, fears, reliefs, worries, joys, and experiences. Perhaps this applies to anyone who has recently gotten married, but to Fuutarou, it is more so, as generic as that may sound. It's honestly much more than one simple ring alone can embody, so it's quite the daunting task for poor Fuutarou's wedding ring.

But it will fulfill its duty; Fuutarou is confident in it. Besides, he's already made up his mind that he'll see to it that it fulfills its duty. And when all is said and done, it will remain as a strong, happy reminder of the transition he would have to undergo now, at this point in time.

Before he realizes what he's doing, Fuutarou raises his left hand up to his face – and gently brushes his lips against the ring.

"Congratulations on your wedding."

Fuutarou lowers his hand slowly, returning it to how it was while he had his arms crossed, leaning against the wall behind him. It's not because of the voice he hears speaking to him nearby that he lowers his hand, necessarily, but either way, the visitor he's expecting is here, it seems.

"Thank you," he answers quietly and curtly. Fuutarou doesn't bother looking in the direction of this second voice to see who it is.

"If you'd told me about it, I would've liked to attend. But you didn't, so..."

"You know why I didn't invite you, though."

"That's true. Someone you've barely ever talked to doesn't deserve to be at your wedding, after all."

"It's not exactly that, it's just that...you would've attracted too much attention."

"Attention, huh. You still think about those times? Ten years ago, that is."

"Nine years, you boomer."

"Boomer? Oh, it's what the kids are saying these days to older folks, huh..."

Fuutarou pushes himself off the wall softly to stand on his own, still with his arms crossed. He also opens his eyes, but he keeps them pinned down at the wooden floor beneath his feet.

"But sometimes, yeah, I think about those times still. I have to, in order to ascertain where I am now."

"Then I'm honored. Even if it's something you force yourself to do."

"Honored by something someone who you barely talked to nine years ago did? That's not like you."

"Neither is you getting married in the first place, but I wouldn't have brought it up if you didn't force my hand, y'know?"

Fuutarou holds his tongue, for he has nothing to say to this.

"But regardless – you did well, kid. I didn't expect for you to've gotten this far – now look at you: newlywed, fantastic career, and a proud family. Best of all, you've pulled your own father and sister out of poverty finally. It's not everyone I meet who turns out like this, as you can imagine. So to be able to see this, the kind of success story that you've made for yourself that you see once probably every other decade...it's a sight for sore eyes, for sure."

Raising his gaze finally, Fuutarou straightens his back in his blue polo shirt and jeans to face his visitor with a hard look in his menacing eyes that give off the vibes of a hard-boiled street thug.

"This is just a guess, but – you didn't come here just to give me some kind words, did you?" he says with chilling calmness that, for a brief moment, drains the warmth right out of the sunlight before him.

"Haha...I remember that passive-aggressiveness well, if nothing else. But no, of course not - that being said, though, there's nothing wrong with offering some verbal niceties to a boy I haven't seen in almost a decade, is there?"

"Maybe not, but you're more interested in that deal we made back then."

"Naturally. And so if you remember all that, you should also remember what I'm here for...what I'm here to collect, as was our deal."

Fuutarou nods slowly. He glances down at his hands, his left hand -

\- and removes his wedding ring.

"...so that's what you'll give me, huh..."

"It's the best I can offer," Fuutarou says icily, handing the ring to his guest after he makes sure to wipe it clean with the edge of his polo shirt, and his visitor receives it and inspects it closely.

"...this is one plain fucking ring, kid. You live in a place like this now and you _still _can't afford anything better?"

"I give you my _wedding ring _and _that's _the first thing you say? Who are you, my father-in-law?"

"You already have one, if I'm not mistaken. So instead, since I made you a offer you couldn't refuse back then, call me your...Godfather."

A short silence ensues as Fuutarou's visitor continues to inspect his ring.

"Alright then, kid. Like we agreed...start from the beginning, the beginning that this ring of yours symbolizes. Tell me everything."

Again, Fuutarou closes his eyes. The memories stored in his mind rush forth upon his visitor's request, filling his inner vision as he takes a step into the golden sunlight that wraps him with the warmth that his memories bring to his heart...

* * *

"Have a good night, Uesugi-san."

"Same to you. Sorry for the intrusion as always."

The chilly night air greets a young man as he exits the sliding doors of the hospital's alternate entrance, after he bids farewell for the day to a passing nurse. Strange for the weather to be this chilly at this time of the year, the boy notes to himself as he stops briefly outside the sliding doors.

Wearing a relatively deflated backpack and the most basic boy's school uniform you could imagine consisting of nothing more than a plain white collared button-up and black dress pants, he adjusts his pair of Audio-Technica ATH-WS990BT's properly over his ears and reaches into his left pocket to pull out his smartphone.

Once he's set the music he wants and the earcups of his headphones begin their work for the night escapade, Uesugi Fuutarou slips his phone back into his pocket and turns to his left to walk down the sidewalk of the road which leads down further into the emergency care ward behind him.

"_I don't have a leg to stand on...spinning like a whirlwind, nothing to land on..."_

Humming along to the song playing in his headphones in English for several of the lyrics, Fuutarou ceases his humming quickly, as these are the first set of lyrics and he'd rather not be heard humming some weird song in English to himself in the middle of the night. Not because his English pronunciation is off or anything - as a matter of fact, it's fluent and contains almost no accent – he'd just rather not bring any unnecessary attention to himself.

On second thought, exactly how much "attention" he can garner just for humming along to a song is up to debate.

The first-year high school student walks briskly through the streets of the city, maintaining a cold, expressionless face that changes only to blink or to watch for traffic at pedestrian intersections. With only his music and his knowledge of the downtown to guide him, he weaves through the city silently, like a ghost, leaving behind no trace of his existence wherever he treads.

The first year of high school has recently started barely a week ago, so naturally there are quite a few things on Fuutarou's mind. Classes, homework, agenda...as he'd only recently moved back in from living abroad for about half a year, finally being able to settle down for the first time in a long time is a welcome relief that will bring at least some semblance of stability with which he can use to organize his new high school life.

School life, huh. Fuutarou lets out a deep sigh at the thought.

An hour after he departs the hospital, Fuutarou arrives at a small and somewhat neglected business park. Its parking lot is covered in cracks of all sizes, with weeds and other plants that can commonly be found growing in urban areas growing quite happily in them. The two-story office building that solely makes up this business park sheepishly boasts a similar tale: fading and flaking paint, missing kanji from names of businesses that once called this park home, and colorful, stylistic, and flamboyant rakugaki layered along the walls of the more accessible first story.

The sorry remnants of once-flourishing entrepreneurship aren't enough to dissuade Fuutarou from walking onto the business park's grounds, passing the park's dilapidated sign that sports the name "DAIKAZOKU BUSINESS PARK". Its directory underneath the name, once filled, now humbly displays but one name: "Uesugi Consulting, Inc."

Going up the creaky stairs and heading to his destination, Fuutarou knocks calmly at the door of the only office in the whole structure that has a window with a light in it. A security camera fixed near the short roof of the building above the door stares down at the boy with quiet impunity, but Fuutarou simply ignores it, for after a short moment, a rather loud and screechy buzz rattles out of the intercom above the door too, with a young girl's voice blaring down at him to boot.

"_Good evening, Onii-chan! I'll be right there, I was making dinner!"_

Fuutarou remains silent, knowing that the intercom is one-way only, and sure enough, he can hear the small pitter-pattering of feet against hard flooring approaching him from the inside of the office. The door emits another very loud buzzing noise, indicating that the door is now unlocked, and Fuutarou takes the initiative this time and opens the door to reveal a small girl with a ridiculously oversized cowlick that couldn't be possible to have without criminally excessive use of hair gel, but there it is.

"Good evening, Raiha," Fuutarou nods down at the girl, who first dives at him to give him a big hug before smiling brightly back and retreating into the office to let her brother inside, who closes the door firmly shut behind him as he enters.

"Yo!" a tall, somewhat burly man with blonde hair and shades riding on his scalp calls over, turning in his worn-out swivel chair that's at least two sizes smaller than what's comfortable for him to gesture a casual two-finger salute to his guest. "Raiha's making dinner, want some?"

"Raiha just told me, but yeah, I'll have some."

Tossing his backpack lightly onto a musty couch near the front door, Fuutarou, having pulled down his headphones, fiddles with his phone quickly to pause the music. The office is surprisingly spacious for what it is; it's perhaps more like a small suite, except for the fact that everything inside seems dingy and used beyond reason. The furniture is visibly old, chipped, dented, or outright missing some pieces; the walls are flaking in some areas and have exposed drywall in others.

"So how was your first week at high school? Exciting, huh? I bet it was," the blonde man in his Hawaiian shirt grins widely at Fuutarou momentarily before turning back to the screen of his laptop.

"Not particularly, it's just school," Fuutarou shrugs simply. "Maybe you had it different, Isanari."

"Sure did! I was a little shit back then," Isanari laughs heartily, still typing away his laptop.

"You still are, to be honest."

"And you're not wrong! And I wouldn't have it any other way. But still, be nice to your employer every once in a while, will ya?"

"And you're saying I'm not? I guess that means you've got enough money to start buying your own equipment and computers, then."

"Aaaaaahhhh, okay, okay okay okay, Fuutarou-sama, I apologize, I didn't mean it that way."

Fuutarou simply snorts under his breath, leaning against the wall next to Isanari's desk and folding his arms calmly. "Any news? I haven't been here for a week due to school, and you haven't updated me yet on anything."

"There wasn't, for the most part," Isanari shakes his head. "No new jobs so far...the contracts I've gotten are all small, nothing big yet, stuff that I can handle on my own. Buuuut..."

"But?"

"I did get an email from one of my ol' buddies from high school, coincidentally. It's gonna be a long-term contract, though, and I'm not sure if you're gonna be willing to accept."

"Never know until I hear it. What's it about?"

"Hold on, lemme send this one email out real quick..."

The scrumptious smell of curry rice is filling the air of the office as Fuutarou waits for Isanari to finish what he's working on. As much as he can appreciate the smell of well made curry, Fuutarou stops leaning against the wall to open the office's windows for ventilation.

"The curry's almost done!" Raiha calls out from the kitchen, having to use a small stool to be able to reach up to the stove safely.

"We're almost done too, Raiha-chan," Isanari replies, sending out his email and then pulling up the one he wanted to talk to Fuutarou about, nudging his laptop to face Fuutarou's direction so he can read it properly. "So it's this one. It's from my buddy Maruo, I think you've already met him once or twice, right?"

"Yeah. Though, it's a bit surprising that he's contacting _you_ about something in regards to me..."

"Just read it. I would've forwarded this to you directly, but I thought it'd be best for you to come here and see it."

"Hm. You're lucky I decided to stop by tonight, then."

"Lemme guess, it's because you wanted to see your Foster dad, huh?"

"No, it was for Raiha's cooking."

"So you're saying Raiha's cooking is better than my contracting?!"

"I thought that was implied."

As Isanari grovels in mock pain and Raiha giggles gleefully from the kitchen, Fuutarou scans the email on Isanari's laptop. The more he reads it, though, the more furrowed his eyebrows become and the more incredulous his expression turns.

"Your eyesight going now or what?" Isanari remarks slightly worriedly, noticing Fuutarou's marked change in facial expression. "Just so you know, we don't have the money to get you prescription glasses, that's on your end."

"What, can't put it on the house?"

"Hey, it might be my dream to one day own my own casino, but that's not the reality I live in right now."

"Oh good, good to know you aren't always letting your brain fly off to Tokyo every other day..."

"What's Tokyo got to do with anything?"

"Okaaaay, Dad, Onii-chan, dinner's ready!"

The sudden clanging of silverware causes Isanari to jolt in his seat in surprise, while Fuutarou simply turns around to see what the fuss that Raiha is making is about, which simply turns out to be Raiha banging her ladle against a pot lid right behind them.

"Sorry, Raiha, we're done now. Isanari, get the table out," Fuutarou says quickly, following the swift-footed Raiha to the nearby kitchen to help her serve the portions onto their dishes. With a hearty grunt of agreement, Isanari also hops out of his undersized swivel chair and opens a nearby closet to pull out a small, foldable dinner table to set it up on the floor near the couches, in between them and Isanari's office desks.

Working together to set the table, Isanari, Fuutarou, and Raiha quickly and efficiently place the chopsticks, spoons, plastic cups of clean water from the water filter, and dishes of Raiha's house-famous curry on the table, moving and coordinating as though they've done this thousands of times before. In just forty seconds, the family goes from discussing business and making dinner to sitting at their humble folding dinner table on the floor, ready to eat.

"_Itadakimasu."_

And so begins another simple dinner in the Uesugi household.

* * *

"So what do you think about that contract?"

It's the men's turn on dish duty, not that there are many dishes to wash in the first place. But for the sake of allowing Raiha to start her homework in a timely fashion, and to make up for the fact that he hasn't been around lately due to his own school activities and agenda, Fuutarou has assumed responsibility for the cleanliness of the dishes, and Isanari has joined him shortly to assist. So together, the two men stand at the kitchen sink, scrubbing and rinsing away.

"It's a tutoring gig," Fuutarou murmurs uncertainly, his eyes fixated on the last dish that he needs to scrub as dishsoapy water drips from the plate down into the sink. "Can't say I've seen a contract like that before."

"But you're smart, kid. Something like a tutoring gig should be a walk in the park."

Fuutarou hands Isanari the last plate, which the latter rinses off thoroughly underneath the sink faucet.

"But for a whole year?" Fuutarou balks somewhat, watching his fellow dishwashing coworker rinse the last plate for the night. "Why's it gotta be a whole year for what should just be a tutoring job? And not to mention, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for people to be looking around for tutors at this time of the year when school literally started last week."

"Kid, seriously, what does it matter, you read what Maruo said down at the bottom, didn't you? Five times the standard tutoring rate in this area!" Isanari exclaims enthusiastically, waving the rinsed plate at Fuutarou and inadvertently flicking some sink water at him. "Not to mention, it's better that it's a long term contract. Maruo's a buddy of mine, like I said, so if you take it, it's not likely he'll terminate the contract early. It's a stable source of income!"

"That might be, but you know how I feel about long-term contracts like this. More importantly, we already know how they can end up, potentially."

"Okay, those past times I get where you're coming from. But you have to admit that this isn't like our typical contracts. You read the contract terms too, right? You don't even need to be that good at it; all you gotta do is just make sure those girls don't completely fail and flunk out."

Giving a deep sigh, Fuutarou folds his arms and rolls his eyes slowly to the left.

"And not just one student, but five?" he grumbles through lightly clenched teeth. "Yeah, no wonder it's _five times _the current rate..."

"They're quintuplets, by the way."

Fuutarou just stares at Isanari for a full half a minute.

"...don't stare at me like they're _mine_, Fuutarou," Isanari says cautiously, taking a step backwards away from Fuutarou's piercing stare. "I'm just the messenger, okay? Think of Raiha..."

"Oh, yeah, I'm thinking about her – about how unfortunate she is to have such a dumb father like you."

"Onii-chan, please don't be _too _mean to Dad, okaaaaay?" Raiha calls from the dinner table, which, after Raiha has cleaned it after dinner, is now repurposed as Raiha's homework table.

"Yeah, kid, don't be so mean to your father," Isanari snickers, jabbing Fuutarou in his folded arms, but he drops his playful grin momentarily to jerk his thumb towards the direction of the door. Fuutarou nods silently, and the two men wipe down the countertop to finish their kitchen duties for the night. Afterwards, Isanari grabs his old smartphone from his desk and heads for the door, with Fuutarou in tow.

"Raiha, Fuutarou and I'll be outside for a sec," the father calls to his daughter, who responds with an amiable "Okaaaaayy ~", and the two men step outside and head down the rickety stairs, where they stop and loiter next to an ancient ash tray standing next to the equally as old waste and recycling bins.

"Still don't know when to give it up, do you," Fuutarou mutters, watching his father pull out a pack, flick one of the cigarettes inside out, and use his pocket lighter to ignite it.

"Hey, you know what they say, old habits die hard," Isanari mutters back. He's about to stow his cigarette pack back into his rear pocket, but he then holds it out to Fuutarou. "Want one?"

"Offering cigarettes to minors, are we, now."

"Bullshit, kid. If there's any minor in this world who can smoke cigs legally, it's you."

"You have a great way of making things that should be illegal sound a lot less illegal."

"So am I a modern day poet, you think? Should I change my name to Asukai Masaari?"

"Not in the good sense, but maybe if that's what makes you feel better about yourself...and no, please don't change your name, you'll embarrass yourself even more."

Isanari chuckles, exhaling his first puff of cigarette smoke into the late evening air, illuminated mainly by the forlorn, dim light from one of the dingy lamps of the building nearby. Fuutarou watches the cigarette breath linger in the chilly night air, then disappear, leaving only its noxious scent behind.

"I assume this new contract you got from Nakano is the reason why you called me here tonight," Fuutarou says as Isanari enjoys his cigarette. "So mind filling me in on what that email didn't tell me?"

"Hmph. Sharp as ever, kid," Isanari nods slowly while raising his cigarette back up to his lips for another puff.

"You always say you'll never doubt me again, but then you say stuff like this that suggests otherwise..."

"Haha, my bad, my bad."

Isanari lowers his cigarette, and now it's his turn to lean against the nearby wall, joining Fuutarou to form the two-man Arm-Fold Brigade.

"Maruo believes his daughters' lives might be in danger," Fuutarou's father reveals. "This whole tutoring thing is just a cover-up, an excuse to make sure that there's someone who's close by and can make sure that none of the girls end up in trouble, or get them out of it if they do."

Isanari pauses.

"Well, no, that's not entirely true. The quints really _are _potential school dropouts," he corrects himself. "So they seriously _do _need a tutor to make sure they don't outright fail high school, apparently, as Maruo suspects they might."

"So it's an even more perfect cover-up story."

"Yeah, pretty convenient how that worked out, honestly."

"Then what are the terms?"

"Most of it's like what you read in the email: it'll start as a year-long contract, you tutor all five girls and make sure nothing bad happens to them, and unlike most contracts, for this one, Maruo's agreed to pay you directly."

"Pay me directly...you're not getting involved at all, then?"

Isanari shakes his head. "I would, but Maruo specifically requested that I stay out of this, that this should be yours alone to handle. He said he figures it'd be easier for you that way."

"But you know I'm still giving you part of the cut."

"Nah, it's fine, keep everything. I already have a ton of contracts active on my own end."

Maybe he'll make sure to buy Raiha something nice every month or something, Fuutarou thinks to himself.

"Then tell me the context for this. What's going on?"

"Ah, right. So yesterday, Maruo was informed that the butler who usually looks after the quints was found dead outside their high-rise; a night patrol officer happened to drive by his car and found him."

"Cause of death?"

"Stab wound through the back of the head, probably through the brain stem first. Clean stab, butler probably died instantly. Whoever did it knew what he was doing. Maruo thinks whoever did it tried to pose as the butler, because he was found without his uniform on. My guess is that they took his uniform in an attempt to pose as the quints' butler and tried to wait it out in his car, just in case the quints came back for anything, but luckily for them, they didn't, so either he left on his own or left when he saw the police officer coming around on patrol."

"Do the quints know about this?"

"No. And it's good you mentioned that, because Maruo specifically wants me to tell you to keep your bodyguarding lowkey. Ideally they should never find out that they're being targeted by someone."

"And what if they do find out?" Fuutarou asks sternly. "I've done solo, duo, and even a few trio escorts before. But five clients, at the same time, for a whole year – there's too much room for error."

"Well, that's why their father specifically requested you. You're the best we have, you know."

"Hard not to be the best when I'm _all_ you have."

Isanari laughs shortly. "And we don't call you the Silent Pride of the Uesugi for nothing, either!"

"Stop calling me that, damn it, it's goddamn corny as hell."

"Fine, fine. But yeah, that's all we know for now, it's up to you to take care of the rest. You're scheduled for your first tutoring session tomorrow after school at four in the afternoon; Maruo did say that as far as the tutoring's concerned, you have free rein to do whatever it takes to get the girls to _not _flunk out, barring anything illegal or against school rules, of course."

"Hang on, I didn't say anything about accepting this contract or not."

Taking one final puff of his cigarette, Isanari presses what's left of it into the old ash tray firmly to put it out.

"Well, this _is _Maruo we're talking about here, Fuutarou," Isanari says calmly, and his voice is missing its signature hearty and jovial tone when he says this. "The fact that he's specifically requested _you _to handle this...I don't think you're in a position to refuse, are you?"

Grimacing, Fuutarou holds his usually sharp tongue in response this time.

* * *

"Puaaaaahhhh ~ finally, we're back home..."

"I knooowwww...why did we have to tour the _entire school _at once!? And in one afternoon, too! We should tell Papa to tell the principal off or something!"

"But Nino, you were the one who said you'd rather tour the whole school at once just to get it over with..."

"I-I didn't expect our new school to be _that _big! It's just a normal public high school, right? It's not like Black Rose where it's a private one!"

"But what does our old school being private or not have to do with anything..."

"Aw, cheer up, you guys! I could go for another school tour, that was fun~!"

"Then feel free to tour it again, Yotsuba..."

"Agh! But it's no fun by myself, you know!"

"Nino, I am positively _starving _after all the walking we did today, there wouldn't happen to be leftovers, would there? I'll take anything...!"

"Oh for God's sake, you come back and food's the first thing on your mind!? But yes, there _is _still some leftover fried rice I made earlier this morning for our lunches today, just take the plastic wrap off the pan and heat it up on the stove..."

"Oh my God, thank you, thank you, Nino!"

"S-Stop, I-Itsuki, stop, don't hug me like I saved your life or something - "

"Oh, oh, me too, me too! Nino, your fried rice today was super duper _extra _delicious today, thank youuuuuu!"

"Aaaaaaggggghh, not you too, Yotsuba! Yotsuba, Itsuki! Listen to me, damn it!"

"Aw, just relax, Nino. You're the only one who knows how to properly cook among us, after all. We _should _be thanking you for all this time that you've been cooking for us."

"I-It's only natural, isn't it?! No need to overreact or anything like this – oh, fine, whatever, I'm over it already..."

"There, there..."

"I didn't say I wanted headpats from you, Miku, knock it off."

Five identical teenage quintuplet girls have just returned home late at night, thoroughly exhausted from their extensive touring of the campus of their new high school. Two of them are tightly squeezing another with their grateful embraces, sandwiching her with loving impunity, while the other two are looking on with varied degrees of amusement.

"Then that is enough of that. Time for the fried rice!" Itsuki, the youngest quintuplet, characterized by her apparently immense appetite and the two yellow star-shaped hairclips she wears, pulls herself away from her older sisters and marches to the kitchen in search of the plastic-covered pan with the leftover fried rice.

"You should_ seriously _learn how to cook for yourself if you're gonna eat that much, Itsuki!" Nino, the second quintuplet, who is distinguishable by her pair of brightly colored butterfly-shaped hair ribbons and her dominant cooking ability, calls after her youngest sister.

"Aw c'mon, Nino, you already know what happens if you try to get the rest of _us _to cook," Ichika, the eldest, identifiable because of her neatly short and round hair, single earring on her right ear, and her constant yawning, sits up on the long couch slowly, having plopped down on it belly-first upon first arriving home. "As a matter of fact, the only other one who even has _any _semblance of cooking experience would be you, Miku."

"But you already know how it is...I can't compare to Nino," Miku shakes her head, holding her left arm submissively. The middle of the quintuplets, she is perhaps the most stand-out of among her sisters due to her blue ATH-AR3BT Audio-Technica headphones with tri-point emblems on the cups around her neck and, ironically, her quiet, passive personality.

"It's okay, Miku, you'll improve! I believe in you! At least, you'll do better than an idiot like me who makes way too much rice!" Yotsuba, the fourth quintuplet known for her seemingly endless energy and the four-leaf clover-like hair ribbon straddling the top of her head, pumps her arms animatedly at Miku in appropriate fashion.

"Calling yourself an idiot won't do you any favors, Yotsuba," Miku replies. "It certainly doesn't work for me, either."

"Aha, then that makes two of us!" Yotsuba responds with the same animated air about her, this time diving in for a hug with her older sister. "We can be idiots together, then! It'll be fun!"

"Mmmuu, don't wanna..." Miku puffs up her lips and pouts, but she lets Yotsuba hug her affectionately anyway.

"Ichika, there weren't any packages or anything for us at our door, were there?" Nino asks the eldest sister, who shakes her head.

"Not when we came in, no."

"Hm, that means our new school uniforms aren't here then. They were supposed to be here by now..."

"Ah, that's right, Ebata-san was supposed to have delivered them to us," Itsuki calls from the kitchen, waiting for the stove to warm up the fried rice in the pan.

"Ebata-san...speaking of him, we haven't seen him in a bit, haven't we..." Yotsuba remarks. "Maybe he's busy helping out Dad?"

"Could be, but then again, he was supposed to be the one to take us to our new school..." Ichika points out. "But he's always busy with something, maybe he got a schedule change and he just couldn't deliver our new uniforms to us on time."

"Then that means...we'll have to go to school tomorrow with our Black Rose uniforms..." Miku murmurs, clearly troubled by the thought.

"We can just call Papa to have the school know what's going on. He's got connections, remember?" Nino shrugs. "In the meantime, until we can arrange for us to get new uniforms, we can just wear something over our old ones. We're technically transfer students, after all, so it shouldn't be out of the ordinary for us to show up in our old uniforms because we didn't get our new ones yet."

Easing herself down onto the smaller couch perpendicular to the two long couches nearby, Nino lets out a breath of relief after finally being able to give her tired feet a well-deserved rest before pulling out her phone.

"But still, a new school, huh..." Ichika lets her head lean back over the top of the couch, as she closes her eyes again, wanting to go back to sleep. "Well, not as if we haven't been through this before."

"Imagine all the new friends we can make! All the new clubs we can join! All the new memories waiting for us!" Yotsuba exclaims giddily, squeezing Miku's left arm even harder since she still hasn't let her sister go.

"Y-Yotsuba, my arm, my arm, my arm, my arm - !" Miku cries helplessly as Yotsuba subconsciously continues to body-squeeze her arm in between her breasts.

"Yotsuba, please let Miku go," Itsuki sternly calls from the kitchen, in the middle of piling the heated leftover fried rice onto a plate.

"Oh! OmigoshImsosorry!" Yotsuba quickly relinquishes Miku's poor arm. "S-Sorry, Miku, I went off and did it again..."

"I-It's okay...I'm used to it..."

Chuckling from the couch as she looks on, Ichika smiles towards her younger sisters. "Unlucky that Yotsuba happens to be the one who likes squeezing other people's arms whenever she gets excited, huh?" she remarks amicably.

"Mmmmmuuu! What's that supposed to mean, Ichika!" Yotsuba pouts just like Miku towards Ichika.

"Well, you're the most athletic out of us, right? So it just makes sense that you'll be the strongest out of us physically."

"It's even more obvious if we compare our arms side by side..." Miku says quietly, rolling up her left sleeve of her blue cardigan first and then doing the same for Yotsuba's short right sleeve. Indeed, the difference between their biceps is night and day; while still reasonably slim and beautiful, Yotsuba's is markedly more developed and defined than Miku's.

"A-Ahaha – well - " Yotsuba lets out some awkward chuckles but hastily rolls her own sleeve back down, even though doing this doesn't exactly hide her arm's muscles entirely.

"It's okay to be proud of them. After all, it's what you have that we don't..." Miku says, trying to reassure her younger sister.

"Yeah, but...it, it still feels a bit e-embarrassing if someone points it out to me like that, you know...?"

While Miku and Yotsuba are conversing on their own and Itsuki is busy wolfing down her reheated leftover fried rice, Ichika realizes that Nino, usually one to join in on any conversation among her sisters, is noticeably absent from any such discourse and so glances over to see what she's up to.

"...Nino? Is something wrong?" Ichika asks, her voice growing concerned at the look on her younger sister's face.

At both the sound of Ichika's concerned tone and its contents, the three other sisters, sensing something wrong, immediately hurry over to the couch to check on Nino, including Itsuki, who brings her plate of fried rice with her. Ichika herself leans forward where she sits on the couch, and when she notices her siblings looking down at Nino's phone screen, she, too, gets up to cop a look. Altogether, the sisters take a moment to read the very long text that Nino has received and was reading.

_**"EEEEEEEEEHHHHHH? ? ? ? ?"**_

The quintuplets' flat vibrates with the combined unison of their surprised and shocked voices.

"Papa assigned us a t-t-tutor!?" Nino finally bursts out, having somehow managed to keep her own shock ballooned inside until all of her sisters got a chance to read the text that their father has sent them. Now her sisters are all checking their own phones, and sure enough, all of them have received the same exact text from their father via group text. "What the hell, this is such a – such a load of shit! He _always_ fucking does this! Tossing us here, giving us that, just because he thinks it's good for us! And now we have to put up with a fucking _tutor?!"_

"Calm down, Nino. Besides, let's not kid ourselves, we probably should've seen this coming, right?" Ichika, ever the level-headed quintuplet, provides the emotional counterweight to Nino's outburst yet again. "Let's not forget the reason why we had to switch schools to begin with."

A heavy air of discomfort hangs over the sisters at Ichika's reality-imposing words.

"I-I won't argue with you on that, but we specifically told Papa that we'll make sure to bring our grades up on our own after we made the decision to transfer!" Nino continues to fume, now back up on her feet in her anger and facing Ichika. "He didn't even give us any time at least to prove ourselves!"

"To be fair, he never agreed to give us time or anything like that..." Miku quietly points out.

"And he's always let us do whatever we wanted for the most part," Yotsuba joins in. "He's not doing this to get on our nerves, Nino, he's doing this because he wants to help us improve our grades. At least, that's what I think."

"Then let me ask you, Yotsuba," Nino pivots over to the fourth quint, "are _you _okay with a tutor coming in every day?"

"E-Eh? M-Me? Ah, well, uh, that's - "

"See? You're not even sure either. And what about the rest of you? Do you agree with this?" Nino surveys her fellow quints, her sharp, piercing blue eyes demanding immediate answers from the rest.

"Ah...well, um..." Ichika can't help but avert her eyes too. "I-I'll admit that...having a tutor might be a bit of an issue for my, uh, agenda..."

"...I'm undecided, too. It _is _a bit sudden..." Miku agrees softly, her eyes naturally dropping down to the floor by Nino's feet.

"I am not against the idea of a tutor, but...I also agree that this is a bit sudden. Father should have given us a bit more time. How long ago did he text you, Nino?" Itsuki asks before shoveling another spoonful of fried rice into her mouth.

"Let's see...earlier this afternoon, while we were still touring the school," Nino answers, checking her phone again before showing Itsuki, who quickly scans the text a second time.

"It certainly seems like Father has already made his mind up about this," Itsuki thinks aloud. "Our new tutor is coming in tomorrow at four in the afternoon, huh? Why don't we at least give it a shot? That way, if it does not work out, we can tell Father honestly that a tutor may not be the best thing for us, at least not so soon."

"I'm _telling _you, it's not gonna do _anything_," Nino grumpily folds her arms, too, after stowing away her phone in her pocket. "This's just a normal high school we've transferred to, right? Can't be harder than Black Rose, no way! And besides!"

Taking a few steps away from the rest of her family in between the long couches and turning around, Nino plants her feet firmly against the carpet and jabs her right index finger at the rest of her sisters.

"This is _our _problem! _We _should be able to resolve it _ourselves! _We don't need an outsider to come in and help us fix what should be _our _issues!" Nino declares emphatically. "That's how we've always done it, haven't we? No need to change it now! Even despite what Papa thinks, too!"

None of the sisters have anything to say back to Nino initially.

"Well, that's...certainly easier said than done..." Ichika sighs quietly, closing her eyes again in drowsiness.

"Then care to explain yourself, Ichika?" Nino challenges. "What do you mean by that, exactly?"

"Hm, for one, Itsuki's right on this when she said that Dad's probably made up his mind for good. And you know what happens if we try going against him on something he's already decided..."

Ichika reopens her heavy eyelids, her own vivid blue eyes gazing up at the ceiling this time.

"For two, let's be real here for a second, our grades _are _downright terrible. Any parent would want to get a tutor for their children if they were underperforming as much as we are. Maybe if we weren't exactly _failing_ and still able to get passing marks, sure, we could have a solid argument for why we don't need a tutor, but that's really not the case."

Nino winces at the word "failing".

"And for three, you talk about how this is our problem and whatnot, Nino, but to play devil's advocate, none of us except for Itsuki's ever really put in the effort to study that much, if at all. We've all spent our time doing whatever we've felt like for the past couple of years, going down our own paths and such. If this is really our problem and our problem alone, we certainly aren't owning it like we should, or like you say we are."

"Okay, fine then, Ms. Devil's Advocate, then I'm assuming you won't mind being the only one the tutor comes to see tomorrow?" Nino scoffs back irritably.

"Whoa there, I never said anything about agreeing to this tutoring thing - "

"And here, the nail in the coffin!" Nino whips out her phone again, turns the screen back on, scrolls down through the text to get to the part that she's thinking of, and practically shoves the screen into her elder sister's face. "Look at this! Look at this part! Papa wants this tutor to stay with us _for an ENTIRE FUCKING YEAR!"_

"H-Huh?! He – he really said that...? Oh shoot..." Ichika, also clearly shocked wide awake by this additional detail, quickly pulls out her own phone to check her own text. "Oh boy, an entire year...I knew he was serious, but...I didn't think he was _this _serious..."

"Yeah, that was...that was why I wasn't so sure about this whole tutoring thing..." Yotsuba awkwardly comments, the clover-shaped hair ribbon on her head drooping down expressively. "If, like, if it were only a short term thing, then yeah, I wouldn't really be against it either, but..."

"It's a whole year..." Miku mumbles uncertainly as well. "I get that we might need some help, but _that _much? I don't like it."

"And what about you, Itsuki?" Nino snaps to her youngest sister, who's busy with her fried rice leftovers. "You knew about this whole year-long tutoring gig, right?"

"U-Uh, yes, o-of course I knew..." Itsuki stammers nervously, averting her eyes while also trying to shovel as much fried rice into her mouth as she can.

"As much as you love eating, don't use my food as a way to cover up the fact that you didn't read that part either."

"I'm...I'm sorry. And...yes, I did not...read that part either - !" Itsuki hurriedly turns around even before she's done talking, retreating to the kitchen with the excuse of having to put away her plate.

Nino triumphantly turns back to Ichika, complete with a smug smile twisted nefariously at their ends.

"Now that I've pointed that out for you, how now?" Nino sneers back at Ichika. "What say you, Dear Eldest Sister Ichika-onee-sama?"

"You can drop the honorifics, you know," Ichika smiles awkwardly, brushing aside Nino's obvious attempts at trying to press the point. "I still won't rescind my earlier statements; the truth is the truth no matter what the context. But...I will say that I don't agree with this whole year-long thing either."

Raising her own phone again, Ichika swiftly types in a text.

"Are you texting Papa? What for?" Nino asks.

"To get him to reconsider the length of the tutoring. Even if we _are _borderline dropouts the way we are..."

"Well, since you keep referring to us like that, I don't know, doesn't it, like, kind of make sense that Dad's giving us a year-long tutor?" Yotsuba absentmindedly wonders aloud.

"Says the one who gets the lowest scores consistently among us. Is that your ribbon talking, Yotsuba?" Miku asks while wobbling Yotsuba's hair ribbon to and fro.

"Hey, that's mean! Hair Ribbon-san has feelings too!"

"Ah, there's the real Yotsuba. Welcome back."

"But I was here this whole time!"

"Didn't you just say that you agreed with Itsuki about Papa making up his mind and such...? What makes you think you'll be able to to convince him otherwise?" Nino grumbles, watching Ichika tap in her text.

"Admittedly it's not much, but since I'm the oldest, I'll try to use that as leverage against Dad. After all, Itsuki and I are the two of us who have the least amount of run-ins with him from before," Ichika mentions, her eyes fixed on her phone. "So if we want to speak up now, it's gotta be one of us who'll make the most impact."

"I'm more worried if Papa will even see your text on time," Miku says, having transitioned from playing with Yotsuba's hair ribbon to now playing with her younger sister's hair, which Yotsuba is much more a fan of and is purring contentedly like a happy little kitten. "Given how busy he is..."

"Yeah, same here. It's still worth a shot, though...given how big of an issue this could end up being." Ichika sends the text that she's written up with a tap of her thumb. "And that's that. By the way, did someone already feed the fish?"

"I did, don't worry about it," Nino responds. "First thing when we came back."

"Then since Dad won't respond until tomorrow, I'll be going on ahead ~ " Ichika gets up to her feet off the couch, yawning greatly and stretching out her arms. "I'll see you girls in the mor - "

Ichika's phone then jingles, indicating the receipt of a notification of some kind.

"Whoa, no way, Dad actually texted back that quick?!" Yotsuba gasps.

Just as surprised as Yotsuba, Ichika unlocks her phone to check her text, and indeed, what she reads makes her simply smile sheepishly.

"Let me guess..." Nino scowls in disappointment at Ichika's reaction.

"Yeah..." Ichika holds out her phone to her younger sister, showing her their father's response. "It's no use. He won't budge on this."

"Then what shall we do?" Itsuki asks, rejoining her sisters now that she's gotten some food in her. "If this has already been decided, it is not as if we can simply turn the tutor away."

"No, we still can," Nino says staunchly. "Papa's always busy, right? He never has time for us whenever we actually want to do anything with him. Since that's the case, we can just tell the tutor to piss off, that we don't need them. If we don't even show up, there's not much the tutor can do, now, can they?"

"I-I think that is going too far. We should at least meet with the tutor, whoever they may be, and explain to them our perspective on this issue. Perhaps they may be easier to convince than Father."

"Hey, if _you _wanna do that, be my freakin' guest, Itsuki," Nino shrugs widely as Ichika bids her sisters good night and sleepily directs herself up the stairs to the second floor of their suite to her bedroom. "Maybe the others can join you too. I, on the other hand, have _zero _interest."

"Well, I'd...feel bad for our tutor if no one showed up on the first day, so...I'll stay with Itsuki," Yotsuba volunteers. "What about you, Miku?"

"...can't say that I'm exactly interested, either," Miku tilts her head indifferently. "I'll just stay in my room or something..."

"Then that's settled! You two can meet with the tutor person and just tell them that we don't need them," Nino claps her hands together in finality. "And that'll be the end of that."

"But...Father will find out, sooner or later," Itsuki murmurs nervously. "Even if we manage to convince the tutor to leave us be, we would have to somehow convince them to also not let Father know, and even then, Father will probably figure out what we were up to."

"Then we'll just tell him that having a tutor wasn't beneficial at all, and that we're better off studying on our own," Nino retorts shortly.

"But would he really believe that?" Yotsuba asks. "Dad's already concerned enough to the point where he's gone and hired a tutor for us. And what if he does actually believe us that a tutor isn't going to help? Then we'll make him end up worrying about us even more!"

"Well, it's not as if Papa worries about us any more than his own work..." Miku sighs curtly, adjusting the headphones around her neck slightly.

"Exactly. And honestly, what does it matter if we flunk out, anyway? All Papa needs to do is pull a few strings of his to get us into another school."

"I would...rather _not _have to keep transferring schools," Itsuki groans, "especially if it means having to go on more school tours like we just did earlier today."

"Ehhhh, but those are fun, though."

"To _you_, Yotsuba."

"And I'd rather not be known for being held back grades, either..." Miku grumbles, with a touch of misery tainting her tone.

"Then we're done here, right? I'm gonna go to sleep too," Nino also yawns strongly, feeling the exhaustion of the day that's seeped into her very core take firm control over her body. "Yotsuba and Itsuki, you two figure out a way to make that tutor go away, I guess. We'll see how well it works tomorrow. Good night, everyone."

As Nino, too, climbs the stairs to bed for her own bedroom, Yotsuba glances nervously at her own younger sister.

"It's...it'll be fine, right?" she asks timidly.

"Just leave it to me. I will figure something out," Itsuki says reassuringly to Yotsuba. "When it comes to things like this, I am confident in my negotiations."

"Yotsuba, just to make sure, stick with Itsuki in case of anything," Miku advises, and Yotsuba promptly snaps up her right hand in a salute.

"Roger that, Miku-Taishou!"

"You don't have to salute me for that..."

Miku turns to Itsuki next.

"And Itsuki, are you _sure _you know how to handle this? I said I was going to just stay in my room or something, but...if in case you need help convincing our tutor..."

With a difficult expression clouded by worry and uncertainty, Itsuki nods slowly.

"I would...definitely appreciate that, thank you, Miku."

"Yeah, no problem..." Miku smiles softly back. "...we're sisters, after all."


	2. Tutelage

"Yakiniku set without the yakiniku, please."

Uesugi Fuutarou watches calmly as the cafeteria lady sets his tray with a small bowl of rice, miso soup, and pickled vegetables.

"Here you go."

"Thank you, ma'am."

The students waiting in line to Fuutarou's right simply stare after him as he walks away swiftly.

"...what the hell did he just order? That's not even on the menu..." Fuutarou can hear one of them murmur, but he simply ignores them.

A valuable skill that Fuutarou has learned to develop in his life is the ability to discern and take advantage of loopholes. This school's cafeteria's cheapest item is the bowl of rice that sits on his tray, priced at 200 yen, but after two days' worth of lunches, he's been able to determine that if he orders the yakiniku meal set and ask to take out the meat, which is ordinarily another 200 yen on top of that, the cafeteria staff will still give him the bowl of rice, but with the miso soup and veggies as if he's ordering the full yakiniku set. Essentially, this means that he can take advantage of the cafeteria system and receive miso soup and veggies along with his rice while only having to pay for the rice itself.

Even better, this means that he can eat at least a somewhat decent meal for twice as long with the same amount of money in the school cafeteria. Along with the unlimited, fresh water available to all students via multiple water dispensaries around the cafeteria, it's a deal too sweet to pass up - he's able to feed himself at a discount so huge it would make supermarket sales-crazed housewives turn green with envy.

After retrieving a cup of water for himself, Fuutarou takes his usual place at a two-seater table near the inner wall of the cafeteria. This is a big high school, as it should be, for it is located in a very densely populated area of the city, and the city itself has been experiencing a rapid growth in business and infrastructure, so naturally there will be a lot of students attending the conveniently located school. And so due to the high student population, the cafeteria, while very big in its own right, frequently sees its capacity filled to the brim with hungry students arriving to buy food during lunch period; the fact that the cafeteria food is also quite well-prepared keeps those students coming back for more with each day that passes.

All this to say, seating is quite difficult to find with so many students frequenting the cafeteria. The first day of high school, in fact, Fuutarou had to eat his lunch standing up because he simply couldn't find a seat for himself, but luckily on his second day, during his rounds about the cafeteria in search of a seat, he found this particular seat in the far corner of the cafeteria that, for some reason, no one seemed to be interested in sitting in. Strange, Fuutarou thought to himself at the time, since there'd be people sitting in the other two-seater tables down the wall, but the reason is trivial; what's important is that he has somewhere to freaking sit to eat and not look like a homeless person standing in the middle of the cafeteria eating lunch that way.

Not that he hasn't done that before, though.

Without bothering to utter the traditional Japanese phrase of thanks before eating, Fuutarou digs into his meager meal right away. Savoring the taste of the freshly cooked, fluffy white rice in conjunction with the deep, hearty taste of miso soup, he takes his time with the food, chewing intently as if to help make the food last as long as possible.

"Yikes, is that Uesugi? He's still sitting there?"

"Looks like he still hasn't got anyone to eat with. What a fucking loner, huh?"

"I know, right, that's so lame ~"

The crunch of the pickled vegetables drowns out those words of social disdain uttered by passersby that Uesugi doesn't see and frankly doesn't care to look at.

"Um, excuse me...?"

Fuutarou's left ear perks up slightly. It sounds like someone is talking to him, and not in the usual condescending manner simply because he's elected to eat alone. Although he knows not to get his hopes up, perhaps this person is worth the effort paying attention to, who knows. So he turns in his chair after swallowing some more rice and miso soup to see who it is.

A girl sporting a noticeably different uniform with a black top in sharp contrast to the lighter tones of their high school's and with long peachy-red hair decorated with star-shaped hair clips is standing behind him. Fuutarou and the girl are at the perfect heights where the first thing his dull black eyes land on when he turns is the perhaps unusually generous size of her chest shrouded elegantly only by her black uniform and not by her food-loaded tray that she holds - a brief moment of comfort for his sore eyes, indeed, but Fuutarou allows such a distraction for a heartbeat before shifting his eyes up to where they ought to be: the girl's vivid, luminescent blue eyes.

"...yes? May I help you with something?" Fuutarou asks curtly.

"Ummm...is it, uh, is it alright if I s-sit with you here...?" the girl stammers nervously, already quite red in her cheeks. Her hands are shaking visibly, causing the water in its cup on her tray to tremble and jump.

"Hm, that's an interesting proposition," Fuutarou replies matter-of-factly, leaning back in his chair, kicking up a foot to his knee, and holding his chin like a detective about to dive into his next case. "Firstly, do you understand the risk of damage you will be taking to your social standing and reputation in this school if you were to sit and eat lunch at the same table as the Lunch Table Hermit, Uesugi Fuutarou?"

"L-Lunch Table Hermit...so they were referring to you, huh? I, uh, I see..."

Somehow, of all things, _that's _what gets under Fuutarou's skin ever so slightly.

"Secondly, and perhaps the more relevant inquiry..." Fuutarou points to the row of empty tables down the wall to his left. "...why not just grab a seat at any one of these tables instead? You don't need to bother asking me for a seat specifically here, now, do you?"

"I was - only trying to be polite!" the girl balks immediately, pouting intensely. "I normally have a group I eat with, but it so happens that today, I must eat alone. So I was walking around the entire cafeteria in search of a free table, and I was only just now able to find these tables. And when I did, I found you eating here alone, so - so I decided to try to be polite and join you!"

As if for emphasis, the girl's stomach grumbles quite audibly, putting Fuutarou in a tough spot in the conversation. Sighing, Fuutarou gestures to the seat on the long couch built into the wall across from him.

"Help yourself, then."

Her facial expression lighting up tremendously, the girl from another school nods in thanks and takes a seat across from Fuutarou, setting down her loaded tray and letting out a sigh of sweet relief.

"Thank you so much. It is just that...I was touring the campus here all day yesterday, and I do not think my body has fully recovered yet..." the girl says while pulling her wooden chopsticks apart in half. "I could certainly do with giving my feet a rest for now."

As she is explaining her situation, however, Fuutarou hears more sets of feet and voices approaching closer towards them, and sure enough, one of them goes in a hushed voice,

"Whoa, shit, look, Uesugi's eating with a girl, dude!"

"Damn, you're right. Hope that chick knows what's good for her, man, nothin' good comin' outta eating with Uesugi..."

Once again, Fuutarou ignores them, busying himself instead with what remains of his lunch.

"I wasn't joking about the first thing I said, though," he murmurs before knocking back the last of the miso soup and setting the bowl down.

To his mild surprise, his female companion is reddened even harder, her gaze angled downwards at her own food and her eyebrows terse from embarrassment.

"Don't worry about them. You have friends you usually eat with, right? Just treat this as a one-time thing, and tomorrow it'll be as if this never happened," Fuutarou shrugs as his eyes also descend upon the girl's food.

250 yen udon, two 150 yen shrimp tempura to go, one squid, chicken, and sweet potato tempura pieces each priced at 100 yen, and 180 yen pudding for dessert.

"You're a big eater, huh," the Lunch Table Hermit remarks with a wry smile, mentally tallying up the cost of the girl's own lunch.

"D-Don't mind me, either! And get that smile off your face!" the girl blurts out, the deep blush in her face reaching its boiling point, but the girl quickly clears her throat and corrects her posture to regain her manners. "But...but yes, it is as you can see, I like to eat well. I will have you know that I - I am still a growing girl, so...so that means I must eat a lot! If you have a problem about it, I shall hear it in exchange for you allowing me to sit with you."

The girl crosses her arms defensively and glares back at Fuutarou, still with her same pout, as if daring him to inquire further.

"Well, it's not that, it's just, I'm not used to seeing people order such a big lunch, much less have someone with a lunch like that come by and sit with me," Fuutarou says quickly, raising his hands in his own defense. "And not to mention, my own lunch looks pretty pathetic compared to yours, and it's not exactly something that I can just _not _notice, you know?"

Realizing the truth to Fuutarou's words, the girl drops her pout and unfolds her arms instantly, the embarrassment in her face swiftly retreating in favor of moderate guilt.

"Oh my goodness, I'm...I am so sorry," she apologizes quickly, unable to tear her eyes off Fuutarou's own sorry-looking bowls and empty vegetable dish at first, only to finally do so and shift her eyes back onto her own hearty meal. "This is very rude of me, I did not mean to - "

"It's fine. You might see it as rude, but to me, the best favor you can do for me for bringing in a lunch like that is to enjoy it," Fuutarou reassures her, draining the rest of the water in his cup. "That, and we don't have much more time left for lunch, so better eat quick."

"R-Right. Then..._itadakimasu."_

Fuutarou wants to get up and put away his own tray, as he has other plans, but to leave the girl alone just as she's beginning to eat, especially now since it feels like the girl would rather eat in a stranger's presence than by herself, puts him in an awkward position. But he's used to being in awkward positions; what he dislikes more is the feeling of indecisiveness, so Fuutarou deals with it by reaching into his pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper.

"Hm? What are you doing?" the girl asks, noticing Fuutarou open up his folded piece of paper, just before her first mouthful of delicious pork-broth udon.

"Reviewing answers to a pop quiz that one of my teachers gave our class," Fuutarou replies coolly. "It ended up being a mock test, since the teacher only intended for it to gauge how much the class already knew, but..."

The girl stares at Fuutarou reviewing his answers, slurping up udon in the meantime.

"Um, I do not mean to be more rude to you than I already have been, but is it not bad manners to be studying like that?" she asks.

"How so?" Fuutarou challenges back, lowering his paper but refusing to break his eye contact with it. "I'm done eating my lunch, and now I'm spending the rest of lunchtime going over some answers to a quiz I recently took. I should be doing this while on the way to my next class, but if I were to just get up and leave you here, that would be even worse manners, no? Especially after what you've had to go through to get here in the first place."

"Even if that is true, I-I would appreciate it if you did not speak as if you know what I have had to go through the last few days," the girl stammers again, but she quickly regains composure this time. "Ah, I know! You must be reviewing because your score was not very good, right? So you feel the need to look over your answers during lunch of all times. If - you will - _excuse me!"_

Leaning forward sneakily, the black-uniformed girl suddenly lurches ahead and successfully snatches the quiz paper out of Fuutarou's hand.

"Hey, careful, you'll spill your water over - " Fuutarou warns, scowling at her. Specifically, he's eyeing the cup of water that the girl's right breast barely missed knocking over by mere centimeters.

"Well then, Uesugi Fuutarou-kun, you received - " the girl smugly scans her lunch companion's quiz.

That smug look of hers lasts about the same amount of time as the shrimp tempura she's demolished just now.

" - a perfect 100," she concludes blankly. Lowering Fuutarou's quiz paper, she instead looks like she's just gotten slapped in the face metaphorically.

"Oh nooooo, how embarrassiiiiiingggg..." Wailing sarcastically, Fuutarou reels a little in his seat and clutches at his face.

"Mmmmmuuuu! ! !" the girl resumes her usual pouting again as her cheeks redden up once more. "You knew I would get curious so that you could show me on purpose, did you not? You are teasing me right now, I know it!"

"I didn't, I swear."

"Liar! You are bad at lying, it is so obvious!"

"No, like, really, I didn't mean to show you. Why would I have any reason to show off my grades to some girl I just met five minutes ago? It's not like you'll be impressed by them or anything, there's no point. And even if you are, it's just a mock quiz, like I said. It would be really lame for me to feel good about bragging about mock quiz scores when they don't even count for anything since we're barely in the second week of school."

Fuutarou's calm demeanor and deduction of his actions also temper the girl's attitude, though there is still a bit of a pout left over that refuses to subside just yet.

"...very well, then. I apologize once more for my rash behavior, Uesugi-kun," the girl bows her head very slightly. "But...now that this topic is on hand, it does remind me of my own grades..."

"Your own grades? How so?"

"Well, the truth is...as frustrating as it is for me to admit to someone else, my grades are not so good."

"Really? That's too bad, you look like you're the studious type."

The offhand comment causes the girl to sit up a bit straighter, and Fuutarou notes that what remained of her pout from before is now gone.

"I-Is that so? I mean, I...I do try my best to study as hard as I can..." the girl says quickly, her cheeks glowing for a third time, but she shakes her head a little to clear her thoughts and clears her throat. "But regardless, the fact of the matter is that despite how much I study, my grades simply do not reflect that. Perhaps it is the way that I study, perhaps I simply cannot for the life of me retain the material that I study...ah!"

The girl suddenly claps her hands together.

"I know! I just thought of a great idea - sharing this table with you has got to be some kind of strange fate in itself," she says brightly. "This might be a bit sudden, but may I ask that you tutor me?"

"Tutor..." Fuutarou murmurs, playing with one of his wooden disposable chopsticks by turning it over and over in between his fingers. "So you ask to eat lunch with a guy whose school name is Lunch Table Hermit, then you ask that same person to tutor you just based off the perfect score he got on a mock quiz that has no impact on his grades whatsoever? You're a lot bolder than I thought."

"B-B-Bolder - !?"

Reddening up the hardest Fuutarou has ever seen a girl blush, the pouting girl lives up to her moniker with the most glorious pout he has ever had the pleasure of beholding.

"Relax, relax. Also, scrunching up your face like that's gonna make you start looking like me, angry all the time," Fuutarou warns her. "That being said, I don't mind tutoring you; however, while I might not look like it, I'm actually a pretty busy person outside of school. So I apologize if this sounds rude on my part, but I'd like to ask to be compensated for my time."

"Ah, a salary, right? Please do not worry, that can be arranged," the girl nods strongly, but her enthusiasm wanes slightly as a look of concern clouds her face. "But...I just remembered something..."

"What?"

"We, uh, I actually already have a tutor who has been arranged to meet with me at my house later today after school," the girl confides. "But in case I do not like that tutor, I will ask you for your services instead. Are you fine with that?"

"Yeah, sure. It's a bit weird to be asking for a tutor this early into the school year anyway, we've barely started the curriculum material as is."

The girl gasps shortly, then leans forward emphatically. "I _know_, right?! I could not believe it either when I found out! It was just so sudden, and...and I would at least like to try being able to improve myself at studying on my own, too!"

"Then why ask me to be your tutor?"

"Urk - "

Realizing that she's run herself into a brick wall, the girl freezes and tenses up at Fuutarou's logic bomb.

"Um...well...it's just..." the girl bites her lower lip, her stressed blue eyes looking down at the couch seat on which she herself is sitting. "N-Never mind, that is none of your business! All you need to know is that should the need arise, I would like to have you tutor me!"

Fuutarou shrugs sympathetically. "Alright, then. Just don't blame me for being at least a little bit curious, though I will admit I'm probably being nosy."

His smartphone in his pocket hums softly, having been set on vibrate, and so Fuutarou pulls it out to check what the notification is. Upon doing so, he notices the current time.

"Lunch's gonna end in ten minutes, so you better hurry up," Fuutarou advises his new potential student, who nods and quickly resumes her lunch. Meanwhile, he himself unlocks his phone and checks his texts, and upon finding a new one, he scans through it rapidly. "Hey, sorry for this, but I have to leave to make a call. Is it alright if I leave you here?"

The girl practically inhales a big portion of udon noodles when Fuutarou talks to her. "Of course, please, do not worry about me. I have taken much of your time as well - though, I suppose you really were not joking about being a busy person."

"Yeah, despite what the other kids here might say about me, I've got a lot on my plate, you could say."

"That's...that is not supposed to be some sort of jab at me, is it?"

"No, it's not, that was just an unfortunate coincidence." Fuutarou lowers his phone and reaches out his right hand to the girl. "And before I forget, you already saw it, but my name's Uesugi Fuutarou. Nice talking with you."

The girl shakes Fuutarou's hand. "Likewise. My name is Nakano Itsuki; I just transferred here yesterday, but I spent yesterday touring the campus, as I mentioned before, so today will be my first day of attendance. I hope to see you again."

The two bid each other goodbye for now, and Fuutarou puts away his tray before heading out of the cafeteria and into the sunny atrium situated immediately outside the cafeteria building. Tapping the "Call back" option on the text he's just received, Fuutarou walks slowly across the atrium towards the steps that lead down to the rest of the school grounds as his phone dials a number.

_"Nakano speaking."_

"Nakano-san, it's me. I just saw your text."

_"Good. Did you have a chance to meet any of them yet?"_

"I met Itsuki just now; chance had it that she decided to sit with me during lunch, so we were able to make acquaintances naturally."

_"I see."_

"But I have to ask, was it really necessary to have put all five of them in the same class as me?"

_"I arranged for it to make your job easier. If it is not to your liking, I can arrange otherwise."_

"Well, now that you've already gone ahead and done it, no need to backtrack. And, like you said, it works in my favor."

_"Very well. I would like to remind you again that their academic standings are...worrying, to say the least. Since you met Itsuki already, you should have noticed that she is still wearing her old school uniform."_

"Yeah, the one from Kurobara High, the prestigious all-girls' private academy."

_"Correct. In an effort to salvage their academic records, I have elected to move them to a public school like yours in hopes that they can at least raise their grades there. As much as I would like them to have remained at Black Rose, I have neither the time nor the patience to see to it that they do so, so this is the next best option I went with."_

Neither the time nor the patience, Fuutarou thinks to himself. What a fabulous parent...Dad of the Year material right here.

"I'll see what I can do then, Nakano-san."

_"I pray that you will. But, more importantly..."_

Fuutarou stops at the top of the stairs, putting his free hand in his pocket as he surveys the beautiful school landscape of spring.

"I've looked into Ebata's murder, but I haven't been able to find the killer's trail yet. I need more time."

_"Have you been able to determine decisively whether or not his murderer is after the girls as well?"  
_

"Still inconclusive, there's just too little evidence. Maybe the killer only went after Ebata - after all, he was a very distinguished and famous butler, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that he may have had enemies somewhere that we aren't aware of."

_"Then you're saying there is no point to have hired you?"_

"Calm down, Nakano-san, I never said anything of the sort. I still agree with you that more than likely, the murderer is still after the girls for one reason or another. I spent the majority of last night making preparations, after all."

_"Hmph. What about the killer himself? Did you at least find out anything about him?"_

"I took the liberty of performing an autopsy on Ebata yesterday. On the surface, it appears to be a simple stab wound through the back of the head; by all accounts, it was a clean, quiet kill. The problem is, with the account you gave me that the police officer who found Ebata's body made, Ebata most likely was still sitting in his car after he dropped off the girls that night, yet he received a stab wound that went into the back of his head, and the driver seat head had no signs of perforation or cuts. The car itself did not appear to be broken in, though the doors were unlocked when the police officer found it."

_"...then it is as we suspected."_

"Right, we're dealing with a mage here. Probably a telekinetic with an affinity for knives..."

_"Then if the killer has the apparent power to kill Ebata in such a fashion, why did they not attempt to go after the girls that night?"_

"Just a hypothesis, but the murderer probably wants to take the girls hostage."

_"If hostages is what they want, they could have simply taken everyone in that car hostage that night."_

"Possibly, yes, but remember that mages are sworn to secrecy and covertness is their top priority. They probably couldn't risk hijacking the car like that because the girls would have started to panic, and even if they were driving back from school last night, Ebata's route took them on decently trafficked roads for the most part. If the murderer could get inside the vehicle somehow and tried to hijack it, Ebata would fight for control of the car, and more than likely they would have crashed and made a scene. If the murderer killed Ebata immediately in the same scenario like he did for real, car goes boom anyway. Mages cannot afford to risk such exposure."

_"And why not? These are mages we are talking about, yes? Certainly they could do something to cover up consequences or evidence of their actions?"  
_

"The really good ones can, but most aren't that good. More importantly, no matter how good of a mage you are, if you slip up even once and expose yourself and the fact that you are a mage somehow, other mages will come in and remove you for risking exposure of magic to society. Because if magic is revealed as a reality in today's world, it will undermine the power of all the current mages in the world as everyone will want to learn about magic."

_"Mages sound like very selfish people, huh."_

Fuutarou could say the same about his client. But for both of their sakes, he refrains from saying this.

"In essence, yes."

The bell signaling the end of lunch rings out in its usual chimes, and Fuutarou turns around to head back into the school building.

"That's the bell. You know how to reach me, Nakano-san."

_"Indeed. I expect updates soon, Uesugi-kun."_

"Roger that."

* * *

"I'm surprised, this new school isn't too bad. I thought people were gonna be super antagonistic towards us for being from Black Rose, but that wasn't the case at all."

The mid-afternoon sun is dancing its way down through the cheery blue and partially cloudy sky, shining its rays over the street on which Itsuki and her siblings are walking after school's end back home. They could have elected to simply taxi their way back home, but at Yotsuba's insistence, the girls have decided to walk to and from school back home at least once so that they know the route.

"I know, right...it's a relief, to say the least," Ichika remarks with a sigh, resting her head against Nino's left shoulder. "That's one weight off our shoulders, I guess..."

"Hey, hey, Ichika, no falling asleep while we're walking."

"Aww...not even for a little bit?"

"That'd be sleepwalking by that point!"

"It's okay. I have confidence in my sleep-walking skills." Ichika flashes her younger sister a thumbs-up as she beams as brightly as she can.

"You _really _shouldn't be proud of having skills like that. Also, you should see a doctor about that."

"But it still doesn't change the fact that you're still the most popular with everyone out of all of us, Nino," Yotsuba says, as bright as the afternoon sun over their heads. "Still always the social butterfly. Some things don't change, ehehe ~ "

"Because I'm the only one here who actually bothers talking to people, you know!" Nino retorts. "We're quints, so whatever one of us can do, we should all be able to do."

"Talking to people...is an unnecessary skill," Miku broods to herself.

"Hey, hey, I heard that. And that's not gonna do you any favors, you know."

"Oh, oh! Speaking of people, there were so many clubs and sports teams I checked out! Everyone's just so nice here ~ " Yotsuba coos, giddy with excitement at the mere thought of being able to join one of such clubs soon.

"Speaking of things that never change, there she goes again..." Ichika chuckles while still having her head rest on Nino's shoulder. "Still, it's reassuring that we're still able to stay like this, even after a few school switches..."

"Yeah..." Nino agrees quietly, her gaze naturally falling down to the ground at her feet, but she quickly snaps out of it and glances over to Itsuki, who's the only one who hasn't talked yet. And the second quint finds out why: Itsuki is busy helping herself to a meat bun that she bought from the convenience store that she just visited a few moments ago.

Getting an idea, Nino eases Ichika off her shoulder, sneaks up behind her youngest sister, and swoops on her, squeezing Itsuki's love handles teasingly.

"It's a meat bun monster, gyaaaaa ~ " Nino giggles, pinching Itsuki's sides naughtily. As expected, Itsuki, almost dropping her meat bun out of surprise, lets out a small little panicked yelp before pouting and fuming at the culprit.

"S-Stop, stop, please!" Itsuki begs, trying her best to look angry, but as Nino is playing with her sides where she is somewhat ticklish, Itsuki can't help but reflexively laugh even if she doesn't mean to.

"But the boys won't be interested in you if you're always eating, you know ~ " Nino says snarkily. "Just look at these love handles, my God! What boy's gonna like the sight of these?"

"I do _not_ need to know what the boys think! That's always been something that interested _you _more, no? Anyways, knock it off, please!"

"Psh. Can't even take a joke..." Grumbling to herself, Nino does comply and ceases her harassment.

"It's like Nino's always dreamed of moving into a public co-ed school like this," Miku adds. "That way, she can flirt with all the boys as much as she wants."

"Hey, I won't lie, I don't know about the rest of you, but I like our new school so far. None of that stiff fucking air back at Black Rose where everything was supposed to be prim and proper...and besides, the moment they had the chance to, all the girls there would still be just like any regular schoolgirl if the teachers weren't looking," Nino shrugs nonchalantly. "This is the best school switch yet, hands down."

"Then if that's the case, Nino, why not accept this tutor we'll be having later today? That way, we can work to keep attending this new school."

"Geh." Nino frowns deeply back at Miku. "So that's what this's all about? Why are you so gung-ho about that anyway, all of a sudden? Sheesh, this's why you won't ever be popular in school, Miku."

"Never had an interest in being popular, safe to say."

"Tch, can't ever get to you, huh. Fine, I guess I'll just have to hog all the boys to myself. Maybe Ichika can have one or two, who knows."

"Aha, we'll see about that, I suppose," Ichika comments from afar.

"S-Speaking of boys, I, um, I d-_did_ eat with one today, at, uh, at lunch!" Itsuki blurts out, immediately following this up with a big bite of her meat bun. "Yes, yes, during lunch today!"

Gasping in surprised delight, Nino almost rams into Itsuki at the mere mention of the latter eating with a boy at lunch.

"Seriously!? You're not bullshitting me right now, are you, Itsuki?!" Nino is all over her sister, who hides her face behind what's left of her meat bun for figurative safety.

"I-I would not lie about something like this, would I? It's true!" Itsuki cries, wondering if it were a mistake on her part to even mention this at all in front of her sisters, especially Nino.

"Oh dear me, my sisters grow up so fast ~ " Nino puts a hand up to her forehead in dramatic fashion. "Especially Itsuki, out of everyone who could've done something like that...!"

"Just for the record, he is not my b-boyfriend or anything! That kind of stuff should not happen in high school! I am still staunchly against it!" Itsuki irritably bites in to her meat bun again.

"Well, you say that, but none of the rest of us have eaten with a boy before yet, have we?" Yotsuba points out, causing Itsuki to burst into a fierce blush once more at the implications of Yotsuba's statement.

"Exactly, Yotsuba. Which is why this's so important!" Nino leers back at Itsuki again. "So? Who was it? Another first-year? Or maybe an upperclassman? At least gimme his last name or something!"

"Nino, back off Itsuki, will you," Miku says, eyeing Itsuki's difficult expression amidst her luminescent blush that's as bright as her hair. "Even if Itsuki does have a boyfriend now, forcing her to tell us who he is can't be good."

"Oh ho? And look who's talking to be giving me relationship advice like that," Nino sneers back. Complying with Miku, the second quint withdraws from Itsuki's personal space and instead invades the third quint's, tilting her head at Miku bossily. "I wasn't aware you knew enough about dating to be saying that, Miku. Care to explain where and how you learned that?"

"You need to be in a relationship in order to gain common sense? I wasn't aware of that," Miku fires back.

"Oh, and look who's talking! I wasn't aware that people who like matcha soda had any common sense to begin with."

"That's got nothing to do with common sense, that's just personal taste."

"Hey, hey, now, let's not fight," Ichika finally intervenes, now that Miku and Nino are beginning to bicker once more. The girls are now walking past the entrance sign of their luxury high-rise apartment and approaching the lobby. "Especially not when we're supposed to have our tutor come in pretty soon. It's almost four right now, isn't it?"

"That tutor thing again? Tch, fuck if I care," Nino groans. "You guys can take care of that, I've gotta redo my nails once we get back..."

"Oh, now that you mention it, I think I'll have to do my nails again soon," Ichika says as she glances down at her own fingernails. "Wanna do them together, Nino?"

"Together? Sure, it's been a while, I don't mind..."

The quintuplets wait for other occupants of the apartment exit the elevator in the lobby so that they themselves can enter to go up to their floor.

"Oh boy...now that we're about to have our tutor come in soon, I'm a lot more nervous than I thought," Yotsuba chuckles awkwardly.

"Are you? You're usually the one who just bounces around all over the place," Nino asks.

"Well, yeah, fair enough, but, like, my grades..." Yotsuba tries to give Nino a cheery smile as she usually does, but instead she just ends up cringing a bit. "Our tutor's probably gonna think I'm a total idiot."

"Oh, come now, that's not the Yotsuba we know and love," Ichika pouts a bit too. She walks up behind Yotsuba in the elevator and pushes the corners of Yotsuba's lips up. "Ribbon up! Smile wide! What time is it?"

"IT'S YOTSUBA TIIIIIIIIIIIME!" the namesake quint cheers and punches the air above her, as if on demand, just as Miku's phone clock strikes four.

"There we go, much better. Now have at it, tiger!"

"Got it, chief! Gaaaooooooo - "

"But that's a lion, though..." Miku murmurs.

The elevator doors open to let the girls out to their apartment floor, and Yotsuba's the first one out, flying out in a blur towards their suite.

"Home sweet home," Miku smiles as Yotsuba spins around in the elevator lobby briefly before following the rest of her sisters to the door to their home.

Flashing a passcard in front of the electronic door handle, Ichika unlocks the door and opens it, holding it open for the rest of her sisters as they file in and take off their shoes. As she's removing her own shoes, though, Nino, glancing down at the floor, notices something.

"Wait, huh? Whose - whose shoes are those? I've never seen them here..."

The other quints also peek over to see what Nino's talking about. A pair of ordinary black brandless sneakers sits neatly on the corner of the shoe floor.

"They aren't mine, those don't even look my size!" Yotsuba clamors, staring intently down at the black sneakers. "Yep, yep, way too big for my own feet!"

"You could probably put your hands in them and go full tiger mode," Miku comments innocently.

"Please do not go putting weird ideas in Yotsuba's head, she will actually do that," Itsuki whispers sharply. "But really, whose shoes _are _those, anyway?"

"Those would be mine."

A sixth voice, foreign to the Nakano household, joins the quintuplets at the entrance of their home. Looking up from the shoes, Ichika, Nino, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki find a boy about their age, dressed in the uniform of their new high school and holding a manila file, pocketing his phone and looking up back at them from their living room.

Shock of varying degrees etches itself into each of the quintuplets' faces, and none more so than the one who has met this exact same boy earlier today. But before any of them can utter a word, the boy gives them a quick bow before finishing,

"My name's Uesugi Fuutarou. I'm a first-year like the rest of you, and I'll be your tutor for this year going forward. I'll be in your care, as I'll do the same for you all."


	3. Shirley Temple

_**"KYAAAAAAAAAAAA! ! ! !"**_

Perhaps predictably, Nino is the first to react substantially, and she does so with an appropriate scream that wouldn't be out of place in a horror film while taking a few big steps backwards, inadvertently pushing Itsuki and Miku behind her backwards too. Ichika and Yotsuba remain where they're standing, though they, too, display looks of stunned bewilderment, but not for long.

"Ooooh! I remember you!" Yotsuba jabs her index finger at Fuutarou. "You're our classmate! You were the one sitting in the middle, looking bored all class long!"

"While you're not wrong, I'd appreciate it if you _didn't _remember me like that," Fuutarou replies dryly, giving Yotsuba a darkly incredulous look.

"More to the point, how did you get in?" Ichika asks curiously, now that Fuutarou's element of surprise has been used up and is wearing off. "This is the thirtieth floor penthouse; we're literally the only ones on this floor because of how new this high-rise is. Nobody except us five should have any reason to be here."

In response, Fuutarou reaches into his back pocket and flashes out a passcard - an exact replica of the one Ichika used just a moment earlier.

"Your dad was kind enough to give me a copy of your house key when I visited his office after school today," Uesugi informs her. "He called me in because your new school uniforms had been delivered straight to his office for whatever reason, so he asked me to take them with me here."

"Huh, that so. How long were you waiting for us, just out of curiosity?" Ichika asks after removing her shoes and approaching Fuutarou.

"Not that long, maybe like ten minutes or so."

"Oh, so not that long, then. You're pretty punctual, unlike me, haha."

"I mean, this _is _my job, so being punctual should be my modus operandi."

"Modasu...oparandi? Is that some kind of foreign saying?"

"Yeah, it's an English phrase that's used to describe a pattern of procedure. Most commonly used in English-speaking law enforcement organizations to describe behavior of criminals."

"Wow, you sure sound like you know your stuff. That's our tutor for you, teaching us something new already."

_"Yeah, says the goddamn criminal right here!"  
_

Ichika, Yotsuba, and Fuutarou glance over at Nino, who's positively fuming as she regains her senses to stomp her way over to them.

"This guy just_ happens _to have the key to our place, shows up out of fucking nowhere, and now you're being all friendly with him!? What part of that makes ANY sense to you, Ichika?!" Nino hollers with little restraint at her older sister.

"Hey, now, he just explained all that, didn't he? Besides, we know him already like Yotsuba said, he was the guy sitting basically in the middle of the classroom when we got introduced to our new class."

"Er, sorry to interrupt, but...was I, uh, were you girls not notified of me coming, or...?" Fuutarou asks cautiously.

"No, we - we were, but that's not the point!"

Nino takes one last threatening step towards Fuutarou and stabs him in the chest with the sharp nail of her index finger.

"You could've at least waited _outside _our home! _Outside!" _she hisses angrily like an aggressive house cat on the prowl. "What kind of guy just barges into another girl's house like this to wait for them? That's fucking creepy, dude!"

"No, like, your dad was the one who said it was okay for me to wait inside - " Fuutarou tries to explain, but Nino is having none of it.

"Bullshit! Bullshit, bullshit, _bullshit!_ Get out, you creep! Out, out, out, out!"

Shrieking obscenities, the second quint lodges herself behind Fuutarou, trying to push, shove, and finally punch him out, but to her dismay, Fuutarou remains as still as a boulder, not budging an inch despite Nino's best efforts that leave her huffing and puffing for breath after a few minutes.

"...so, uh, are you done?" Fuutarou scowls down at Nino, who's trying to catch her breath with her hands on her knees after all the punches she's thrown. Nino simply bares her clenched teeth back up at him.

"Wow! To be able to handle one of Nino's tantrums like that, you must be some kind of Super Tutor, huh?!" Yotsuba concludes excitedly, with sparkles flying out of her eyes.

"...and what is with you and coming up with these weird impressions of me," Fuutarou sighs, cringing a bit at the title of "Super Tutor". "I'm not some sort of superhero, if that's where you're going with that."

"Hm, well, maybe not now then. But if you manage to actually help me raise my grades, then you really _will _become a Super Tutor!"

"Can't wait."

"U-Uesugi-kun!" Finally coming to terms with this wonky turn of events, Itsuki also approaches Fuutarou with Miku in tow. "So - so _you _were the tutor who was supposed to show up today...?!"

Fuutarou nods shortly. "Yep, that's me."

"Then - then why did you not tell me at lunch about this?"

"Ehhhhh!? It was _this _loser you ate lunch with?!" Nino exclaims again, by this point having caught enough of her breath to spare the energy for this spoken revelation.

"Oh my ~ " Ichika coos on the sidelines, covering her mouth with one hand. "Could this be ~ ?"

"It is _not_, Ichika! Please do not misunderstand!" Itsuki shouts, already embarrassed enough as is. "Well, Uesugi-kun, what say you? Why did you not simply inform me of this when I was at lunch?"

"Hmmm, let's see..." Fuutarou feigns a pose of thought before grinning directly back at Itsuki. "...to surprise you, I guess?"

Hearing these words, Itsuki instantly hits her emotional breaking point.

"T-T-To _surprise_ me?!" the youngest quint explodes. "H-How - how _dare _you! Not only did I suffer some embarrassment having to sit with a boy I never knew before today, both from myself and others walking by, not only did you call me a glutton, and not _only _did you purposefully show me your quiz score to rub in the fact that my own studying skills are subpar, but you sneak into our house _just to surprise us? Just to surprise ME? We didn't even KNOW each other before today, and you thought SURPRISING ME was a good idea?!"  
_

Listening to Itsuki's tirade, Fuutarou is coming to understand that, at least between Itsuki and Nino, these girls are most definitely quintuplets.

"Itsuki, you shouldn't be yelling like that to our - " Ichika tries to make her sister lower her voice, but Itsuki completely ignores her, and Fuutarou talks over Ichika anyway.

"To be clear, you were the one who made the decision to sit with me at lunch today, I did _not _call you a glutton, merely a 'big eater', I did _not _show you my quiz score on purpose, and I had explicit permission from your dad to enter your house to wait for you all. That, and like I said, he asked me to deliver your new uniforms anyway," Fuutarou counters swiftly and efficiently. "While you've made your point that I shouldn't have said I wanted to surprise you like this, _you _need to learn how to take a joke."

_"But we literally did not know each other until today! And you thought it was appropriate to pull a joke like this on me? On us!?"_

"I didn't know that people needed to be lifelong friends to make jokes to each other."

And now Itsuki reaches her limit. Clenching her fists and her teeth in a manner very reminiscent of Nino behind her would-be tutor, she closes the distance between herself and Fuutarou one more time to confront him.

"Fine! Very well! It appears that I simply cannot take a joke, while _you_, Uesugi-kun, have no tact!"

"That's right, that's right! You tell him, Itsuki!" Nino snarls at Fuutarou's back. "Fucking creep!"

"It appears I was wrong to think of you as an appropriate tutor for me - for us, rather," Itsuki continues, still glaring daggers back up at Fuutarou, "If this is how you wish to behave, then I hereby retract my request to have you act as our tutor."

And to finalize her statement, Itsuki walks straight past Fuutarou over to the stairs leading up to the girls' bedrooms.

"But you can't do that, I've already been hired by your dad to tutor you. And my little joke aside, you haven't even given me a chance to even tutor you," Fuutarou calls after her while Nino, too, follows after Itsuki.

"And I have no desire to give you any such chance," Itsuki spits back. "I was willing to overlook your 'little jokes' from earlier today at lunch, but this - you have gone too far, not only deceiving me but also being in our house before we ourselves arrived, saying that you wanted to 'surprise' me. If you are truly a tutor, you ought to know how to act like one!"

With a quick tussle of her long peachy-red hair, the fifth sister tears her eyes away from her would-be tutor.

"At least take your new uniforms up with you," Fuutarou calls after them.

But the second sister sticks her tongue out at Fuutarou in reply, bidding him goodbye with her right middle finger before they disappear to the second floor of their penthouse.

Once the echo of Itsuki's door slamming shut dies down, Fuutarou turns to the remaining quintuplets.

"Well then," he sighs quickly, "there goes my dramatic entrance, I suppose."

"I mean, Itsuki...isn't wrong, you know," Ichika chuckles awkwardly. "Even if it _was _a joke, waiting for a girl, or I guess in our case girls, in her own house is kinda weird, don't you think? Thankfully we're all in the same class, so at least I can give you a pass on this, even if Dad _did _give you permission to come in, but..."

"I was just trying to make an impression, that's all. But like you said, I guess I did take it too far," Fuutarou clicks his tongue in muted frustration.

"No, no, I get it, I totally get it, Uesugi-san!" Yotsuba says quickly, sensing the need to cheer their (unwanted) guest up. "You mean like one of those 'park debuts' right? But instead of being at the park, it's here at our house!"

"Yotsuba, that's not what a park debut is..." Miku mutters.

"O-Oh, it's...not? Ehehe...I guess I mixed it up with something else again..."

Sighing softly, Miku also takes her leave without another word, now that Itsuki has flat-out rejected Fuutarou as their tutor and thus removed any reason for Miku to be down in the living room as well. Ichika lets out another big yawn and waves goodbye to Fuutarou.

"I'm feeling pretty tired myself, so I'll go take a nap. Since Dad probably did give you permission to wait for us in our house, you can stick around if you want, but whether or not we'll actually bother take tutoring lessons from you is...another matter..."

Soon, the door to Ichika's room closes shut, and the penthouse is peaceful once more. Fuutarou stands alone in the living room, with only one last quint remaining by his side.

"Er..." Yotsuba, suddenly realizing her solitary situation with her new classmate in the wake of this heated first meeting, at first feels subdued and awkward, but her sympathy at Fuutarou's own situation fuels her with the motivation she needs to resume her usual bubbly self. "Don't worry about it too much, Uesugi-san. I'm sure they'll come around in due time."

But Fuutarou shakes his head.

"No, this was my mistake. It's not often I get the opportunity to really interact with other people, so...I decided to step out of my comfort zone to make some sort of memorable entrance," he admits, scratching the back of his head. "You noticed how my shoes were placed? I put them there so that it was hard for you girls to miss when you walked in. I predicted that someone would see them and realize they'd never seen those shoes before, and I would pop out and make a sort of cool entrance. But, as you can tell, that...didn't really work out so well."

"B-But I thought it was cool!" Yotsuba blurts out half-heartedly, but only in an attempt to lighten up the mood.

"Do you now? Or are you just lying to me?"

That second half of Fuutarou's question freezes Yotsuba in her tracks.

"Thought so," Fuutarou sighs again. "Again, I shouldn't have done that. Now I've gotta figure out a way to actually start tutoring everyone because of how badly I fucked this up..."

"Then you can start with me!" Yotsuba offers. "I'll be your first student, Uesugi-san!"

This time, Fuutarou can tell she isn't lying.

"I appreciate it," he grins slightly back at her. "Then I'll start with you, this time with a _proper _introduction."

Planting his feet together and straightening up, Fuutarou gives Yotsuba a quick bow.

"I'm Uesugi Fuutarou. I'm your fellow classmate at school, and I'll hereby be your tutor for the rest of our first year."

"And I'm Yotsuba! Nakano Yotsuba. I'm the fourth of us quintuplets ~ " Yotsuba grins widely back, beaming with the infinite radiance of a star. "Pleased to meet you, Uesugi-sensei!"

"You can just call me Uesugi, no need to be formal like that when we're in the same grade."

"Ehh...but you were the one who just bowed to me as your 'proper introduction'..."

"Hm, that's right...it's my loss, then."

"Aha, I won in something that I didn't even know!"

"You sure did. Anyways, since this's our first meeting, we don't need to go straight into tutoring, so let's just talk."

"Okay ~ Then I'll get us something to drink, you can sit on the couch over there ~ "

So Fuutarou obeys and takes a seat on one of the long couches in the living room, reopening his thick manila folder to go through the stack of papers inside while waiting on Yotsuba. A door creaks open somewhere on the second floor at some point, but Fuutarou elects to concentrate on going over the papers until Yotsuba rejoins him, placing a glass of Shirley Temple before him before sitting down across from him on the other long couch with a can of sparkling clementine Izze.

"A Shirley Temple? I've never drank one of these before..." Looking astonished, Fuutarou sets aside the manila file he's been looking through again to pass the time and picks up his glass.

"Ehehe ~ it's one of my favorite drinks," Yotsuba explains with a cheery smile as always. "I'm terrible at cooking - in fact, with Nino as the exception, we all pretty much are - but I did manage to learn how to mix a Shirley Temple because I wanted to try it so bad. I just love carbonated stuff - soda, sparkling juice, even sparkling water, I just love the fizziness ~ " She takes a swig of her clementine Izze, letting out a satisfied sigh while Fuutarou gingerly tries out his Shirley Temple. "Yeah, that really hits the spot!"

"You even put a cherry on top, too, sheesh," Fuutarou chuckles slightly, noting the cherry resting among the rocks at the top of his glass.

"I mean, hey, you can't have a Shirley Temple without the cherry on top, otherwise it just won't be a complete Shirley Temple!" Yotsuba pouts quickly. Fuutarou notes the immediate similarity between her pout and Itsuki's, even if Yotsuba's is done playfully. "Actually, Uesugi-san, you said this is your first time trying this out, right? How did you know the name of it, then?"

"I've seen people drinking it before. Like, people at bars or at restaurants, in their outdoor eating patios or whatever. So I picked up the name from walking by every now and then." Fuutarou takes another sip of his beverage.

"I see, I see. So how is it?" Yotsuba leans in in anticipation.

"The drink? It's great. I don't get the chance to drink stuff like this often, so it's automatically really good by my usual standards."

Yotsuba watches her new tutor take another sip of the drink she's mixed for him.

"Uesugi-san, you don't need to lie to me about the drink if you don't like it," Yotsuba says. The tone of her voice is, alarmingly, devoid of the usual Yotsuba-trademarked bubbliness. "Especially after...you were the one to tell me not to lie to you."

"...what do you mean? I really am enjoying it," Fuutarou gives his new student a confused look.

"Then why are you just taking tiny little sips of it every time you drink?" Yotsuba asks. Another smile is creeping up to her face, but it's much smaller and a pitiful shadow of the ones she usually makes. "If I didn't mix it well, or if the flavors are off, you can just tell me. I've screwed up lots of times before to get where I am now, and I understand I'm not perfect even still."

Taking another small sip of his drink, true to Yotsuba's accusation, Uesugi sets his glass down on the table that separates the two long couches.

"I'm not lying to you, Yotsuba," Fuutarou shakes his head slowly. "The reason why I'm taking these small sips is because I want to savor the taste for as long as I can. When I said earlier that I don't get the chance to drink stuff like this all that often, that was an understatement. This is the first time in a long time that I've drank something that's not water."

Yotsuba blinks at Fuutarou.

"...eh?" is all she can say at first.

"So just off that, it's objectively impossible for me to say that your drink is bad. Even if you mixed it wrong, I physically wouldn't be able to tell," Fuutarou continues, lifting up the little cherry Yotsuba has placed on the rocks for him, as if to inspect it. "I think it's safe to say that it's the best drink I've had in recent memory, or what memory that matters. Maybe if you were to serve this to one of your sisters, they'd be able to tell where you did wrong and how you can improve, but I can't. I guess that's something I can't teach you as your tutor, haha."

Fuutarou puts the cherry back into his glass where it belongs and looks directly back at Yotsuba.

"Therefore, I want to take my time with this drink, even if it does mean the ice's all gonna melt by the time I'm done with it. Not because you did anything wrong, but because I want to make the most out of something you've given me for everything that it's worth." Fuutarou picks up the manila file again that he's set next to him on his couch. "And even if you did mix a bad drink, I'd still drink it all anyway...would be a waste to just toss it as long as I can still drink it...so long as my stomach doesn't blow up, of course..."

"A-Aha...I don't think that would, uh, happen..." Yotsuba forcefully laughs, but it just comes out as a few miserable coughs instead. Dropping her gaze down to her lap, she pauses for a moment - then mumbles, with her hair ribbon drooping down over her eyes,

"Well...then...I can...I can...make more for you anytime...if you'd like..."

"Thanks. But for as much as I do like this Shirley Temple, I would rather not drink it too much. Carbonated drinks aren't exactly all good for you, especially if you drink a lot of it..."

"Awww c'mon, Uesugi-san, way to break the mood!" Yotsuba cries out suddenly, pouting hard at Fuutarou, who reels in reaction to Yotsuba's sudden outburst.

"Whoa, whoa, what did I do? What did I say?" Fuutarou blinks in shock at his new student.

"Nothing! Nothing at all! Hmph!" Still pouting, Yotsuba crosses her arms and turns her head in another direction.

"Then why are you acting like your sisters towards me right now?"

"No particular reason ~ "

Sighing, Fuutarou busies himself again with reviewing the contents of his manila file in hopes that Yotsuba will return to form, which she does when she notices Fuutarou taking more sips of her Shirley Temple in exactly the way he described to her. A small smile, this time filled with warmth, returns to her lips.

"I'm just happy that you're the one tutoring us, honestly," the fourth quintuplet speaks, picking her can of Clementine Izze back up again and holding it with both hands on her lap, not taking a sip from it herself just yet.

"I was just about to ask," Fuutarou nods, still perusing the contents of his manila file.

"Ask what?"

"Why you didn't run away like the others."

"Well, that's...that's obvious, isn't it?" Yotsuba's smile widens and expands back to its usual state. "It's because I _want _to be taught by you!"

Those words grab Fuutarou's attention, and his eyes look up from down at his folder back at Yotsuba and her radiant smile. Taking her right hand off her drink and placing it on her bosom, she lets her smile fade a bit so she can explain herself.

"Yesterday night, after we came back home from touring school all day, Papa sent the five of us a text telling us that starting today, we'd be having a tutor work with us to get our grades up for the rest of the year. At first, I was scared at the thought - I was like, well, what if, what if I didn't like this tutor? Then that would mean that all five of us would have to put up with them for an entire year. It's bad enough already that I'm the dumbest out of everyone...so that whole idea was, um, pretty scary to me. I-In fact, everyone was so against the whole tutor idea that - that Itsuki and I were supposed to be the ones to tell you to not come back, because we didn't like the idea of you being here for a whole year."

"Uh huh...so that's why everyone acted the way they did?"

"Well, that, and..."

"Yes, yes, I get it, no need to mention it again."

"I-I'm sorry!" Yotsuba chuckles awkwardly again. "But, um, yeah, I didn't...I hated the idea too, because of that."

"But now you're here with me as the only one who's giving me a chance to do my job right," Fuutarou remarks, sipping from his glass of Shirley Temple again. "What changed from yesterday to now?"

"So, the moment you told us that you'd be our tutor, I was relieved, like, _super _relieved." Yotsuba finally takes a sip from her carbonated juice to refresh her throat. "Because if our tutor's gonna be someone from our grade, and even from the same class as us, then I figured, you know, this whole tutoring thing might not be so bad. It might even be fun, I thought!"

"True. I think your dad had the same idea, because given how your grades are now, and by 'you' I mean _all five _of you," Fuutarou sighs, raising the manila folder up so that Yotsuba can clearly see its contents, "I don't think a normal tutor's going to cut it. I can see why you said earlier that I'd become a Super Tutor Hero if I managed to help you raise your grades."

Yotsuba's heart plummets in her chest when she realizes what Fuutarou's showing her: test papers from all five quintuplets throughout their intermediate and even elementary school years back at Black Rose Academy. Check marks, check marks, check marks as far as the eyes can see, with low double-digit numbers and an alarming number of single-digit numbers, even, interspersed among them. The markings are so red and so bright that Yotsuba's partially shocked at herself for not noticing even once what Fuutarou's been reading over all this time.

"Let me be honest with you, and I don't mean to say this to offend your feelings or any of your sisters' feelings," Fuutarou says with a firm voice as he closes the manila folder, sets it aside next to him on the couch, and picks back up his own glass. "Ordinarily, if all you needed was a little help to get your test scores back on track, I wouldn't be called here. Your dad should've and would've called in a normal tutor who would probably do a good enough job in my place. But it's now very clear to me why he didn't do that, and why he offered me this tutoring job that's supposed to be year-round. You and your sisters need help, _serious_ help - help that a normal tutor just can't provide on a number of levels."

The tutor takes a pause of his own to take another tasty sip of his drink.

"The tutor you girls would probably benefit more from would have to be someone who's in the same school, doing the same work and taking the same tests as the rest of you. Your dad understands that, and so he took a risk and asked me if I were willing to dedicate this next year to helping you all raise your scores as much as possible, by any means necessary - barring anything unethical, of course."

Yotsuba has long since locked her gaze down at her lap, as if refusing to return her tutor's gaze. Fuutarou assumes the reason is because he's been looking through her test scores, which, understandably, would be quite upsetting to his student.

"If you're upset that I've looked through your test scores from a long time ago, I'm sorry. It's just that your dad gave me these tests that you and your sisters took to show me the extent of help that I would have to give you," Uesugi explains quietly.

"...it's...it's not because of that..." Yotsuba mutters softly.

"Sorry, say that again? I didn't quite catch that..."

Yotsuba shakes her head strongly, as if trying to wake herself up, and finally looks intently back at her new tutor.

"N-Never mind, I'm okay now, Sensei! I'm ready to learn!" she proclaims loudly, snapping up a fierce salute. Fuutarou is mildly impressed by how crisp her salute is for a civilian girl like her. "Please teach me everything that I need to know to improve my grades!"

"Good attitude. Likewise, I'll do everything in my power to get you and your sisters there. But actually, that'll be it for today."

Yotsuba's hair ribbon droops down again as a confused look of her own slides onto her face.

"E-Eh? Even though I got so fired up just now...?" she asks awkwardly.

"Truth be told, I didn't expect your situation to be _this _bad. That, and your dad barely contacted me _yesterday _for this job, and I didn't exactly have a ton of time to think it over on whether or not I would accept it. I'm just as woefully unprepared as you girls are."

Fuutarou glances over his shoulder over at the long fish tank that's even longer than the couch he's sitting on against the far wall behind him, underneath a row of bookshelves, to watch the exotic fish swim about calmly inside.

"Now that I _do _have a better understanding of your girls' situation, I'll need some time to prepare materials of my own. And because this is going to be a long-term thing, I'll also want to get to know every one of you a bit better, since it doesn't make sense for a tutor from the same class as you to be as stiff and formal as the teachers you listen to every day. Or, at least, that's what I think."

"Then that won't be a problem with me!" Yotsuba gives Fuutarou her usual toothy grin. "But I'm not sure how well that'll go with everyone else..."

"Yeah, same. Speaking of the others, initially I'd intended to just talk to everyone here, tell them what I told you for the past half-hour. Today wasn't meant to be a full-blown lesson or anything when the school year's barely started and I have no idea where you all _currently_ stand as far as your academic ability goes, that's absurd."

"Currently? I mean, you can just tell from our past test scores, can't you? It's not like we're going to suddenly skyrocket our scores over a single vacation."

"But it's always nice to have an indicator of where you're all at now. To that end, I'll make a mock test of my own and bring it back later so I can have you all take it at some point this week. As for actual lessons, though, it'll probably have to be like starting next week or something..."

"Next week? Why next week, any reason?"

"Other than the evaluation test, I need to spend _this _week repairing relationships." Fuutarou groans to himself, taking an unusually big sip from his drink. "And I'll admit any day of the week that...social interactions aren't my forte, as my so-called 'dramatic entrance' proved earlier. Nonetheless, I can't call myself your tutor if I can't even bring you girls to willingly take my lessons, and your dad would certainly start having his own doubts if he finds out."

"Then I'll help you out with that!" Yotsuba jumps up to her feet like an elated house bunny who's spotted food.

"Ah, thanks, but leave it for later."

"Awww, why not now?"

"I'd rather just leave them alone for today. For as bad as my social awareness skills are, I can at least tell that me going to see them again now won't do me any favors. Give them a day, and I'm hoping that maybe they'll have cooled off at least a little bit."

"Mmm...okay then, if that's what you wanna do."

"By the way, how do you like your new school? The uniforms you and your sisters were all wearing are from Black Rose, right? That prestigious all-girl's academy on the other side of the city?"

"It's great! Super duper great ~ " Yotsuba livens up again to Fuutarou's relief. "It's such a big school, and there're so many people and so many clubs and sports teams, I really love it. Black Rose...well, let's just say that it didn't really click with me. So I guess transferring actually worked out great, ehehe ~ "

"That's good to hear. You mentioned clubs and sports teams in particular, do you like sports? Are you good at them?"

"Oh yeah, for sure! I _loooove _sports, and while I don't know if I'm any good at whatever I'm playing, people always tell me that I am! So I'm hoping that maybe the same goes for our new school too. That, and..."

Yotsuba's radiance fades again slightly.

"...and...the thing about sports...well, it's not studying, right? All I have to do is move my body around...kick a ball, shoot a ball, throw a ball, hit a ball, you know, _do _something. I don't have to use my brain at all; it's not like I'm going to be given a score based on my physical performance, right?"

"Well, in the Olympics, judges give scores to evaluate performance, don't they?" Fuutarou points out.

"O-Okay, but, but, but, I'm not exactly planning to go compete in the Olympics or anything, am I?!"

"I mean, you never know. Also, that was just me nitpicking, don't dwell on it too much."

Standing up and picking up his manila folder, he stashes it away in his school messenger bag and clasps the bag flap shut. He also takes the glass of Shirley Temple and, to Yotsuba's surprise, chugs the rest of the drink down, even eating the cherry and crunching through some of the few ice cubes that have managed to survive melting in the drink itself.

"I-I thought you said you were going to take your time with it?" Yotsuba asks, reaching out her hands for the glass.

"I would, but time doesn't really allow for that, and I can't just take this glass with me," Fuutarou shrugs indifferently as he hands Yotsuba the glass so that she can put it away for him.

"So you're gonna get going now?"

"Yeah. I told Itsuki earlier, but I'm actually a pretty busy guy outside of school as is, and now I'll have to use whatever time I got left over to get stuff ready for you girls."

"I-I see. I'm sorry that...that we have to be such a big burden on you," Fuutarou's sole willing student apologizes, bowing her head a bit to match her words.

As she keeps her head bowed, Yotsuba suddenly feels a large, warm hand rest softly on top of it, pressing down on her hair ribbon.

"As busy as I am, now that I've accepted this tutoring job, I won't let that get in the way of doing my job properly," she hears Fuutarou's resolute voice say. "I have bigger problems that are bigger burdens to me, both in the past and right now. And if anything, this is a burden that I've chosen to take on myself, because unlike most others, at least I'll be able to help other people out with it."

Pulling his hand off Yotsuba's head so that she can look back up at him, Fuutarou gives her a tiny smile of his own, the best that he can give.

"And I don't like the word 'burden'," he says. "I prefer to call it...a responsibility."

Regaining her smile slowly but surely, Yotsuba nods back at her new tutor.

"Then - as your new responsibility, I look forward to working with you! Please take care of me - and the rest of my sisters too!" she affirms with a stiff bow of her own, probably to match the one that Fuutarou gave her earlier.

"But you said not to be so formal just earlier..."

"Oh come _on, _you're ruining the mood again, Uesugi-saaaaaan!"

"S-Sorry. No, really, I am, I told you that I suck at socializing!"

As Yotsuba slaps her hands lightly against Fuutarou's back as the latter begins to walk out of the living room, Fuutarou suddenly stops, causing the fourth quint to almost crash into his back.

"Also, I would've appreciated it if you came down here to join us if you were just gonna sit up there eavesdropping on us all this time," the tutor says in an uncharacteristically loud voice.

"H-Huh...? Eaves...dropping?"

Yotsuba looks up at the second floor railing, but there's no one there, and no one responds, either.

"But...no one's there," she tells her tutor, who scratches the back of his head again.

"Hm, that's odd. I thought I heard someone's door open while I was waiting for you to make me that drink...maybe I heard wrong."

Brushing off his mistake, Fuutarou heads to the front door as Yotsuba tags along to see him off.

"Tell everyone that I'll be coming back tomorrow - and not _inside_ the house this time," he specifies with a dark grin, signifying recognition of his mistake from earlier while pulling on his shoes. "In fact, you can go ahead and tell them that I don't anticipate giving them any actual lessons until next week, like I mentioned, other than the mock test."

"Okay ~ see you tomorrow at school, Uesugi-san ~ !"

"Yeah, enjoy the rest of your evening, er - " Fuutarou pauses. "Should I call you Nakano, or...would that be too confusing...?"

"Just Yotsuba is fine any time! I'm used to it, what with going to school with my sisters all time and all."

"Got it. See ya later, Yotsuba."

Waving goodbye to her new tutor, Yotsuba closes the door once Fuutarou's turned to head for the elevator lobby.

But she doesn't leave the door just yet, even after closing it. Instead, she leans against the door, looking down at the floor as her hand rises up to hold the top of her head, where Fuutarou had put his hand a few moments ago. Smiling with a blush blooming quietly in her cheeks, Yotsuba closes her eyes.

"...just like that time..." she whispers to herself. "...even if...he doesn't seem to remember me..."

While Yotsuba stays at the front door for a few moments more, up on the second floor, behind the covered railing, sits a girl with blue headphones with tri-point emblems on the cups.

After hearing the door shut, Miku, wiping a cold sweat off her brow, silently gets up from the railing and slips back into her room stealthily, (mostly) undetected.

* * *

Waiting for the elevator to arrive, Fuutarou buckles a bit and puts his hand against the wall to keep his balance. His back is aching quite a bit - for an uptight little bitch that Nino is, she can sure throw some goddamn good punches. She doesn't seem like the type to practice martial arts or anything, so where and how the hell did she learn to throw some hands? It's not to say that he hasn't taken worse blows in the past, but at least during those times he was able to defend himself and adrenaline was giving him a hand in ignoring the pain, two things that are noticeably absent here.

He decides to concentrate on the girls to give his mind something else to dwell on rather than the pain. Yotsuba is clearly the only one who's willing to work with him, despite being the dumbest out of the five, as he noticed from the girls' previous test scores. Normally he'd appreciate the fact that the student in most need of help is reaching out to him like this and accepting his help, not to discredit Yotsuba herself, but it pales slightly when it turns out _all five quintuplets _are in similarly dangerous positions. After all, being the dumbest out of the group doesn't mean much when the _entire group _is downright stupid, at least academically.

But how on earth is he going to round up all the girls to take his lessons? Never mind the fact that he hasn't had the time to put together lessons of any kind yet, no thanks to just finding out about how bad the girls' situation really is today when he received their Black Rose Academy test scores from their father, he needs to win their trust first. He figured he would've needed to do that, but shooting himself in the foot with that lame "dramatic entrance" he tried pulling off as a joke just to have some fun made that trust-winning job a thousand times worse than it should've been.

Sighing through his nose, he clicks his tongue in annoyance and stands back up straight as the elevator arrives on his floor and chimes to indicate its arrival, walking inside once it opens. But he doesn't reach for the button panel right away.

Instead, he fishes out his passcard and waves it once in front of a small sensor at the top of the panel, then hits the roof access button. The button confirms with a green light, and the elevator shifts upwards directly to the roof of the high-rise, spitting Fuutarou out to a tiny elevator lobby with a small flight of stairs leading up to a door with the same sensor as the one in the elevator. Again flashing his passcard in front of it, Fuutarou waits for the door to click open, then pushes the door open to step out onto the roof of the luxury high-rise apartment.

High-altitude winds whip past his clothes, skin, and hair the moment he steps out onto the roof. Being a luxury high-rise, the roof is equipped with plenty of antennae for satellite communications, a lightning rod, and even a helicopter landing pad.

Fuutarou makes a quick round of the rooftop. Due to the city's rapid expansion and growth and the resulting wealth that it's producing for the city, affluent and rich families are flocking here in unprecedented droves, increasing the demand for luxury housing like this to be built, but in recognition that too many such high-rises could potentially come off as negative PR for their non-bourgeoisie population, in addition to preserving at least some of the suburban landscape, the city government has allowed only one such luxury high-rise to be built in this vicinity. Not only did this mean that the prices for flats and suites in this particular high-rise skyrocketed, but it also means, more relevant to Fuutarou, that this high-rise is a perfect vantage point that he can use as a magical surveillance station.

Pulling out his phone, Fuutarou thumbs through his texts and pulls up a file sent to him by one of the high-rise's administrative staff containing the high-rise's schedule of helicopter arrivals and departures, just to make sure that there isn't one assigned today, which there is not. Once he's double-checked that, he lowers his phone down to his side but doesn't put it away before reaching out his free hand before him, towards the large red H that denotes the helicopter landing zone.

_"Fate is in heaven; armor is on the chest; and accomplishment is in the feet,"_ he chants calmly, focusing on the helipad. _"By my authority, by the authority of Bishamonten and the Seven Gods of Fortune, craft my spear and build this pagoda."_

Clenching his outstretched hand into a fist to end his chant and lowering it, Fuutarou watches as a bright blue magic circle etches itself all at once like a stencil into the landing zone, covering it in its entirety. Once the huge rune is set in place, the newly fledged tutor and teenage mage raises his phone again, this time thumbing a number that he calls before putting the phone next to his ear.

_"Yo, kid! What'cha need?"_

"I'm at the roof of the high-rise, ready to transmit the coordinates."

_"Copy that, gimme one second...a'ight, send 'em."  
_


	4. Delinquency

"Eh...? He wasn't even planning on giving us any sort of lesson yesterday...?"

The Nakano family is enjoying breakfast together fixed by none other than Nino, who's cooked mini-omelettes filled with bite-sized ham pieces, leafy greens, and thin apple slices, to start their day off for school. Yotsuba has just finished explaining what Fuutarou did the previous afternoon after everyone else had gone to their rooms.

"He just wanted to talk with us, and, um...get to know us," Yotsuba nods slowly, cutting a piece of her omelette and gazing at it for a second. "And...while he was waiting here for us to arrive, he was looking through our tests from Black Rose so that he could get a grasp of exactly what we needed, and what he needed to do as our tutor..."

"Psh, that's just a load and a half," Nino scoffs as she, too, joins her four other sisters at their six-person dinner table with her own plate of mini-omelettes. Miku is nibbling at the side of one of her omelettes, Itsuki is already on her second, and Ichika is...fast asleep, completely ignoring her food. "Also, Ichika, wake up, at least get some food in you before you doze off."

"Okaaayyy..." Sleepily, Ichika pulls her face out of her folded arms and picks up her utensils to begin eating her cooling food. The way Ichika moves after just waking up reminds Miku of a sloth in the wild. "By the way, why did we have to wake up so early...? It's not even seven yet..."

"Since today is our first _real _day of school, we ought to arrive a bit earlier than usual to class so that we can give ourselves a good start for the rest of the school year," Itsuki reasons, washing her food down with a swig of water.

"I...don't think that's how it works, necessarily, but...whatever..." Ichika goes back to her food with meager interest.

"Anyways - if he didn't even _intend_ to tutor us, then that's even worse!" Nino snaps. "That just proves that he's a freaking creep, doesn't it?"

"But - but - Dad hired him for a reason, right? And it seems like they know each other, too - we can't deny that, can we?" Yotsuba tries to argue.

"Bah. It's just some nepotistic bullshit...Papa offering someone he knows a job and all that. In fact, that just makes him even _more _disgusting, you know?"

"Nepotistic..." Miku mumbles, finally saying something at the dinner table while still staring down at her half-eaten omelettes. "That sure sounds familiar."

Feeling her right eye twitch, Nino glares in Miku's direction as the latter returns to eating her breakfast at the slowest pace out of the quintuplets.

"Okay, I didn't mean to take it in _that _direction, but you know what I mean, Miku!" Nino snarls.

"A-Anyways! He said he would be back tomorrow, and that he'll have us take an evaluation test to see where we're at right now," Yotsuba continues, sensing another potential argument boiling up between Nino and Miku, as is often the case in the household. "And Dad texted us earlier this morning before we woke up that Uesugi-san would be coming in today at five instead of four like yesterday."

"Oh, so now he's being late to his own tutoring sessions? Some tutor _he _is...not only is he a creep, but he also sucks at his job, wow, I'm soooooo surprised..."

"We haven't even given him a chance yet," Miku speaks up again quietly. "We should...at least give him a chance to do his job if we're going to judge him on it."

"That's funny...I don't recall you being supportive of having a tutor over from two days ago, Miku. Care to explain your change of heart to us?" Nino questions menacingly.

"It's not a change of heart...I'm just trying to be reasonable, which you should make more of an effort to be yourself."

"Oh, and what part of my behavior so far isn't reasonable? Do tell me, Miku, what part about freaking out that a random classmate from our new school was waiting for us to arrive home _in our own house _just to 'surprise' us that he was the tutor that Papa hired is unreasonable to you? Tell me!"

"You said it yourself, didn't you? The fact that it was _Papa_ who hired him, which is further cemented by the fact that he has a passcard to our house. Do you think Papa would just give anyone a key to our house?"

"Tch. Even Papa can have his lapses in judgment, okay? I'm convinced this is one of those times. And besides, he should've at least let us know that he was going to give a house key to the tutor if that ended up being the case!"

"Haha...even though Dad's such a perfectionist at work..." Ichika chuckles softly.

"N-No one's a hundred percent perfect, Ichika! Not even Papa! Even _he _can make mistakes! He made one not telling us about giving Uesugi a key to our place!"

"You're not wrong, but even with that in mind, let's not forget that Dad always hand-picks his own staff at work and makes sure that everyone he works with is capable and hardworking. We know this since we've visited him at work a few times before and met his coworkers there and talked with them and all. Just because Uesugi-kun isn't exactly part of his conventional staff doesn't mean Dad shouldn't have to apply the same standards to him too, right?"

Once again, Ichika's calm and big-sisterly demeanor puts the brakes on Nino's emotionally driven train of thought, and Nino, unable to come up with a counterargument, returns to eating her breakfast in silence, though she does notice Miku wearing a small smirk on her lips.

"Wipe that fucking smirk off your face, Miku," Nino snaps again.

"Please, you two, do not fight first thing in the morning," Itsuki says firmly, standing up from her seat to go put away her empty dish and glass. "Thank you for the meal, Nino, it is delicious as always."

"Hmph. You're welcome..."

As Itsuki turns on the sink faucet to wash her dish and glass, Yotsuba also finishes her food and wipes her mouth with a napkin, silently wondering to herself how the rest of the day will unfold for her and her sisters.

* * *

"...ahem!"

Sensing someone glaring down at him nearby, Fuutarou calmly opens his eyes, finding himself with his head in his arms against the top of his desk. Without so much as looking at his homeroom teacher, a short and bald middle-aged man who has a comically oversized front tooth that makes him look like a bald rat, Uesugi sits up properly, clasping the top of the bridge of his nose to wake himself up fully.

"Sleeping in class again now, I see! Which must mean my lessons must really be _that _boring for you?" the teacher snaps down at Uesugi as several students in the classroom start snickering, Nakano Nino included among them as one of the louder ones.

"I wouldn't say _boring_, per se, but being the only person in class who managed to get a perfect score on that mock quiz you gave us last week doesn't really help your case out, Sensei," Uesugi nonchalantly says, now finally glancing up at his teacher. "That, and it doesn't exactly help that you sound like someone's holding your nose constantly as you talk."

The snickering immediately spikes as quite a few more students join in at Fuutarou's comeback, and the bald teacher puts on an almost comical face of anger in retaliation.

"S-S-Such disrespect! In all of my nine years of teaching, I have yet to see a student of such - such - _brazenness _and _insolence _until today!" he yells, immediately silencing the snickering going on in the room, but realizing that he himself may be taking things too far raising his voice like this, the bald teacher clears his throat quickly and smiles deviously back down at Uesugi. "But that is very well, then. Rejoice, Uesugi - if you seem to have no use for my lessons while I am here, then I suggest you make yourself useful and volunteer yourself to be the class representative! At least _that _way, you'll have some way to redeem yourself!"

"But didn't you say last week that someone like me who constantly sleeps in class would never become enough of a model student to become class representative, not even in a thousand years?"

Once again the class bursts into a round of chuckles and snickers as Uesugi exposes their homeroom teacher's hypocrisy. Now growing red in the face, and not the good kind, the class's bald teacher starts gnashing his teeth as he takes on the look of an overheating tea kettle that's been left on an active stove for too long.

"This has gone _too far, _Uesugi! Pack your bag and _get out of my classroom!" _The homeroom teacher roars, unable to bottle his temper and throwing his finger in the direction of the door. "Report to the disciplinary committee _immediately! _I will let Takeda know that you are on your way! This is merely our _second week into the school year _and I _refuse _to deal with the likes of you!"

While the teacher fumes and rages, Uesugi pulls out his phone, unlocks the screen, and starts thumbing through it.

_"And you're even looking at your phone while I'm yelling at you! I can't believe what I'm seeing! Is this what this generation's youth boils down to?!" _the teacher hollers hysterically once he realizes that Uesugi's doing.

By this point, most of the rest of the class can no longer contain their laughter. At first, their homeroom teacher's anger was frightening, but now he has gone so far off the deep end in his rants that the scene is more hilarious than scary; the fact that Uesugi seems so nonchalant and uncaring about it all certainly doesn't help the imagery be any more serious.

"U-Uesugi-san, just - just put your phone away, please!" Yotsuba, who's sitting in the same column of seats as him in the rear of the class, tries to call out to him, but she's not sure if her hushed voice can reach him or not.

Worried, she looks around at her sisters, but to her dismay, none of them seem particularly interested in the scene, no thanks to the fact that the five of them were not present during the first week of school to fully understand the context of the situation and why many people in their class are laughing at the situation.

With one exception - Nino is looking on intently, clearly mentally invested in the outcome of this classroom conflict.

"Nino! Hey, Nino...!" Yotsuba tries calling out to her, but to no avail.

Just before the bald homeroom teacher snaps again and decides to try to yank his student's phone away from him, Uesugi turns his phone around in his hand and raises it up to his confrontational teacher to show him what's on screen.

"Oh ho, obedient now, are we, giving me your phone like th - "

Just as he begins to gloat, the bald homeroom teacher stops in his vocal tracks when he realizes what he's seeing on Uesugi's phone. Quickly, once the students realize what their teacher's face looks like now, the chuckling and snickering in the room evaporates once again. Nino, too, snickering with the two girls in front of her with whom she's already made friends on her first day of school since transferring, stops to pay attention to what's going on.

"You're an excellent teacher, Sensei. As disrespectful as I've been to you so far by sleeping in class and sometimes showing up late to homeroom, I won't take away the fact that you're a phenomenal teacher," Fuutarou says, still speaking in his nonchalant voice, but this time with his eyes closed again like he's planning to go to sleep as soon as he's done talking his own part.

Now, with their homeroom teacher's look of comical anger flipped one-eighty and replaced by a look of pure fear and confusion, Fuutarou's calm voice has somehow gained a subtle but chilling edge - and the patronizing words he's giving the teacher as if cushioning him for the death blow he'll deal immediately after don't exactly help matters, either.

"So phenomenal, in fact, that I thought to myself, that's strange, why would a teacher of your caliber choose to teach here when there are other schools in the city or even elsewhere that are more prestigious and wealthier and would be more than happy to accept a teacher of your credentials into their faculty? And you said you've been teaching for nine years, which is funny, because when I checked our school's faculty history records, you've only been teaching here for three. That's a little..._strange_, don't you think, Sensei?"

Uesugi lowers his phone, making sure to lock it so that whatever he showed to his homeroom teacher remains an open secret between just the two of them.

"I don't want to make it sound like I'm trying to accuse you of anything at all, oh no, I wouldn't want to do that," Fuutarou continues. "But what if...what if, just _hypothetically_ speaking, you were teaching elsewhere at first...but had to change schools yourself due to some, let's say, _unforeseen circumstances?"_

The more Fuutarou talks, the more he enunciates his words so that there is absolutely no way anyone in the room can mistake his words for anything else.

Ichika, realizing that this is the perfect diversion to sneak in a few z's, lowers her head quickly on her desk, not unlike how Fuutarou was napping himself until a few moments ago. Yotsuba looks utterly confused as to what's going on; Miku just gazes out of the classroom windows, since she's sitting next to them; and Itsuki looks on tensely, wondering what could be making her new teacher freeze up like this when he should be laying down the law on Uesugi.

Nino, on the other hand, has the most unique reaction out of her sisters - she's glowing with subtle admiration, her vivid blue quintuplet eyes wide and attentive, quite obviously intent on wanting to see how the situation will unfold from here.

"H-H-How - did - you - " The bald homeroom teacher slowly takes steps away from Uesugi, unable to tear his eyes off his student whom he once thought was nothing more than a smart but utterly disrespectful juvenile delinquent, as if in a fear-induced trance.

Sighing and opening his eyes again, Fuutarou lethargically grabs his messenger bag underneath his desk-chair, which he didn't even bother opening for class anyway.

"Don't worry about it, Sensei, no one's gonna find out. Besides, I was only voicing some thoughts that I should've kept to myself out loud," Uesugi gives his teacher a small, lifeless grin. "I was just curious, you know? And you seem to be convinced that I think your lessons are utterly boring, and so I did my best to convince you otherwise...but I guess I failed again. I apologize for being such a disappointment; I'll be removing myself from class for my behavior towards you for today."

Pocketing his phone for the time being, Uesugi pulls his messenger bag's carrying arm up and over his left shoulder as he gets up out of his seat and walks up to the chalkboard, the left side of it where the "Class Representative" section is, and he chalks his name under the line to accept his new position.

"I'll also accept the Class Rep position, hopefully that'll motivate me to stop being the failure that I am," Fuutarou nods courteously to his homeroom teacher, whose back is flattened against the middle of the chalkboard behind the teacher's podium as he passes by. Incidentally, he's still unable to tear his eyes off Uesugi. "Though, for the teacher to resort to asking someone like me to become Class Rep, I think that says more about the class as a whole and how much of a spine everyone _else _needs to grow after no one volunteered for it last week."

Fuutarou walks calmly the rest of the way towards the front door in complete and total silence - if Fuutarou still had his eyes closed and didn't know there was class in session, he probably wouldn't know there were other people in the room. Opening the door and putting his left foot halfway out the doorframe, he pauses one last time.

"...well, maybe except for the transfer girls in the back, since they weren't here last week, obviously," he notes without so much as a glance towards the quintuplets whom he's referring to. And with that, he quietly closes the door behind him with a loud click, leaving the classroom still in a stunned stupor.

In the back of the class, Nino gazes discretely at the front door for a few more moments as the homeroom teacher does his best to recollect himself and at least make an attempt to resume class as normally as he can. Having covered her mouth with her hands so that no one can see that she's smiling and blushing like an idiot, she lowers her profile so that she can try to fix her expression.

_"...what the fuck is his_ _problem, seriously..."_ she thinks quietly to herself, unable to force the blush in her cheeks to abate. _"Trying to act all cool like that...just who does he think he is..."_

Unable to make heads or tails of the situation, Yotsuba, looking quite troubled, lowers her gaze down at the top of her desk. Itsuki simply snorts quietly, expressing her extreme disapproval at her would-be tutor's unbearably delinquent actions, Ichika is now fast asleep just like Uesugi before her, and Miku is still gazing out the window next to her.

* * *

After removing himself from his own class, the newly self-appointed Class Representative walks out of his classroom building, checking his phone for the exact time. Still twenty minutes left in the current class period - not that it matters, since Fuutarou's attendance is basically invalidated for the rest of the day for his obscenely disrespectful behavior towards his own homeroom teacher. Because he was told to go see the disciplinary committee, that means that the rest of Fuutarou's classes are to be considered absences, even though he's technically at school, so since it's come to that, there is now no reason to attend the rest of his classes like a proper student for today.

Which works out for him, actually - this means he has the whole school day now to work on the next step of his preparations.

Opening his phone up again, Fuutarou pulls up a map of the school campus. Due to the size of the school and due to its extremely high relevance to the situation, Fuutarou will need to be thorough about setting up his runes so that he can cover the campus as well as he can. He determines his first area of interest and begins heading in its direction.

Fuutarou wonders to himself whether or not being that harsh towards his own homeroom teacher was necessary. On second thought, it probably wasn't - that teacher isn't a bad person, and the blackmail he threatened him with wasn't even that bad, just an embarrassing photo of the teacher back when he was working at another school and was forced to dress up as a rat for one Halloween, quite the embarrassing memory that teacher has sworn never to reveal to anyone at this school. And while he's a strict and difficult teacher, Fuutarou wasn't lying when he said he was a good one, too. He just wonders if the quintuplets can handle his classes...

Rather, he pulled that stunt off mainly to get the class to finally get off his case. While he's comfortable with admitting as many times as he needs to that his social skills and awareness are quite subpar, what he has more confidence in is his understanding of schoolyard psychology: ideally, with his secret identity as a mage, Fuutarou wants to be a complete and total wallflower in the public eye, both in and out of school. So the fact that he's already somehow earned a lunchtime nickname for himself is quite vexing; even if it more than likely won't amount to much, Fuutarou would rather not take the risk of leaving his school-time reputation alone, on the off-chance that it could develop into something more annoying in the future, at a time when he really would rather not deal with any such external factors while handling things that actually matter to him.

So as unfortunate as it is, Fuutarou took advantage of the developing situation in his homeroom and used his homeroom teacher to make an example out of him. That way, he can put the rest of his classmates in their place without directly offending any of them; retaliation by proxy, essentially. And since his behavior is so unusual compared to how he's usually acted so far in school, no doubt his classmates will gossip about it to the rest of their friends, who'd then tell their own friends, and such news will spread through the school like an invisible wildfire. Then, most everyone will know to avoid him because his social identity will change from Lunch Table Hermit to that scary delinquent first-year who was easily able to seemingly blackmail his own homeroom teacher, and the infamously strict Bald Rat, out of all the teachers he could've gone after.

Of course, this plan is riddled with risks, since gossip can so easily mutate while running its course, and Fuutarou could end up with a twisted reputation that ends up earning him even _more _attention than before, but he's got contingency plans for that in case that happens. Besides, his relatively unpopular status at school will lean the ensuing gossip later today in the direction of Scary Delinquent than anything else, so at least he has that going for him.

But back to the matter at hand: Fuutarou arrives at his first designated spot, the front atrium in front of the cafeteria. He's spent every night since he accepted the tutoring contract traveling to different parts of the city, establishing magical sensor and surveillance stations diligently in strategic locations across the city - as a matter of fact, beginning with the surveillance station he set up on the rooftop of the Nakano girls' high-rise, their tutor has pulled an all-nighter traveling around the local vicinity completing the surveillance network, and by the time he finished, it was basically time to go to school, so he came straight here without bothering to go home. Fuutarou knows that Ebata's killer will try his hand again at some point, and this time with no butler to target to lure the girls out, he'll likely cut out the middleman, no pun intended, and go after the girls themselves directly.

The problem is that as he explained to the Nakanos' father, there's simply way too little evidence to work with for Fuutarou to track down the culprit. While there are magical registries that he could look at that can maybe help him narrow down the identities, just out of experience he knows not to bother wasting his time with them, simply because of the fact that any ordinary person, with enough training, guidance, and motivation, can learn to use magic...or even become a full-blown mage.

And Fuutarou should know that better than most.

Therefore, while still quite rare, mages can walk the normal world freely under the freedom of anonymity. The magic world is much like the Internet in the sense that so long as you make sure to keep your trail as clean as possible, keep your profile low, and keep yourself from saying or doing shit that's too obviously dumb or dangerous, you can basically do whatever you like, so long as you know what you're doing. Such is the unwritten creed of mages in the modern world of today: two mages can walk straight past each other and not even know that the person they just passed was a mage, though the really good ones might be able to sense it.

So it's imperative for Fuutarou to prepare adequately, and by adequately, he's going to cover the entire city with surveillance runes. With how exceedingly elusive the murderer is for now, the best option the mage-for-hire has at the moment is to put the entire city under his watch and look for signs this way, signs of unusual behavior or movement. And in case the killer does get moving, hopefully Fuutarou will be able to detect him with the absurd number of surveillance runes he's planning to build throughout the city.

But Uesugi knows he needs to act fast - the fact that the Nakano girls are already likely under threat already puts him at a severe disadvantage. Ideally he ought to be informed of a client's situation before they get targeted, so that way he can first investigate the potential attackers and stop them before they can even make a single move to cause the least amount of trouble for the client. But in this case, he doesn't have the time to search for the attacker's identity before the fact since Ebata, the quintuplets' butler, has already been offed; simply finding his murderer as Fuutarou progresses is the best course of action presently.

For now, after he covers the school, he should have covered most of the areas that the girls will likely occupy in the city, so the fact that the killer hasn't made another move so far is quite fortuitous. But until the culprit is caught, he must stay vigilant...

* * *

"Hello, Uesugi-san ~ ! Come on in!"

Yotsuba and her warm welcome greet her new tutor as she opens the door for him. Setting the runes down on the school campus proved more tedious and more difficult than Fuutarou had anticipated, both because of other students getting in the way and his own exhaustion from the all-nighter he just pulled. Yotsuba notices the acute fatigue etched into his face as he nods back at her with a strained smile and takes off his shoes before entering the house proper.

"Y-You look really tired, did something happen?" she asks worriedly, noting the visible tiredness plastered on Fuutarou's face. "You had that run-in with our homeroom teacher earlier today, too..."

"Had to pull an all-nighter," Fuutarou answers honestly, sighing heavily and feeling the exhaustion course through his veins as he sets down his messenger bag on the couch. Once again, only Yotsuba has greeted him at all on the first floor, with the rest of the quintuplet crew missing like yesterday.

"You really must be super busy, Uesugi-san. It's barely the second week of school and you're already pulling all-nighters? You were already in the classroom sleeping at your desk when we arrived, and we even arrived half an hour before school started. We were all, like, really surprised!"

"It's not school-related, in case that's what you're curious about, but that's for another time." The tutor glances back at his only student for the time being. "I'm assuming everyone's already in their rooms?"

"Er, yeah...I tried to convince them to come out to meet you at five, but..." Yotsuba's hair ribbon is drooping down again.

Fuutarou glances up at the large clock that's built into the wall over the still-unused fireplace in the living room, across from the couches, and the hands on the big wall clock read a few minutes after 5 in the afternoon. Because of the extra time he needed to finish setting the runes back at school, Fuutarou had to call the girls' father to let the girls know that he would be an hour late for today. But even with that extra hour buffer, it seems it's still not enough.

"Well, I wanted to actually talk to everyone today, so I'd like to ask you to help me bring everyone out," Uesugi nods at Yotsuba, who immediately brightens up again.

"Roger that! Just follow meeeeee ~ !"

Yotsuba simply flies up the stairs and turns around to wait for Fuutarou to catch up to her at the top.

"Okay, let's get started! First, from left to right - Ichika, me, Miku, Nino, and Itsuki. You can tell because of the white lines on the doors, ehehe ~ "

Fuutarou notes Yotsuba's observation - certainly it's a simple yet clever way to denote whose rooms are whose, since the quintuplets' names are numerologically structured, and thus it removes the need for name plates or anything of the sort. Though, to be fair, some of the girls certainly _seem _like the type to still hang their names on a sign outside their doors or the like.

"Let's start with Itsuki first," Yotsuba suggests, leading Fuutarou over to the youngest sibling's room on the far right. "She's super diligent when it comes to actually studying, so she should wanna join us!"

So Fuutarou knocks politely on Itsuki's door, which opens a moment later.

Before either Fuutarou or Yotsuba can ask her anything, Itsuki, having already dressed out of her school uniform into her weekday afternoon casuals, glares darkly back up at her would-be tutor.

"I still refuse," she says curtly.

"I didn't even get the chance to _ask _you anything yet," Fuutarou scowls down at her while Yotsuba's jaw drops in shock at Itsuki's stubborn rejection.

"No need, I could hear you right through the door," Itsuki explains, scowling back at Fuutarou in response. "And now that I think about it, why does our tutor have to someone from our grade - heck, from the _same class, _while we are at it? Are there no other decent tutors in this city or something?"

"Not when compared to me, no."

"And on whose authority do you think that you are better than the rest?"

Fuutarou simply narrows his eyes down at Itsuki, like he's unsure of what he's hearing out of Itsuki's mouth.

_"Your dad's," _he stresses slowly. "Or are you trying to tell me right now that you don't think much of your dad's judgment?"

Taking a small step back, the youngest quint feels her face distort slightly with discomfort at the sudden harshness of her would-be tutor's words.

"P-Perhaps he has put a bit more faith in your tutoring ability than me, but still, as far as I am concerned, you have nothing to prove yourself beforehand. What are your credentials? What kinds of tutoring have you done before this, if any at all?"

"My credentials? The only credential I need is the fact that I'll probably get better grades than you with only ten percent of the studying you do."

Baring her teeth in response and letting her left hand clench the side of her open door, Itsuki gives Fuutarou the nastiest scowl she can offer while Yotsuba, frozen in place behind Fuutarou at the standoff between her sister and her tutor, looks on helplessly, unsure of what to do herself.

"Ugh, that...that insufferable arrogance you have...I absolutely detest it. Just because you got a perfect score on a mock quiz of all things, you think it is appropriate to come to class late, sleep in class, and act like that towards our homeroom teacher earlier this morning? And now, you think you can just waltz up to my room and tell me these things? I just _cannot _believe you right now, you know that?" Itsuki growls defensively back up at Uesugi.

"Okay, I don't want to be told those things by a girl who barely transferred in yesterday and didn't even show up to class until today," Fuutarou returns fire. "Besides, ignoring the shit that happened yesterday, I'd like to remind you that _you _were the one who asked me to tutor you at lunch yesterday, and I accepted it. Doesn't that count for _something_, at least?"

Narrowing her sharp blue eyes back at her male classmate, Itsuki pulls her nose up to shun Fuutarou and begins to close her bedroom door.

"That was simply your imagination; please forget about all of our interactions so far, because as far as I am concerned, they never happened."

And Fuutarou watches Itsuki's door slam shut right in his face. Rolling his eyes, Fuutarou turns aside to face Yotsuba, who tries to give him an encouraging smile.

"Ah...ahaha, well...you know, since, like, there's five of us, there's always bound to be one of us who won't wanna cooperate, you know?" the fourth sibling pats Uesugi's back reassuringly. "Let's just move on for now."

She points over at Miku's room, skipping past her own room for obvious reasons.

"Miku's actually the smartest out of us all; you probably could tell looking at our test scores from yesterday. She's consistently always the highest scorer among us," Yotsuba explains as the two of them shift over to Miku's door.

"But like I said yesterday too, being the smartest out of a group filled with failing students doesn't exactly amount to much," Fuutarou says quite dryly, making Yotsuba awkwardly chuckle again.

"E-Even still, I'm confident you two will get along ~ " Yotsuba pauses, dimming her own strained enthusiasm as Fuutarou knocks on Miku's door. "...well, maybe...I'm not really sure. Miku's usually super quiet and keeps to herself most of the time..."

The door opens, and out peeks the quintuplet with the usual blue headphones around her neck. With one problem - her long peachy-red bangs cover her right eye, and her door hinges are on her left, meaning that she ends up not being able to see at all with the one eye that's peeking out from her room.

"...Yamamura Sadako?" Fuutarou remarks absentmindedly, raising an eyebrow down at Miku, who quickly realizes her mistake and hastily opens the door, parting her bangs open so that both of her eyes are visible. She also tries to suppress an embarrassed blush that she can't quite get rid of.

"D-Don't treat me like a ghost...!" Miku pouts, pursing her lips in the same fashion as her sisters. "And what do you want?"

"I'm here to ask you something that Itsuki didn't give me a chance to say, which is to ask you to join us downstairs so that I can start doing my job properly as your new tutor," Fuutarou answers with blunt honesty.

"No."

"Fast answer, I like it. But are you sure?"

"Why does our tutor have to someone from the same class as us? Are there no other decent tu - "

"Okay, you can stop with the deja vu now, I get it."

Giving up on Miku immediately, Fuutarou turns to proceed to Nino's room next door, but Yotsuba quickly hops in front of him to block his path and get him to stop.

"But what about what you said earlier this morning, Miku?" she calls her older sister out. "You said at breakfast today that we ought to at least give him a chance to do his job right before we can judge him on it. Why are you going against what you said this morning now?"

"I changed my mind. Acting like that to a teacher...he's a meanie," Miku answers simply.

"But - but you did the same to one of our teachers back at Black Rose!" Yotsuba accidentally blurts out.

With the fastest of reactions, Miku slams the door shut even more loudly than Itsuki did earlier, forcibly cutting the conversation short. Yotsuba, realizing her lapse in tongue far too late, gasps shortly, subconsciously covering her mouth with her left hand.

"Oh my God - I'm, I'm sorry, Miku! I didn't - I didn't mean to bring that up! Miku? Miku!" Springing forward, the fourth quint cries out to her sister, almost crashing into the door in the process, but her pleas invoke no more responses on the other side. "Miku, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to say that! Miku? Miku, please! Mi - "

The same firm hand that caressed her head yesterday grasps Yotsuba's left shoulder, and she is instantly silenced as she turns her head slowly to look back at Fuutarou behind her.

"Just leave her be. It's my fault for forcing a situation like this in the first place," Fuutarou shakes his head, a statement that leaves even Yotsuba bewildered.

"...but you didn't even do anything wrong! You're just trying to do your job!" she hoarsely asserts back at her tutor. "It's my - "

"No, it's my fault, Yotsuba." Fuutarou pulls his hand off Yotsuba's shoulder. "As far as your sisters are concerned at this moment in time, it's going to be my fault whether it really is or not, anyway. So let's just move on."

At first, Yotsuba doesn't move. She stands where she is, in front of Miku's bedroom door, having let her head hang weakly on her neck and letting her hair ribbon droop down dejectedly as well.

"Before you say anything, don't apologize for them, your sisters haven't done anything wrong either," Fuutarou says quickly, which startles Yotsuba enough to make her raise her eyes back up at Fuutarou. "The responsibility of getting everyone together is mine alone, you're just doing your best to help. I'll figure something out eventually."

"...okay," she nods slowly, trying her best to move past this jarring moment. "But...how did you know what I was going to say? Not even we quintuplets have any sort of twin telepathy...or I guess in our case it'd be called Quintuplet Telepathy? Ahaha..."

"You seem like the sort of person to apologize a lot. You gave me a few of those yesterday while I was over, right?"

"Aha, yeah, I guess I did..."

"Then there you go. Anyways, let's move on to Nino..."

Fuutarou knocks on Nino's door, but nobody answers. Tilting her head in confusion, Yotsuba reaches for the door handle.

"That's weird...she's always one to answer her door when someone knocks..." she mutters to herself, and to her surprise, the door is unlocked, so she opens it up.

"...aaaaand she isn't even in her damn room," Uesugi rolls his eyes again, once he peeks into her room after Yotsuba and confirms the absence of the second quintuplet sister.

Saying this, however, Uesugi notes that this is the first of the quints' rooms that he's able to freely step inside, if only for the fact that Nino isn't here for the time being. It's a surprisingly very well-kept room, with clean and brightly colored furniture, miscellaneous picture frames, custom flowery pink window blinds that hide a sliding door that leads to a personal veranda outside, and a whole crowd of cute plushies and stuffed animals that sit on the properly made bed and on the shelves on the wall nearby.

"Nino was the one who kept punching me in the back yesterday, right? I don't think this would've ended well with her either way," Fuutarou shrugs, taking one more look around Nino's room before turning to head out.

"Ah...yeah, you're...you're right..." Yotsuba agrees half-heartedly with a sympathetic sigh. "Then...then last on our list is Ichika. She's the most levelheaded out of all of us, so actually you've probably got the best chance to get something going with her!"

At first building her confidence and enthusiasm back up, Yotsuba exits Nino's room, only to freeze again in front of Ichika's door this time.

"...and what's that pause supposed to mean?" Fuutarou asks hesitantly, wondering if such a question is even appropriate in the first place.

"Er...well...it's just..." Yotsuba's strained smile degrades further into a full-blown cringe while she puts her hand on the handle of the door to Ichika's room. "Try not to be _too_ shocked..."

Yotsuba's words of warning materialize into a room covered and strewn with the most concentrated amount of random bourgeoisie trash that Fuutarou has ever had the displeasure of beholding. Mainly it's just girl's clothes practically flung all over the place as if the concept of tidiness or, heck, even that of "laundry basket" simply doesn't exist in this realm that is Ichika's room. Funnily enough, as Fuutarou thinks this to himself, he does spy a poor laundry basket barely managing to peek out from the far corner, holding about three times the amount of clothes that it was originally built to hold. If it counts for much, Fuutarou _can _actually see that this once was a proper girl's room, with posters of famous actresses hanging on the walls and necklaces and pendants hanging from a designated frame on the wall among the posters...too bad it's become the Eighth Wonder of the Modern World with how much shit's lying around.

"Someone actually lives here, huh..." Fuutarou can't help but express his somewhat diluted disappointment as he and Yotsuba walk inside - or, at least, try to. There's hardly any space to walk, so it's just a challenge figuring out where to go to avoid stepping on anything.

"Unnngh...it'd be nice if you didn't...treat a girl's room like it's uncharted territory..."

A familiar voice crawls out from underneath the lump-shaped blanket on what appears to be a bed against the far wall, and out peeks Ichika, who yawns mightily from her afternoon nap.

"Good morning there ~ " Ichika smacks her lips uncomfortably, able to taste her breath and immediately regretting her decision. "You're still around, huh...? Yotsuba told us that you stayed for a bit longer yesterday even though no one showed up..."

Fuutarou rolls his eyes for a third time, and this time he figures he might as well keep count while Yotsuba makes an attempt to clear a path in the room, muttering about how she just cleaned up Ichika's room the other day.

"Where the hell do I start...for one, there's so much shit in here that it's hard to even know where to walk; for two, it's the afternoon; and for three, thankfully Yotsuba was kind enough to stick around to talk to me and actually let me do my damn job. If it weren't for her, I probably really_ would _have left early, which, as I understand, was your girls' intention for me to begin with."

"Well, if it's any consolation, I wasn't involved in that myself. Itsuki and Yotsuba were supposed to be the ones to tell you that...and you know how Nino is from earlier..." Ichika slowly sits up and starts to stretch her arms up.

But in doing so, forgetting one crucial detail, Ichika accidentally lets the blanket that she's been sleeping with start to fall off her shoulders.

"Whoa - "

Thankfully (or not), she does react quickly enough to catch the blanket before she can turn this fanfiction M-rated, and Fuutarou can see why: Ichika is clearly not wearing anything underneath that blanket.

"Ehehe, sorry about that. I usually don't bother wearing much when I go to sleep," Ichika bashfully admits, holding up her blanket so it doesn't fall off to expose her chest again. "Yotsuba, since you're here, can you grab some clothes for me? I can't really move like this..."

As Yotsuba moves to assist, Fuutarou sighs lightly and glances over at Ichika's desk, which is just as littered with stuff like the rest of the room.

"I won't judge you on how you keep your own room, since that's none of my business, but I can't imagine you study in here..." he comments, pushing aside random fashion magazines, notebooks, writing utensils, and papers to clear a space on her desk.

"Oh, c'mon...while I get that you're supposed to be our tutor and studying is your M.O..."

Fuutarou glances back at Ichika, sensing irritation in her voice initially, only to find the eldest quint lying back down on her bed, still with her blanket covering her, but she's lying in such a way that her butt is finely highlighted by the thin blanket and pointed in Fuutarou's direction.

"You've finally achieved what every teenage boy dreams of, which is to make it into the room of a girl in the same grade, and _that's_ the first thing that comes to your mind?" she coos teasingly, even closing one eye at Fuutarou to wink at him alluringly.

To her quiet disappointment, however, Fuutarou doesn't react the way she wants him to by rolling his eyes for a _fourth _time and letting out another fatigued sigh.

"If only that's what my dreams were made of," he remarks offhandedly.

"Uwaaaa! I-I-I-Ichika, wh-what the heck's _this?!" _Yotsuba cries out, grabbing attention again and lifting up a piece of lingerie, a black babydoll with rose patterns woven into the breast cups. "Where did you get th-this?! So...so adult-like, and...m-mature...!"

"Oh, that...I forgot I even had that, to be honest...and besides, we're quintuplets, so I bet they'd look good on you, too ~ "

"Y-You think so...?"

"I mean, better that than the panties you've kept wearing since elementary."

"Eeeeeeeek! Ichika, stop, stop, stop! Not another word out of you, Uesugi-san's still here, you know!" Yotsuba practically smacks her hand against Ichika's mouth to get her to shut up right away while Fuutarou can't stop himself from cringing off to the side.

"O-Okay, okay, calm down, I was just teasing..."

"But...well...since you mentioned it..." Yotsuba shyly turns around to face their new tutor, holding up the babydoll so that it roughly takes the shape of her own body. "H-How is it, Uesugi-san? Do you think...I could...um, look good in this...?"

"Sure," Fuutarou answers without missing a beat.

"Eh - !?" Yotsuba tenses up, feeling a blush heating up her cheeks.

"Wow ~ Uesugi-kun making moves already, how bold ~ " Ichika giggles, leaning in towards Yotsuba. "How about it, Yotsuba? Wanna try it on for real?"

"Just to be clear, I have very little imagination when it comes to female fashion sense, so when I say you look good in it, I'm only saying that to complement you. I actually have no clue if you look good in something like that or not because, like I said, my dreams aren't made of teenage girls dressing up in lingerie or lying in bed wearing nothing like a sloth," Fuutarou declares with a very exacting clarification.

"O-Ouch, that hurts a bit, don't you think...?" Ichika smiles awkwardly as Yotsuba hangs her head again, disheartened by Fuutarou's indirect rejection.

"Anyways, the reason why we came in was to ask you if you'd like to join us downstairs so I can actually start doing my job right," Uesugi informs the eldest quintuplet. "If there are no problems, meet me downstairs; I'll be waiting in the meantime."

Fuutarou turns and exits Ichika's room to do just that, but he only manages a couple steps before he himself is stopped in his tracks by a certain Miku who's standing in the way.

"...did you decide to join us, Miku?" he asks tentatively.

"No, it's not about that," Miku shakes her head, her steeled blue eyes poking out from behind her bangs up at Fuutarou. "I'm missing my gym uniform from our new school; we picked them up earlier today...specifically the jersey, and I had it up until a moment ago...before you arrived."

Fuutarou continues staring back at her with furrowed eyebrows of confusion. His lack of an answer prompts Miku to take a step away from him.

"Stealing girls' gym uniforms - I wonder if Nino was right about you after all, being a creep - "

"I'm sorry, what exactly do you want me to say to that?" Fuutarou interrupts Miku before she can finish. "I just got here and I went straight up to your rooms to talk to you; Yotsuba can testify to that. I didn't steal shit, okay? Did you check around properly or are you just accusing me out of the blue because you want me to get out too?"

"I already _did _check everywhere that it could've been. Well, maybe except..." Miku points into Ichika's room.

"...that makes no sense. If you had it up until a moment ago, why would it just randomly wind up in Ichika's room? It seemed like we were the first ones to go in there after Ichika went in to take a nap, so I don't think it'd be in there."

"Hmph." Miku pouts a little and folds her arms, unwilling to listen to Fuutarou.

"If you lost it, then you can just ask for another one, right? No big deal," Ichika calls out from her room as she's in the middle of getting properly dressed. "Just wear your old gym clothes from Black Rose."

"Ugh, that? I just tossed it...don't want it anymore," Miku grumbles with a small amount of venom in her words.

Sensing those trace amounts of venom, Fuutarou glances back down at Miku.

"Something against your old school for you to toss their uniform?" he asks.

Silence, not unlike the same that befell their class earlier in the morning, grips the air among the quintuplets and Fuutarou on the second floor. Quickly realizing that he's just stepped on a landmine, Fuutarou bites his lower lip briefly in recognition of his insensitive mistake. Maybe it's because of the angle of the sunlight coming into the penthouse from the side, but Miku's blue eyes appear lightless and empty as they peer with a vengeance into Fuutarou's.

**_"None of your fucking business,"_** Miku glares angrily back up at Uesugi, who notices that her fists are also clenched tightly like Itsuki's from yesterday, but the key difference here is that Miku, for whatever reason, wraps her fingers around her thumbs when she tightens her fists.

"Now, now, Miku, calm down, he didn't mean to bring that up," Ichika says quickly, also sensing murderous intent from the middle quint. "Forgive him, okay? He didn't know."

"And you can't blame me for mentioning this because of how you acted when Yotsuba talked to you earlier," Fuutarou points out, causing Miku to look aside begrudgingly.

"Whatever the case, it's better off that you don't know. Just don't bring it up again..." Miku mutters.

But before she can retreat back into her own room, a voice that Fuutarou hasn't heard yet calls up to them from below on the first floor.

"Oiiiii ~ what're you all up to up there?"

Miku and Fuutarou glance over the railing down at whatever's calling out to them, joined shortly by Yotsuba, and the second quintuplet who hasn't been accounted for yet, Nino, is standing beside the dinner table, returning their gaze with a baking pan full of small, finely crafted cookies.

"I made too many cookies just now, anyone want some?" Nino calls back up.

"Nino, now's not the time for - " Miku starts, but Yotsuba interjects, pointing down at Nino.

"Look, look! That's your name on that jersey, isn't it?"

Sure enough, on the left breast of the jersey are stenciled the kanji 中野 三玖.

* * *

"Well, that's four of you, which is more than good enough of a start for today, I guess," Fuutarou sighs, scratching the back of his head as is his tic. "We'll worry about Itsuki later. As I believe Yotsuba's informed you all already, I'd like for you four to take this quick quiz that I'll use to evaluate your current academic capab - "

_"Itadakimaaaaasu ~ !"_

The four quintuplets present at Fuutarou's "lesson" drown out the sound of him placing the evaluation quizzes on his end of the table in between the long couches in the living room as they help themselves to the wide assortment of snacks that they've piled onto the table: pouches of Pocky, bags of Calbee potato chips, assorted pastries from a local bakery near the school, a big plate filled with all the small homemade cookies that Nino has baked just now, and a tall plastic bottle of C.C. Lemon that's just poured out four glasses' worth of its contents for everyone at the table, with the notable exception being Miku, who's opted for a small can of matcha soda instead.

"Mmmm, these cookies are so good ~ ! What flavors did you use for these?" Ichika murmurs lovingly, savoring the exquisite baking skills of her younger sister.

"Strawberry creme, green apple gelato, and cinnamon extract. I wanted to make something a bit different than usual," Nino explains, snapping a picture of all the snacks with her phone to post to her friends.

"And why exactly are you wearing _my _gym jersey?" Miku asks suspiciously.

"What do you mean 'why', obviously I don't wanna my own clothes dirty while baking. Aaaand...send."

Annoyed by Nino's negligent response, Miku reaches over and grabs hold of her jersey that her sister is wearing.

"Take it off and give it back. Now."

"Wha - hey, knock it off, stop it! You're gonna knock over my drink like last time, I'll give it back later!"

Clicking her tongue irritably, Miku lets go.

"It's okay, Uesugi-san! I've already gotten started ahead of everyone else!" Yotsuba beams at Fuutarou, complete with pencil in hand, and he glances over at his only truly willing student, who's taken one of his quiz sheets and has indeed gotten started - by simply writing her name.

"Ah, good work, keep it up," he says dryly, so dryly that he takes a sip from his glass of C.C. Lemon.

Ichika gives another big yawn, stretching out her arms, which causes her shirt to press up against her generous chest and accentuate them, though this time she probably isn't doing this on purpose. "Eating made me sleepy again ~ "

"Just for the record, Fuutarou, I didn't agree to taking your quiz yet," Miku mutters, helping herself to a green tea-flavored pastry.

"By the way, I wanna pick up something at the mall, who wants to go with me?" Nino suggests.

"Oh, oh, I'll help!" Yotsuba eagerly volunteers, abandoning her quiz altogether before she can even really start.

Watching the sisters chat and snack, completely ignoring the quizzes he's prepared for them, Fuutarou slowly facepalms. Little wonder why they're in the position that they are - his own faults aside, not only do they actively _not _want a tutor like him around, but now that he's finally somehow been able to get them all together, they're just outright ignoring that he's even here. He knew that having to teach five girls at once would be tough, but he assumed that going into it, his students would at least be willing to work with him in recognition of their terrible academic states.

Clearly, they don't give a single flying fuck. With maybe Yotsuba as the sole exception.

As Fuutarou silently ponders what his next course of action should be, as hopeless as the situation seems at hand, Nino notices Fuutarou brooding to himself and decides to crawl over to his side while he isn't looking.

"Are you not a fan of cookies or something?" she asks once she's next to him, grabbing his attention and causing him to raise his face out of his hand.

"It's not exactly that, I just wasn't sure if I'm allowed to eat anything here with you guys," Fuutarou explains quickly. "Not to mention, you clearly don't want me here as your tutor, so wouldn't it be awkward if I decided to help myself to the cookies _you _made?"

"Oh, you have a point. So I guess you _do _have a tad bit of tact to you," Nino smiles quaintly at him, gesturing to the platter of cookies. "Well, don't worry, I'll allow it for today. I haven't laced them with anything either, in case that's what you're worried about."

"I have even _bigger _worries now that you've even bothered mentioning _that _possibility."

"I'm serious! See, look, my sisters are eating them too, and nothing's happening to them."

"...you make it sound like you use your sisters as guinea pigs..."

"What the heck, I don't, sheesh. Unless her name is Itsuki."

Both Yotsuba and Ichika burst into loud snorts that they can't control, and they both duck their faces underneath their hands in an attempt to hide their laughter.

"...surprisingly, that's a reference I actually understand..." Fuutarou notes, though he doesn't laugh like the others do while popping one of Nino's cookies into his mouth. "Mmm, these are really good. You're a good baker."

"Thankies ~ I'm the only one who knows how to cook and bake properly, so it's only natural that they're good, huh?" Nino smiles pleasantly again, clasping her hands together next to her cheek.

Wary of Nino's abrupt shift in attitude towards him, Fuutarou helps himself to a few more cookies. She's probably up to something.

"Oh, and by the way, I'm just curious, but..." Nino tilts her head at her would-be tutor, "...just what kind of arrangement exactly did you have with Papa?"

"And why do you need to know, is what I'd like to ask," Fuutarou replies crisply, in between cookies. "As your tutor, that kind of information is confidential; I don't need to divulge that if I don't want to or need to."

"Ah c'mon, it's obvious that you're just not the type of person who'd do this kind of thing, right? I mean, just look at how you behaved to our homeroom teacher this morning!" Nino points out. "You're a big and scary delinquent type, I can tell. People like you have no reason to take on a tutoring job like this, do you?"

"And you know so much about delinquents to think you know all of their situations?" Fuutarou talks back. "Though I won't dispute the whole delinquency thing."

"Aha, so you admit it at least."

Nino puts an elbow on the corner of the table and leans her cheek against her open hand, gazing back at Uesugi.

"Quite frankly, we don't need something like a shitty tutor," she says with a polite smile that is anything but. "Especially not someone like _you."_

Fuutarou's expression doesn't change one bit at Nino's threat; he just pops another cookie into his mouth instead.

"Wow, look at you, you really _did _like 'em," Nino marvels, noting the noticeable crater that Fuutarou's made into the cookie platter. She gets up, grabs the sole glass of water on the table from the other end, and returns to give it to her would-be tutor. "Here, have some water. You must thirsty after all those."

"Thanks."

Accepting Nino's token, he immediately drains the entire glass of ice water to help wash down the cookies he's just eaten and sets it down. While it tastes a bit different from water he usually drinks, it's helped him clear his mind; while still a failure for today, the fact that four out of the quints are here now is progress by itself. Either he can consolidate his progress or attempt to convince Itsuki to join them so that she won't be left out, but that could come at the cost of another or more quints drifting away.

As Fuutarou is pondering his options, Nino suddenly gets up to her feet. He glances up at her to see what the matter is, and there's a dark look on her face.

Raising her hand and starting to wave down at him, Nino smiles and says,

"Bye bye ~ "

Narrowing his eyes up at the second quint, Fuutarou is unsure of what to make of Nino's strange behavior now.

But before he can ask what she's up to, he slowly tilts to his right and slumps on the carpet. His eyes are closed, and he is breathing deeply, fast asleep.

"Too easy," Nino snickers, her smile growing markedly more wicked as she relishes in her victory. "I guess it doesn't matter how tough you are if this's all it takes, huh? Stupid fucking idiot."

"Ah - ! Nino, did you really just - " Yotsuba cries out, only now just realizing what has happened.

"It's done, Yotsuba. Call a taxi or something and get this creep out of my fucking sight already," Nino venomously hisses, grabbing Fuutarou's drugged glass and taking it to the kitchen to clean. "That'll teach him to never come back here again."


	5. Curry Night

"...sir. Good sir, I hate to interrupt your sleep, but we've arrived."

Opening his eyes, Fuutarou sits upright from the rear seats and rubs his forehead with the back of his index knuckle to clear his senses. He can see that he's been thrown in the back of a taxi, and instinctively, he checks himself for any bruises, cuts, or other injuries and pats himself down to make sure that he still has his phone and wallet in their appropriate pockets, which he does. His messenger bag is also stowed on the empty seat to his left. At least the girls were courteous enough to make sure nothing of his was left behind, though that's obviously not meant to be a complement.

"I was informed that this is your home. Is this correct, sir?" the taxi driver sitting in front of him, a gently-mannered and neatly dressed middle-aged man with a very round face and a clean and slick haircut, asks his passenger, who glances outside and realizes that he is in fact staring straight at the Daikazoku Business Park grounds.

"Yes, this would be my stop, thank you. How much is the fare?" Swallowing his simmering anger towards Nino for drugging him for the time being, Uesugi remains calm and politely asks the taxi cab driver for the cost. It's not as if the taxi driver's done anything and is therefore innocent in this situation, so might as well pay the fare and have him go on his way.

"4800 yen; we accept cash or credit."

Forty-eight hundred yen...Fuutarou is grimly reminded of why he never takes private transportation. With how expensive it is, he can't fathom ever taking a taxi like this normally to get anywhere, especially not with his family's current financial situation, and even less so with him being a mage and all. Giving a quick sigh and accepting his fate, the boy reaches for his wallet to produce the bills - it's money that he'd obviously much rather not spend, but what can he do? The driver isn't doing this for free, either.

But before he can pull the wallet out, a girl's voice speaks out first.

"By card, please."

The taxi driver smiles over at the passenger sitting shotgun to his left and takes her card, thanking her for her business.

"You didn't need to do that, Itsuki," Fuutarou sighs. "I can pay for myself."

"Although I personally owe you nothing, the fact of the matter is that Nino did go too far today," Itsuki admits as the driver hands her card back. "So I will apologize in her stead, just for tonight."

"Thanks...I guess."

Exiting the taxi, Fuutarou double-checks to make sure he's got everything and rounds the vehicle to bid Itsuki farewell for the rest of the evening.

"I'm betting that if you didn't need to go somewhere, you yourself wouldn't have bothered doing this for me either?" Fuutarou asks, his curiosity getting the better of him, despite knowing Itsuki might take offense to this question too.

"Hmph. All I have to say that is that I needed to go out shopping tonight, and dropping you off at home while on the way seemed the best course of action," Itsuki clarifies. While she isn't glaring daggers back at him, Fuutarou can tell that she doesn't feel inclined to keep conversing with him for much longer.

"By chance, you didn't go through my stuff, did you? You or your sisters?" the fledgling tutor continues.

"And what sort of reason would my sisters and I have to do something like that? I admit I am rather confused by what you're asking me..."

"Hey, don't blame me for wondering - if one of your sisters has the guts to drug a guest of hers and kick him out of her house, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that she'd be willing to do far worse, no?"

Fuutarou's bluntly piercing logic renders Itsuki unable to respond to this statement for a few seconds.

"A-Anyway! Do you get it now, Uesugi-kun?" the youngest quintuplet finally turns her head in Fuutarou's direction to speak properly to him. "This is what you can expect trying to come back to our house. Therefore, I suggest that you give up being our tutor."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know I was talking to your dad! That's right - _because I'm not," _Fuutarou feigns surprise at first but quickly switches to irritation as he gripes back at Itsuki sarcastically. "Tell me, Itsuki, on _whose authority_ do you think that telling me to stop tutoring you will actually do anything?"

Very visibly miffed at the fact that Fuutarou is using her own words against her from earlier in the afternoon during their previous confrontation, Itsuki presses her teeth together before growling back,

"On _MY_ authority!"

"Uh-huh. And I'm supposed to be impressed? Or scared? Which is it?" Fuutarou gives Itsuki a particularly nasty look because of how much of a spoiled brat Itsuki is coming off as right now to him. "And speaking of authority, actually, you're the youngest out of your sisters, right? So do you even _know_ what authority feels like?"

This is the last straw for Itsuki. She doesn't even bother wasting her time trying to show her anger on her face; instead, she jams her fingers against the seat belt release, tosses aside her seat belt, practically shoves the door open, and swings her legs out to exit the taxi to stomp a few times towards her would-be tutor, with all the motivation she can muster to slap him as hard as she physically is able.

"I knew it, it _was _Onii-chan!"

Hearing light footsteps pattering towards them across the cracked parking lot, Fuutarou turns around just in time to see Raiha run up to him to greet him.

"You should've just stayed inside, Raiha, I was gonna be over soon," Fuutarou sighs, not wanting to get his sister involved in his quarrel with Itsuki. Speaking of Itsuki, hearing Raiha's voice made her freeze mid-slap, and she's swiftly retreated her striking arm before Raiha can realize what's actually going on.

"Well, this car was sitting outside for a while now, so Dad and I were wondering if these were debt col - "

Fuutarou immediately cups his hand around Raiha's mouth.

"Mmmmkay, that's enough out of you, let's head back inside." He turns back to Itsuki. "I'll be coming back tomorrow, same as the past two days. We've got a lot of work to do."

Itsuki opens her mouth to protest, but once again Raiha stops her in her tracks, this time managing to pull her mouth away from her older brother's hand to say,

"Ah, you're one of Onii-chan's students, right? Dad told me about how he was tutoring five people at the same time!" she says cheerfully. "Since you're already here, and we're just about to have dinner, is it okay if you join us? We're having curry tonight!"

"Raiha, as nice as that offer is, she's got her own plans for tonight, so just let her be," Fuutarou tries to convince his younger sister otherwise while Itsuki quickly wipes off the drool that's leaking from the corners of her mouth at the mention of curry.

But Raiha isn't done. Deploying her secret tactic, Raiha scrunches up her cheeks, gazes over at Itsuki, and whimpers in the best tear-inducing voice she can manage while making sure she herself looks like she's about to burst into tears,

"You...don't wanna...?"

Clicking his tongue, Fuutarou resigns himself. Once Raiha deploys this tactic, it's game over; there is nary a soul in the world who can resist such weaponized cuteness and go against its childish, innocent desires. He turns around to face Itsuki, who can't stop herself from blushing.

"I guess you're eating dinner with us. Sorry about this, Itsuki."

* * *

_**"GAHAHAHAHAHA!"**_

The hearty laughter that Fuutarou knows too well fills the interior of the Uesugi office-house, almost knocking over some of the picture frames on the drawers nearby from its sheer decibel level alone.

"To think that the day would come when the kid would finally pull it off and bring a girl back home!" Isanari can't seem to stop laughing at the top of his lungs with heartiness.

"For the record, it's _not _for marriage like you're hoping it is," Fuutarou sighs, once again facepalming as he, his father, and Itsuki all sit at the tiny folding dinner table that they've set out. The table was already quite small for three people; now Fuutarou wonders if the laws of physics would even allow the table to hold four people's worth of dishes.

"Oh? Then what's she doing here, then? Gotta have a reason, right?" Isanari challenges, poking a straw into the milkbox he's had sitting on his desk for the last seven hours because he'd forgotten to drink it earlier.

"She's my damn student, old man. Remember? From the tutoring gig _you _passed by me?"

"Damn, that's right, that's right!" Isanari nods greatly. "Totally forgot about that, my bad. No but for real though, when're you gonna marry this chick?"

Fuutarou just stares at his father. "Dad, don't ever call her a chick ever again, that's fucking weird."

"Hahaha! See, you're being defensive over her! That's too precious, too precious! Hey, what was your name again? Nakano...?"

"Itsuki; my name is Itsuki," the fifth quint repeats awkwardly, managing the best smile that she can when she has no idea how to deal with such an overbearingly outgoing father such as Fuutarou's.

"That's right, that's right. My bad, I'm much better with faces than I am with names..."

"Then I really hope you don't run into the others," Fuutarou remarks to the side. "God forbid you try learning them all just by their faces."

"It's fine, I'll manage," Isanari waves his hand to dismiss his son's doubts as he begins to drink from his milkbox. But when he realizes that something tastes off about the milk, he checks over the milkbox again. "Ah crap, it's already been a week since this thing's expiration date..."

"Just toss it, then, I can go grab more milk tomorrow on my way b - "

"Toss it?! I can't just waste valuable milk like this! All I gotta do is drink it before it's too late!"

And with that, Isanari virtually inhales the rest of the milk right in front of the two high school freshmen. Itsuki merely blinks, unable to comprehend Isanari's actions, while Fuutarou just groans loudly.

"I swear, Dad, if I get a call from you tomorrow while I'm at school that you've clogged the pipes again..."

"Hahaha, that won't happen! I'll just go clog up someone _else's _pipes instead!"

_"THAT'S EVEN WORSE, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!"_

"Bahahahahaha!"

After the two boys go at each other like this for a few more minutes, Raiha, who's minding the cooking in the kitchen from which the delicious curry smell that's making Itsuki's mouth water faster than Yotsuba can fail a test, calls over to them.

"Food's just about done, just another minute or so," she says. "How's the tutoring going so far?"

Naturally, this grabs the attention of the two high school students sitting at the table.

"Well, Raiha-chan, about that - "

Itsuki begins to talk, but Fuutarou speaks right over her with,

"It's going well so far. We still have a lot to work on but it's still the beginning of the year, we can take our time for now."

Again annoyed at Fuutarou's deceptive actions, Itsuki scowls once more back at her would-be tutor. "What are you saying right now - ?"

"Go with it, you're gonna make her feel sad if you tell her how things aren't working out..."

"Thank goodness! That's a relief to hear," Raiha nods with a huge smile, returning to minding the food now that it's just about done. "That means that we can finally start paying off our debts, right?"

Itsuki freezes at the word "debts". She didn't anticipate learning so soon why Fuutarou interrupted her just now.

"Hey, Raiha, don't bring that up when we've got a guest over," Fuutarou warns Raiha sternly.

"Ah, you're right, I'm sorry..." Raiha taste-checks the curry one last time, now determining that the food is perfect. "Okay, food's done! Onii-chan, Dad, come help me with the food ~ "

"Finally! I gotta have something to help wash this expired milk down." Isanari springs up to his feet and strides over to the kitchen as his daughter begins to ladle out servings of curry onto four big plates. "Oi, kid, c'mere and give us a hand. Just 'cause you got your girlfriend over doesn't mean you can slack outta kitchen duty!"

"I know, I know."

But as Fuutarou gets up from the table, he leans in towards Itsuki briefly.

"Don't worry about our situation, just enjoy tonight's dinner."

Itsuki gazes after Fuutarou as he joins his family in the kitchen to bring the food and water over, wondering aloud to his sister and father if the table's even big enough to fit all the plates and cups. While she waits for them, the youngest quintuplet finds herself lowering her gaze down to the tiny table.

The tiny meal that Fuutarou was eating at school on the first day that they met...the pathetic state of not only the business park but also the Uesugi household itself...Fuutaruo's homely appearance in general...before she departed the penthouse with Yotsuba, who volunteered to carry the drugged Fuutarou to the taxi that was waiting for them at ground level, Nino was commenting on just how many cookies Fuutarou had eaten earlier that day by himself...and now the debt that Raiha mentioned, even if Fuutarou specifically told her not to worry about it...

"Here you go. The house favorite: Uesugi Special Curry and Tamagoyaki! I hope you like it!"

Raiha is beaming when she and the rest of her family return with plates and cups of water, and Fuutarou quickly determines that the dinner table is in fact too small for four people's worth of dishes, so he sets everyone else's dishes on the table first and simply sits down at the table with his own plate in one hand, opting to eat off it while simply holding it.

"Y-Yes! Then if you will excuse me - _itadakimasu!" _Itsuki nods hurriedly, clasping her hands together in thanks for the food and picks up her spoon to dig in.

"Hmph. As if a high-class patrician would even bother liking the common foodstuff of us mere plebeians," Fuutarou cackles shortly, but it's short because Raiha immediately dashes over and karate-chops the top of Fuutarou's head.

"You shaddap, Onii-chan. She's your student, isn't she?" she points out with a dull smile that indicates anything but happiness.

"Yes, but lemme tell ya, she won't be satisfied with just this."

"And _you _need to fix that sarcastic attitude of yours."

"Don't wanna."

So Raiha karate-chops her brother on the head again.

"That's not gonna change anything, you know."

And again.

"Raiha, enough of that, just eat already."

And again.

Itsuki somberly watches the small antics between Fuutarou and Raiha, while Isanari looks on with amusement while gobbling down his own dinner in true Isanari fashion. Slowly raising a spoonful of curry to her mouth, she carefully guides it in, making sure to savor every part of the food made by the small and delicate hands of a girl who should never have to say the word "debt" like that in her childhood.

For as much as she may love eating, Itsuki hates it if she must eat with a heavy heart or when she's feeling down, because then this means she can't concentrate on how good the food is itself. But for the sake of this family whom she's just met today, the patrician girl conceals her sentiments as best she can so as not to make a scene.

As she gulps down this initial spoonful of curry, Itsuki gazes back down at her plate. This setting, this camaraderie - it's all so painfully familiar. And just when she thought she'd managed to leave it all behind...

"...delicious..." she mutters to herself.

* * *

"A'ight then, kiddo, walk Itsuki-chan out. This isn't exactly the best part of town, after all."

Fuutarou pulls his shoes back on, and so does Itsuki. Raiha and Isanari watch them prepare to leave, and in doing so, Raiha speaks up again,

"Um, Nakano - er, I mean, Itsuki-san?"

"Yes?" Itsuki turns to Raiha one last time for the night.

"Since Onii-chan is tutoring you and your sisters now...I just wanted to let you know that Onii-chan is a great person, and he's a great tutor," Fuutarou's younger sister testifies slowly. "Even if he's got a lot of bad things about him, like...being mean to people, being an overly sarcastic jerk sometimes, and being an insensitive idiot..."

"Raiha, if there's anything that I did to make you angry recently, you can just let me know," Fuutarou sighs rather impatiently.

"But, but! He's still a genuinely nice person. Even if it doesn't seem that way at first."

Forcing an awkward smile for the sake of keeping Raiha's, Itsuki nods in confirmation.

"So...that's why..." Raiha pumps both of her arms up at their guest, "...will you come eat with us again sometime? Please?"

This time, without missing a beat herself, Itsuki relaxes and widens her smile.

"Of course! I get quite hungry after studying for a long time, so please allow me to return for dinner with everyone again!" she says gracefully and cheerfully.

Bidding her goodbyes to Fuutarou's family, Itsuki exits the office and, led by her would-be tutor, walks out of the business park to the street to wait for another taxi that she's called for. The two of them stand out in the dark, with the only lights coming from a few dim streetlights around the degraded business park.

Unable to stand the silence, Itsuki breaks it first.

"Please do not get the wrong idea here," she says quietly; the fact that tonight is a calm night with no winds to muffle her voice enables this quiet tone from her. "As much as I empath - no, sympathize with your situation, I still will not accept you as our tutor."

"I didn't intend to use my own family as a way to guilt-trip you into doing so, either, if that's what you're implying."

"I was not! Besides, how could you have planned for something like this if you were out cold for most of this afternoon..."

"Exactly. And for my part, I still won't accept your denial, either. I will return tomorrow as your tutor."

Itsuki glares back at Fuutarou, but this time with much less anger and abhorrence as before.

"And I am telling you, that will be unnecessary. I will continue to study on my own, without having to rely on your tutelage."

"And I'm telling you, you're not going to get anywhere. Yotsuba should've already told you that your dad gave me everyone's test scores from back when you were all still at your old school. I've gone through it all - and based on what I've seen, nothing that you say to me's going to convince me that you'll be able to pull yourself out of this all by your lonesome."

"This time will be different. This time..." Itsuki faces her classmate in full. "...this time, I will pass my exams with my own power. I will prove you wrong, Uesugi-kun, and show you that I can do well even without your help or anyone else's, for that matter."

The second taxi of the night veers into view, its bright headlights giving away its arrival.

"Then...how about this, Itsuki," Fuutarou says calmly and quietly. "I'm still coming over tomorrow at four in the afternoon, but it's going to be slightly different. Since you've gotten free food from us plebeians, I need you to do me a favor."

"Tch...even though Raiha-chan was the one who cooked and not you..."

"Still ate our food at the end of the day, didn't you? Listen, get everyone together tomorrow, same time; you'll see what I mean."

Unsure of what to make of Fuutarou's words and quite frankly having had enough of talking to him, Itsuki elects to simply get into the taxi without another word, other than bidding him good night when Fuutarou himself gives her such a farewell on his end. The young tutor lingers at the sidewalk, watching the taxi drive off into the distance, and once it's sufficiently far away, he heads back inside.

But he doesn't head back inside immediately.

Instead, he walks around the rear of the building, where there is an old service ladder that leads straight up to the roof. Climbing up and getting onto the roof, Fuutarou heads over to the far edge, where he then sits down with his legs dangling over the side right over the Uesugi office.

A small blue rune appears beside him, and out of it and into his outstretched hand drops a crinkled pack of cigarettes and a lighter with only about a quarter of its fuel left. He'll need to grab another lighter at some point, Fuutarou makes a mental note to himself as he pulls out a cancer stick, lights up, and puts the lit cigarette in between his lips while putting the pack and lighter back into the rune out of which they've fallen. He takes a long puff, making sure to savor the toxic smoke for all that it's worth.

The heaviness of the air that he's filling his lungs with...the noxious smoke and the burning chemicals that engulfs him slowly as if sinking into invisible quicksand...ah yes, it's been a long while since he's decided to have another smoke.

Ordinarily he'd reserve a smoke for a much more stressful day - while the quintuplets have certainly been a bit frustrating to work with, they are by no means the worst he's had to deal with. But with the windless night and the cloud-draped full moon in the starless night sky before him, tonight just feels like the perfect night to light one up, that's all.

Since he's here now, it's a good time for Fuutarou to review the events of today...especially what happened _after _Nino "drugged" him.

* * *

"That'll teach him to never come back here again."

Poking the "unconscious" Fuutarou on his nose and unable to elicit a response from him, Ichika frowns slightly. "He's out for good, huh. Hey, Nino, are you sure this was a good idea?"

"You don't wanna bother taking his stupid tutoring lessons either, do you?" Nino snaps at her older sister from the kitchen, making sure to clean the drugged glass thoroughly.

"Well...not really, but...I _do _think that pulling a fast one on him was a bit overboard."

After hesitating for a few moments, Yotsuba takes matters into her own hands and heads over to Fuutarou's side, pulling him up with great exertion as he's surprisingly much heavier than she thought.

"What on earth are you two doing?" Calling out from the stairs as she descends, Itsuki is scowling at Yotsuba and Fuutarou as the former simply decides to drag him over to the couch behind her.

"Nino did it again, Itsuki!" Yotsuba calls out, turning her head in Itsuki's direction in an effort to win her sympathy.

"Did it again? Oh, I see..." Itsuki immediately understands once she sees the unconscious Fuutarou while Yotsuba tries to heave him onto the couch with much struggle until Ichika sighs and gives her a hand. Now with the two of them, Fuutarou is pulled up to the couch so that he can sleep sitting on it for the time being and not on the floor.

"Hey, what kind of reaction is that? You're normally the first one who gets angry whenever Nino goes off and does something like this!" Yotsuba exclaims once their drugged tutor is now safely secured on the sofa.

"Hm, let us just say, I do not mind as much if the one Nino drugged is him." Itsuki gives Yotsuba a quick tussle of her hair before joining Miku at the table, pointing at the platter of Nino's cookies. "Do you mind if I have some?"

"It's for everyone, so...help yourself..."

"Thank you."

Yotsuba helplessly looks on at her sisters, none of whom seem to give a damn about the fact that they've drugged the person that's supposed to be their tutor. With one exception: Ichika walks over to her and puts her hand on her shoulder.

"Don't dwell too much on it. And Nino never hurts anyone she drugs, so he'll be fine," Ichika says reassuringly.

"...that's not the point, though," Yotsuba purses her lips, letting her eyes fall to the carpet and feeling her chest tighten up slowly.

"Then what is? Tell your sis what's on your mind."

The fourth daughter of Nakano looks back up at the quietly dozing Fuutarou. If there is one silver lining about this situation, it's that, at the very least, he is getting some badly needed sleep for how terrible he looked coming into the house almost an hour ago.

"He's been...working so hard for us already," Yotsuba's strained voice lets out. Perhaps it's this welling feeling in her chest that she can't quite identify that's giving her the drive to say what's on her mind, for she usually doesn't act like this. "Even if it's only been two days, even if maybe it's understandable that there wouldn't be much progress...I don't want to take it away from him, the fact that he's already been doing everything he can for us."

"Has he? Um...well, I guess you would know better than anyone else, since yesterday..." Ichika grins painfully, realizing that she'd completely skipped out on Fuutarou's first official day of tutoring.

"While that may be, just how do you know whether or not he truly has been putting in the effort?" Itsuki points out after washing down her cookies with a swig of Miku's C.C. Lemon, since Miku dislikes sweet stuff. "It is as you say, Yotsuba, it has only been a mere two days. Not to mention, he has barely taken the time to meet with the rest of us!"

"But that's only because the rest of you haven't given him a chance to do that!" Yotsuba argues back, taking a step towards Itsuki and Miku who are sitting together at the low table. "He's had to work with all of us acting this way towards him, you know! I told everyone this morning what he was doing before we got home yesterday, right? He was looking through our tests!"

"So? Any fucking idiot can do that, so what gives?" Nino grumbles, returning from the kitchen once she's done cleaning the drugged glass.

Yotsuba then walks around the long couch before her to the table and picks up her quiz sheet to show her sisters.

"He didn't _just _skim through our test scores," she declares resolutely as her sisters just stare aimlessly at the quiz sheet she's holding up. "Look at the questions themselves."

So her sisters do. Naturally, Miku, the sharpest one among them, understands first after Yotsuba.

"...the questions are taken straight from our most recent tests from our old school," she mutters, somewhat in annoyance.

"And not just that," Yotsuba continues, pointing down her own sheet. "A lot of the questions are from our most recent tests, yeah, but that's only around half of them. The rest are questions taken from tests from all throughout our middle school years!"

Lowering her quiz sheet, the fourth quint surveys her sisters quickly, who begin to have various degrees of discomfort creeping up on their faces.

"He didn't _just _skim through our test scores just to see how badly we did," Yotsuba repeats herself emphatically. "He looked through them _all_. He looked through _all _of our tests and hand-picked questions out of them to see if we can answer them right this time around. That's why he wanted to give us this evaluation quiz, because he said he wanted to know where we currently are in terms of test-taking!"

"Even...even if that may be, that is simply laziness on his part, no?" Itsuki talks back, getting back up to her feet to speak to Yotsuba on the same level. "Going through our old tests, picking out old questions, and then putting them together to make a quiz...how unmotivated and lazy must you be that _that _is how you come up with a test for your students? And he calls himself a tutor! Preposterous!"

"But Yotsuba did say this morning that Fuutarou-kun was really busy guy outside of school," Ichika reminds her youngest sibling. "And we all remember what happened this morning, right? We all walked in on him sleeping at his desk when we were so early we should've been the first ones to arrive."

"...he looked like crap, too," Miku adds quietly from the table. "And...when I confronted him about where my jersey was earlier outside our rooms, I could tell that he didn't take a shower recently. Smelled pretty sweaty, I think...he's been moving around a lot."

While her sisters are pointing out just how exhausted Fuutarou seemed to be, Nino looks away to hide the growing look of discomfort on her own face, discomfort that is now slowly mutating into guilt. As she was cleaning, she realized that she accidentally didn't slip the glass of water that she gave to Fuutarou to drink enough of a dose for a guaranteed knock-out, and just to make sure, she checked the drug bottle in the cabinet above the sink, which indeed did not have enough of its contents removed for a full dose. Normally with an insufficient dose, a normal boy like Fuutarou would merely start feeling woozy and lethargic, so the fact that Uesugi knocked out that fast from a suboptimal dosage...

"I won't pretend to know what Uesugi-san's up to that makes him so busy outside of school, and I don't want to pry into his personal business either," Nino hears Yotsuba continue to speak once she's done doing her part feeling sorry. "But for us to do all this and act like this...not wanting to cooperate with him, not even wanting to _talk _to him, ignoring him when he's trying to help us, and then now drugging him asleep just because we don't want him here...don't you guys think we've gone too far?"

Itsuki pulls over Miku's quiz sheet to look it over for herself. As she scans it, something about the test catches her eye - but she decides not to mention it for now, for if she does, it will be the equivalent of losing the moral battle against Fuutarou.

"You didn't do anything wrong, Yotsuba...you don't need to group yourself with the rest of us," Ichika pats Yotsuba on the shoulder reassuringly. "You're the only one who's actually been spending time with him, after all. The rest of us...well, not so much."

But Yotsuba shakes her head. "No...I don't think that's good enough. I'm the dumbest one out of everyone here - it's only natural that I should be the one who should be going to Uesugi-san for help the most. Even if I'm not behaving exactly like everyone else, the fact that Uesugi-san needs to deal with a stupid idiot like me who gets single-digit test scores more often than double-digits...no, I can't exempt myself or give myself any excuses, Ichika. This is...this is how it should be. I'm just as guilty as everyone else..."

Yotsuba lowers her head even more, to the point where her bangs now cover most of her eyes as though her name is Miku.

"...especially since..._I'm _the reason why we had to transfer..."

It is at this point that Miku also gets up from the table to walk over to Yotsuba and take her hand.

"Being the dumbest out of us doesn't mean a whole lot when we're all dumb," she says quietly, trying her best to lift Yotsuba's dampened spirits. "I don't think myself as the 'smartest' of us quints, since it doesn't amount to anything other than 'I'm still failing'. So you shouldn't think of yourself as the dumbest. And...if anything, you did me a favor...getting us out of Black Rose..."

"And besides, we talked about this before, didn't we?" Ichika takes Yotsuba's other hand. "If one of us falls behind, we won't just leave her there. Mom always said to stick together no matter what happened, didn't she?"

"Yeah, and it would still be the same if it were somebody else," Nino adds, putting her right hand against her hip. "More than anything else, we have to stay together...even if our lives have changed to this point, at the end of the day, we can't ever forget that we're all we have."

After pausing, Nino shoots a nasty look over in the unconscious Fuutarou's direction.

"And we can't let people like _him _get in the way," she adds hatefully.

"Don't worry about it, Yotsuba. We'll figure something out," Ichika warmly takes Yotsuba into her arms and embraces her, patting her on the back comfortingly.

"But first, we ought'a figure out what we're gonna do with his ass," Nino points to their dozing tutor.

"I have some shopping to do later tonight, so I will take my share of responsibility and make sure that he returns home safely," Itsuki announces, looking up at the rest of her sisters. "Does anyone have any objections?"

"None here. How're you gonna get him home, though? Ebata still hasn't come around..."

"By taxi. It is the next best option, after all."

"Then that's settled. What do you all want for dinner?"

"Anything's fine," Miku answers for the group.

"It's always 'anything's fine', huh," Nino sighs. "It wouldn't kill you all to give me some more specific requests, would it?"

"But...anything you make is good..."

"That's right, that's right ~ " Ichika nods fervently, smiling over at Nino too while still hugging the downhearted Yotsuba. "You always make great food that we don't know what to choose, they're all so good ~ "

Pouting somewhat at the complements she's receiving, Nino gives a quick flick of her own hair before turning around and heading to the kitchen to make dinner preparations.

"Then I'll just make some curry tonight, I guess..."

Itsuki's ears perks up at the mention of curry.

* * *

Itsuki _really _loves curry, Fuutarou thinks to himself as he watches the full moon. Not only did the quintuplets have curry for their own dinner, but Itsuki ended up coming over to his house and clearing the plate that Raiha gave her, too. Just what kind of bottomless stomach does she have to be able to eat that much? Fuutarou doubts even he would be able to down that much food, even at his hungriest.

But that's a tangential matter; what matters more are two things: Yotsuba's insecurity, and the fact that Nino is in possession of some alarmingly potent drugs.

First, Yotsuba. Fuutarou had already gotten the sense that she has some sort of hidden motive that drives her to be the most willing out of the quintuplets to accept him as her tutor. Although he'd need to spend more time with her to make certain of this hunch, just with what little time they have spent together has led Fuutarou to believe this, at least before Nino tried drugging his ass. It's perhaps not an _ulterior _motive, that sounds far too malicious for the likes of someone like Yotsuba, but for someone as ditzy and bubbly as her, he finds it hard to believe that bad grades would be the sole factor in pushing her towards him in a figurative sense.

And now, he knows why - or is starting to see why, at least. Yotsuba admitted that she is the reason for the quints' transfer to Fuutarou's school out of Kurobara, so guilt is a major factor. Or, perhaps even worse, Yotsuba harbors a degree of inferiority complex in comparison to her sisters, despite the fact that they are all potential dropouts.

Fuutarou finds himself scratching the back of his head. In hindsight, maybe the whole spiel that he gave her about how being the dumbest out of a group of dumb people doesn't mean a ton was in fact incredibly inappropriate; if this is the case, then it makes sense why Yotsuba reacted the way she did when Fuutarou revealed to her that he'd been looking through everyone's test scores.

_"...Even if he's got a lot of bad things about him, like...being mean to people, being an overly sarcastic jerk sometimes, and being an insensitive idiot..."_

Raiha's words about him float into his head. Fuutarou lets out a soft sigh - while his sister is indeed spitting facts, he certainly doesn't act this way to maliciously put anyone down, and even less so towards someone like Yotsuba.

For now, Fuutarou resolves to put more emphasis on tutoring Yotsuba. He might not know how exactly tutoring the girls will go, especially with all this initial resistance that he's getting, but he should have expected girls like them to react this way - with the clear exception of the fourth quint, they're all just rich spoiled brats, after all. Going in with any such high expectations out of them would just be asking for a bad time; Fuutarou didn't even have high expectations of them to begin with and look how that turned out already.

Tapping the burning ashes of his half-smoked cigarette to the side, where they drip into another small blue rune that catches the ashes for him, Fuutarou switches the subject in his mind.

Now _this _is something that worries Fuutarou more urgently than Yotsuba's case, and that is the fact that Nino somehow has access to drugs. Of course, there are normal date rape drugs and the like that are in circulation within the normal population, though thankfully it's somewhat less so here in Japan than in other countries, if that really counts for anything.

For context, most normal club drugs have symptoms that appear after ingestion first, symptoms like dizziness, disorientation, loss of muscle control, slurred speech, nausea, altered heart rate, sleepiness, sudden confusion, or even a sense of suffocation. Depending on their doses, eventually these drugs can lead to unconsciousness.

If standard date rape drugs were all that Nino had, then Fuutarou wouldn't be as concerned as he is now, since he can buy the possibility that she has access to them through her friends; since Yotsuba described her as a social butterfly of sorts, it's not unreasonable to assume that she's in contact with some less-than-savory friends who could hook her up with some less-than-legal items. But what Nino does have is on another level.

This drug that Nino possesses skips all the symptoms and just puts you straight to sleep within mere seconds. Fuutarou has encountered this before, in the form of a prototype strain during a previous contract. If he recalls correctly, the drug's name is "Heisei" (平静) due to its ability to knock a full-grown adult out in mere seconds after ingestion; it's a magically-engineered drug produced from an unspecified concoction of well-known club drugs like flunitrazepam, gamma hydroxybutyric acid, and ketamine and various magical ingredients that was originally intended for medical procedures in the magical world so that patients could enter immediate deep sleep for a set period of time while mage surgeons could operate immediately without hassle.

In fact, Heisei is so strong that mage surgeons have been known to skip out on magical anesthetics altogether because they would be redundant. Its other advantage is that due to its magically engineered nature, past a certain amount, various doses of Heisei would be able to reliably put patients to sleep for varying amounts of time, making it quite the convenient drug in the magical medical field. However, past another threshold, too big a dose of Heisei would put patients into a comatose state out of which they may not be able to wake...and even more than that, and the drug would simply halt all brain activity.

Naturally, it would only be a matter of time before a drug of this potency and strength leaked out to the criminal side of the magical world, and sure enough it did, as that previous contract of Fuutarou's showed. While he's aware that there are magical investigations under way to try to determine the extent to which Heisei has spread into the normal world, Fuutarou has done his own share of investigation, at least in this region, as a way to protect his family from ever coming into contact with it or other drugs like it. He did find that Heisei is still an extremely rare drug on the underground black market, as its sheer reliability and potency have give it quite the hefty price tag that dissuades most potential buyers from purchasing it, and that's before taking into account supply and demand laws and middleman markups.

That is certainly not a problem for Nino, though.

At the very least, it seems like the quintuplets are aware of about Nino's drugging habits, judging by their reactions from earlier, so for now he'll have to assume that the girls know better than to mess around with it, though he highly doubts that any of them know just how truly dangerous Nino's drug is.

The most alarming aspect of this issue is the fact that because Nino has somehow gotten her hands on Heisei, this means that she has a contact to the magical world, which is a direct violation of the terms of his contract with the quints' father. And even if it weren't a term on the contract, Fuutarou doesn't want Nino to have a gateway into the magical world anyway; this side of the world is no place for ordinary girls like her or her sisters to wander into unknowingly. It's bad enough what can happen to you in the normal world, especially when date rape drugs are involved, but have that happen to you in the magical world, that's hell you've just entered, whether you believe in it or not.

As Fuutarou takes one last puff from his spent cigarette and flicks the butt into the ash tray rune, he gazes up at the full moon one more time to finish the night. He'll need to take a shower to get rid of the cigarette smell, otherwise Raiha'll find out that he's been smoking again, and he knows how angry she can get just from seeing how she's reacted to finding out about her father smoking the other day.

But above that, he'll need to keep a close eye on Nino and find out how the hell she's acquiring Heisei. To that end, he'll need to search the girls' house for it and see how much of it she has to predict when she needs a refill, at which point he'll track her down to eliminate the source. This, on top of trying to tutor them for once. He smirks to himself lightly, knowing that it'll probably be another long night ahead.

"Heh...this fucking sucks."

And with that, he hops off the edge of the roof.


	6. Evaluation

With a sharp inhale through her nostrils, Nakano Miku snaps her eyes open into the darkness of her room.

Her skin is cold and clammy, what parts of it haven't been underneath the covers of her bed. Finding it difficult to breathe, Miku can't seem to shut her eyes or move the rest of her limbs, for that matter. Slowly but surely, Miku regains the ability to breathe properly - not because of her own willpower, no, but because that's how it always happens - there is nothing she herself needs to do.

There is nothing she herself _can _do.

After what seems like a dreadful eternity staring up at the ceiling of her pitch-black room, Miku finally regains full motor functions and slowly sits up in bed, surveying her room robotically.

It's her room, yes. There is no doubt that this is her room, that this is her room that she is in right now.

Miku has to make sure. She has to double-check, triple-check...quintuple-check, even.

Because there are some nights when it feels like she's somewhere else.

Even when she's inside her own room.

The digital alarm clock on her desk within arm's reach from her bedside reads 3:24 AM. So late, Miku thinks to herself. Everyone else should be fast asleep at this hour, too. It's in her best interest to just go back to sleep.

But of course it wouldn't be that easy.

_"Hrrk...! Nggghh, aaaagggh...!"_

Finally, the pain hits. Not physical pain; Miku is by no means a sickly girl, even if she has the demeanor of one and carries herself about like one, and neither does she have any current physical afflictions.

Miku doesn't know how exactly to describe this pain. Nothing about her body physically hurts, but her head just starts to pound like someone's taken a chisel and hammer and is stabbing her against both of her temples at the same time. It doesn't hurt, but it hurts like hell all at once. A phantom pain, a pain that doesn't exist, yet torments her so anyway.

Cringing at the unbearable pain that only escalates more and more without any concern for her own well-being, Miku narrows her eyes in the dark and quickly raises both of her hands to clutch at her face tightly, as though doing this will somehow ease the pain, which It doesn't, but what else can she do? It's to the point where even trying anything at all, doing _something _to give her mind something else to focus on rather than the pain is therapeutic, even if, in the end, it doesn't even matter what she does.

But this isn't the bad part. It's what follows after.

_"Stop...! Please...stop...stop...stop...!" _Miku breathes, her subdued, almost bored voice now twisted into a high-pitched, terrified tone. _"Don't...show me...don't...don't...don't...don't...don't...don't...!'_

The pain builds and builds and builds. Miku knows full well what is about to happen, and there is nothing she can do to stop it, other than beg helplessly to nobody in particular for her panic to cease. The blurry outlines of her bed, furniture, and the rest of the room bleed into the darkness, being indistinguishable and disappearing altogether as Miku's eyes, still wide and staring through the cracks in her fingers, unable to close themselves, begin to emit a pair of small blue lights.

Her clammy skin on her hands moistens up even more without warning, becoming slippery and disgusting. Did her hands just start pouring out buckets of sweat all of a sudden? Miku finally manages to tear her hands off her own face to check them, but...that's not sweat on her hands.

That's blood.

Feeling her heartbeat pounding in her throat, along with the chiseling pain throbbing in her temples, Miku is unable to keep her hands raised before her, and they drop lifelessly to her lap. With her hands out of the way, Miku's eyes gaze emptily down at the ground before her, because she's no longer sitting up in her bed.

Blood stretches as far as she can see in all directions. The air is stagnant, heavy, and suffocating. A suspicious liquid, probably also blood, is dripping from above somewhere, and the tiny splashes they create echo as though Miku is in an enclosed space, even though there are no boundaries to this space that she can see - black atmosphere conjoined in chaotic but silent unity with a blood-red mirror sea, at the epicenter of which stands an equally silent Miku.

She's been here before. She doesn't know how many times she's been here before. And she knows what will come next.

A small girl's scream, crashing through the silence like a baseball struck through a window, rattles the mirror blood sea:

_"MOOOOOOOOM! ! ! !"_

Finally, Miku's eyes manage to blink - and find themselves staring down at her bloodless, clammy hands on her bed blanket, no longer subtly glowing in the dark. She's back in her room, which means...the nightmare is over.

For now.

Miku can still feel the aftershocks of the throbbing in her head still pounding against her temples, so she lifts her hands back up to the sides of her head to nurse them. It's only when she does this that she feels something leak out of her eyes and dribble swiftly down her cheeks and down onto her blanket. She knows what they are, though...and there's no point to wipe them away if there's more where they came from.

For a good twenty minutes, the third quintuplet sits up in her bed, quietly and patiently waiting for the aftershock throbs in her head to subside. It's bad enough that she has to experience this in the first place; she doesn't want to have to go back to sleep with the experience fresh on her mind, so she'll wait however long she needs to to let them go away on their own.

Once they have gone away for the night, Miku finally wipes the tears from her face with the backs of her hands and dries off the wet spots on her blanket as much as she can. And once that's done, she sits up in bed, scanning her own room warily and wearily, and eventually her tortured eyes rest upon a single blue paper crane whose color is beginning to fade, sitting underneath the lamp on her desk. After staring at that fading blue paper crane for a few moments, she gets out of bed, stealthily opens her door slowly and in such a manner that the hinges on her door don't creak loudly to potentially wake any of her other sisters up, and quietly heads down to the first floor to use the bathroom, since there is none on the second floor where the quintuplets' bedrooms are.

Washing her face thoroughly and taking her time, Miku stands at the bathroom sink and gives her hands the same treatment, dully looking down at them. The nightmare is still so vivid in her mind that even now, even when she knows there is none, Miku can see blood washing off her fingers, her fingernails, in between her fingers, and off her palms and the backs of her hands.

The scariest part is the fact that no matter how much "blood" she seems to wash off, she seems to be making no progress.

Halting her own mind-numbingly pointless hand washing, Miku turns off the faucet, dries off her hands and face, switches off the bathroom light, and makes her way back up, knowing exactly where to go even in the near-total darkness of the living room to head back up to her own room. As she passes the kitchen, though, she notices one of the cupboards above the sink that's been left slightly ajar. While she doesn't know how the cupboard door has been left ajar or who neglected to close it properly, Nino will make a big deal out of this in the morning to her sisters, even if she's the one at fault, so Miku, preferring not to have to deal with that bullshit in the morning, takes a slight detour into the kitchen, shuts the cupboard, and goes on her way back to her room.

The door to Miku's room clicks softly shut, again to not wake up the other quints this late in the middle of the night as the nightwalker quintuplet crawls back into bed without another word. And thus, without incident, the Nakano household settles back into its picturesque nighttime landscape once more.

With one exception.

Pushing off the wall next to the short hall that leads into the large bathroom, a dark figure straightens itself up, gazing in the direction that Miku has walked to return to her bedroom. It is very hard to tell in this darkness what the figure looks like, but just like Miku before it, the figure walks perfectly through the living room without bumping into anything, but it doesn't head for the stairs. Instead, it heads for the sliding window that leads out to the balcony that offers a magnificent skyline view of the city downtown.

The moonlight has grown a little stronger over the course of the night, enough to the point where soft moonlight is able to bleed through the sliding window. So when the figure steps into it, it's easier to see what it's wearing.

Dark dress pants, and...a shin-length half-kilt that drapes behind the figure's legs as though it were wearing a trench coat. However, as the figure opens the sliding door quietly and closes it behind itself to step out to the balcony, the figure is not wearing an actual trench coat, but rather a simple black zip-up hoodie jacket and a black cap. Oddly, there are two scissor-shaped tufts of hair sticking out the back, over the snapback flaps.

With a tiny vial of fine white powder cradled in his right hand, the figure stands out on the balcony for a few moments, probably enjoying the brightly lit skyline, before mantling over the balcony railing and dropping out of sight.

* * *

The next day...

"Good, everyone's here today for once. Thanks for that, Itsuki."

Clapping his hands together once, Uesugi Fuutarou stands before his supposed students, the five quintuplets, who are begrudgingly giving him their audience, sitting on the long couch across from him after he's moved the second long couch out of the way so that there is nothing standing in between them. Itsuki, whom Fuutarou has thanked for doing as he's requested the previous night, continues to scowl back at him, saying nothing in return. Ichika is, not surprisingly, dozing with her head cradled on Yotsuba's thighs; Miku, sitting in the middle of her sisters on the sofa, has her knees tucked inwards to her chest and her heels on the edge of the sofa; and Nino, sitting on the other end from Ichika, is busy texting on her phone.

"...you still haven't given up? Even after what happened to you yesterday?" Miku grumbles as usual, her Audio Technicas cupping her cheeks somewhat.

"And I've got plans this evening to go hang out with my friends, you know?" Nino complains with a sigh, still focused on her phone that she's given a rather cutesy bunny jacket with its tall ears pointing up from the top of the phone. "Not to mention, I'm pretty sure I told you that we don't need a tutor. Unless you don't remember that part either?"

"Whether or not I remember you telling me that you don't need a tutor is irrelevant," Fuutarou coolly replies, standing with his feet somewhat apart and his arms crossed to assume a stance of staunch authority. "But you've certainly gotten that point across to me."

"That so? Then why the hell are you still here?"

"To see if you can back up your words."

Fuutarou unfolds his arms and points down at the quiz sheets that were left behind from yesterday on the low table before the quintuplets.

"Those are the tests that I made for you and intended for you five to do yesterday. I think Yotsuba told me earlier at school that she told you this already, but for repetition's sake, this is meant to be an evaluation test for me to see exactly where you girls stand right now in terms of your test scores," Fuutarou explains calmly. "Since you girls keep telling me that I'm not needed, and by 'girls' I specifically mean Nino and Itsuki, and I guess Miku to an extent, I'd like to see you all prove it."

Nino has since looked up from her phone, joining Itsuki in scowling back at the boy from their class who's standing before them; Miku's face remains unchanged and apathetic. Yotsuba, feeling the tension sparking between the sisters to her right and her tutor, tries her best to smile, but she's unsure if her efforts are really having any impact on the situation at hand. Ichika, meanwhile, is stirring and waking back up again from all the talking that's going on.

"We don't need to prove _shit _to you, asshole," Nino growls softly. "So why should we bother?"

"Let me make you an offer you can't refuse," Fuutarou takes a single step towards them, returning the troublesome quints' fierce gazes with a stone-cold look of his own to match theirs. "What if I were to tell you that should you take this test and pass it, I will disappear from your lives entirely, and you'll never have to deal with me ever again for the rest of your lives?"

The quintuplets all take a glance down at the tests before them that Fuutarou has put together for them. He continues,

"You all can go and graduate however you want, because passing this test will tell me that you girls really _have _changed and can study on your own without being in danger of becoming high school dropouts. However, I'll give you a fair bit of warning: I don't expect any of you to pass. You know that I've been through all your test scores from past years, and with the context of your recent transfer to our school, I have no reason to believe that any of you have improved in any substantial way."

Fuutarou folds his arms again, narrowing his dull black eyes down at the girls.

"You _will _all fail this test," he declares quietly, and somehow, his voice sounds more compelling when it's spoken with such a softer tone. "So while that offer I made you girls just now is still in place, none of you will be able to uphold your side of that offer. So instead, I'll give you all a choice: either you can save yourselves the embarrassment of not being able to back up your words about not needing me as your tutor and accept your situation, or you can embarrass yourselves by failing this test and thus waste _my_ time, waste _your _own time, and _then _accept your situation. So - tell me, which'll it be?"

The combination of Uesugi's softer tone of voice, the same that he used against their homeroom teacher the day before, his deathly, piercing black eyes, and the overbearing conviction behind his words puts enormous pressure on the quintuplets that none of them were expecting to deal with; not even the nonchalantly friendly Ichika or the rebellious and hardheaded Nino find it in themselves to raise a word of objection, at least not at first.

"Understood. I shall accept your...'offer'."

Itsuki picks up her glasses case sitting on the edge of the low table and opens it up to pull out her glasses.

"H-Huh? Wait, Itsuki, you can't be serious right now," Nino stammers, hardly able to believe what her youngest sibling is doing.

"I _am _serious. All we need to do is pass this test and we will never have to concern ourselves with him again." After placing the glasses on properly, Itsuki scowls even harder than before back at Fuutarou, as though the two of them are having an unspoken contest to see who can stare at each other to death.

"But - "

"Eh...if that's how it's gonna be, I'm in, too," Ichika says sleepily, getting one last yawn in and turning towards the table.

"Yeah, let's just take the test and do our best for now. I'm sure we can all pass!" Yotsuba cheers, but she gives Fuutarou a very awkward grin towards the end, letting him know that she herself is very much so aware of how contradictory her actions right now must seem.

"Fuutarou, what's the passing score?" Miku asks, reaching over and grabbing the sheets on the other side of the table to distribute to her sisters as one by one they begin to sit at the table and off the couch. Nino, naturally, is the last to join them.

"Because I'm being such a jerk about this, I'll give you all a really lenient threshold," Fuutarou says. "Our school's passing threshold for exams is 30 points, so while I'd normally make it 60 points to pass so that there's a reasonable buffer between passing and failing, I'll drop that to 50...no, 40 instead, just for you five. Get 40 points or higher, and you pass."

"Ugh...even though we don't owe you anything..."

Murmuring in annoyance under her breath, Nino, also having grabbed a pen from Yotsuba's pencil bag, writes down her name at the top of her mock quiz before giving Fuutarou one last look of irritation.

"We'll make you regret talking like that down at us...!"

"I'd love to see you try." Fuutarou taps his phone's screen to set the timer. "Exam period is the standard one hour. Normally I'd like to have you five go to your rooms and take this test for the sake of academic integrity, but I'm already asking a lot out of you all, so here is fine. But if I catch any of you trying to cheat, that's an immediate 0; that's your only warning. Begin!"

* * *

An hour later, having taken some time to grade the girls' papers, Uesugi returns from the Nakano dinner table to announce their results.

"Okay, I'm done grading. I'll admit, you've all done much better than I thought - you got a full 100!"

Fuutarou places the graded mock tests on his end of the table and pushes them towards the quints so that they can see the scores for themselves.

_"If I totaled everyone's scores, that is."_

An awkward silence ensues following Fuutarou's dagger of truth as the quints stare blankly at their test results. Ichika got a 12; Nino received a 20; Miku scored a 32; Yotsuba hit an 8; and Itsuki netted a 28.

The grim reality finally begins to sink in: Ichika sheepishly smiles, having closed her eyes and leaned her head lightly against Miku's left shoulder and headphones. Nino sighs with a "Geh...!" as she sprawls over the table, laying her arms out in front across the glass top. Miku, now Ichika's temporary pillow this time, awkwardly looks off to the side. Itsuki's lips quiver, looking down at the table before her and avoiding the sight of her abysmal 28 score.

Gazing back down at the girls, especially down at Itsuki and Nino, his two biggest opponents, Fuutarou refolds his arms slowly.

"So...tell me more about this whole...'you don't need a tutor argument' that you two in particular keep telling me about," the triumphant tutor questions the two sisters in particular. "For your reference, I shouldn't have lowered the pass mark all the way down to 40 even if that's still technically passing because there'd be too much of a risk that any one of you could easily score much lower than that, yet I lowered for you all anyway just to give you the benefit of the doubt. And even _with_ that, only one of you even broke the 30 point mark."

"Fucking shut up already, God...!" Nino snaps back up at Fuutarou, positively seething now with frustration. "We fucking get it, dude, we're all fucking stupid! God, just shut up!"

"Is this all you have come to do, Uesugi-kun?" Itsuki, back to grinding her teeth together in anger at Fuutarou's oppressive words, quietly speaks, as though trying to match Fuutarou's own quiet intensity from before they began their tests. "Did you merely come to our house today just to press the point on us about just how inadequate we are in our grades?"

"Honestly?" Fuutarou pauses for a moment, deliberating to himself. "Yeah. That's all I've come to do today."

Itsuki immediately jumps up to her feet, her fists once again clenched tightly. Ichika, hearing the sudden movement and immediately seeing the balled fists of her youngest sibling, becomes alarmed at this sight and speaks up right away. "Whoa, whoa, Itsuki, calm down, he hasn't said anything wrong!"

"Please be quiet, Ichika, I have something to settle with him," Itsuki snaps at her oldest sister before refocusing her attention exclusively on her would-be tutor.

"Oh? You're approaching me?" Fuutarou tilts his head in mock interest towards Itsuki. "What do you have to say to me this time, hmm?"

"What do I have to say to you? Oh, goodness, where on earth should I start?" Itsuki can't help but break out a smile, so gripped is she with incredulity at Fuutarou's mocking words. "Last night, just before I departed your home, you told me to get my sisters together for you when you arrived today because your family was gracious enough to feed me, so I did what you asked of me as a favor, like you said - "

"Wait, Itsuki, you ate _dinner _at his place? Even though you had dinner with _us_ right before you left?" Nino perks up from the table, her face etched with confusion.

"We had curry, by the way," Fuutarou adds swiftly.

"Whoaaa...I knew Itsuki was the meat bun monster, but I guess she's a bigger curry monster instead..."

Nino's joke at Itsuki's expense does wonders for the tense atmosphere, immediately breaking it up as everyone except for Nino, Itsuki, and Fuutarou all bust out laughing; even the introverted and usually brooding Miku can't help but smile, though she quickly hides her face afterwards.

"W-W-Will the rest of you just _shut it!" _Itsuki hollers, frustrated out of her mind that things are just not going the way she wants. Exasperated by her sisters' behavior, Itsuki simply ditches the hope of trying to get them to settle down and turns back to concentrate on chewing Fuutarou out instead.

"You tell me to get everyone together for you, which I did for you as a favor, and with the belief that you had something actually productive in mind for us!" the youngest sibling yells, having to raise her voice over her sisters' laughter. "And instead what do you do? You merely have us take this silly evaluation test and use our bad test scores just to rub in the fact that we are not the most academically gifted students in the world! You even had the _gall _to be so _confident _that we would fail, just to embarrass as much as you could!"

Itsuki stomps up to Fuutarou, who coldly stands his ground against her and does not flinch a single bit when she jabs her right index finger up at his face.

"Allow me to repeat myself, Uesugi Fuutarou-kun!" she growls with absolution. "Did you come here to tutor us? Or did you simply come here to make fun of us?"

"Both," Fuutarou replies chillingly and swiftly, even before Itsuki has a chance to lower her hand from his face. "Certainly, it's my job to be your tutor, the tutor for all you, and while you might not believe me at this very moment, I would've rather _not_ resorted to doing this and ruin everyone's impression of me right off the bat, even if admittedly part of it was my fault from the very beginning. But that aside - "

Fuutarou takes small but forceful steps towards Itsuki instead, causing the latter to subconsciously back away from him, unable to take her eyes off him.

"You girls are in such a horrible position grades-wise that I felt it necessary to hammer the point home by giving you these mock tests," Fuutarou declares with impunity. "And with your past test scores in mind, at least to me, it is crystal clear that no one has bothered doing this before me! As much as the truth hurts, somebody needed to step in and say this straight to all of your faces, that for all the studying you all may or may not do, you need external help to be able to get your grades anywhere but down! But unfortunately for your sakes, no one did, including your own dad, apparently, so as the tutor he's hired to do what should've been _his _job, I took the liberty of confronting you all about just how shit of a position you're all in, knowing full well that I run the risk of having you all fucking hate me after I'm done!"

Raising his voice more and more as he speaks, Fuutarou finishes his rant practically shouting straight into the face of Itsuki, who's frozen solid after a few backwards steps as Fuutarou's damning words echo in her ears. Disengaging, the young tutor backs himself up to remove himself from her personal space, having spoken most of his due by this point.

"You wanna talk about how I have the 'gall' to be confident in the lack of your academic ability? Let me be clear and say that it's not quite 'gall', it's _fact, _and facts don't care about your feelings about the matter. In _fact_, your dad could've taken any random person off the streets and told them to tutor you, and they'd instantly know that all of you need some serious help," Uesugi continues, having just a bit more left in the tank before he stops, and for the coup de grace, he turns sharply towards Itsuki. "You're gonna prove me wrong, you said? Mmm, can't quite say that I'm impressed right now."

A loud sniff follows Fuutarou's harsh words just as he is finished talking. A single tear appears on Itsuki's face, dribbling down her left eye slowly at first, then streaking down as the floodgates slowly but surely crumble in the face of the frustration, embarrassment, and anger that come crashing through.

Itsuki opens her mouth to say something, but instead she removes herself from the living room, stomping away and up the stairs with her face bowed so that her sisters can't see her face, even though they all immediately know what she's doing.

"Itsuki? Itsuki! Itsuki, wait!" Ichika calls after her, having gotten up from the table in alarm.

"Just leave her be," Fuutarou says quickly and quietly this time so that Itsuki is less likely to hear him.

"Uesugi-san, that was..." even Yotsuba, normally Fuutarou's cheerful advocate, is shocked at the lengths to which Fuutarou has gone just now, but she isn't able to get the rest of her thought across because as soon as she realizes what is wrong with her youngest sister who slams the door to her room as hard as she can as she disappears from view, Nino almost jumps up to her feet, takes four strides past the table and sofa, and punches Fuutarou as hard as she can right on the jaw.

She would, if Fuutarou didn't react precisely and catch the punch before it can connect.

"And I haven't even gotten to _you _yet," Fuutarou murmurs softly as Nino, trying to pull her fist away but quickly realizing that Fuutarou's grip is monstrously strong, struggles to pry her fist free. "Since you've been telling me what's on your mind so freely lately, I think I'll do the same: you've punched your tutor enough."

"S...Since...since when did I say you were my tutor...?" Nino seethes, panting and gritting her teeth.

"Okay, okay, really, guys, that's quite enough!"

Finally taking action, Ichika dashes over and grabs hold of both Fuutarou's and Nino's wrists to also pull them apart, though the eldest quintuplet also finds out just how scarily strong Fuutarou's grip is. The sisters are only successful in having Nino escape his grasp because Fuutarou lets go, and Nino fires the nastiest look of silent fury back at him in retaliation as she rubs the fingers and knuckles on her right hand.

"I know that you're frustrated with us because we haven't been cooperating with you, but you really didn't need to go so far as to make Itsuki cry!" Ichika gestures vehemently at her male classmate. "You couldn't hold back even a _little _bit?"

Fuutarou shakes his head, to Ichika's sharp dismay.

"Holding back would mean that I'm pitying her or otherwise trying to sugarcoat this situation, and I have no intention of doing that give how dire it is," he replies curtly. "Besides, even if she did end up crying from that, I can tell that she's a strong girl; I have faith in her that she can handle that. Actually, the fact that she ended up crying from that is proof of it."

"...what kind of fucked up logic is that?" Nino snaps broodingly. "You made her cry, and therefore you know she can handle it? Itsuki's right, you just love being an asshole, don't you?"

"When I feel it's appropriate, yes, in fact. I admit it," Fuutarou fires back immediately. "And right now is one of those times."

He looks up at the second floor, in the direction of Itsuki's room door, which he can see the top of from the living room.

"And since we were on the topic, yes, I stand by my faith in Itsuki that she'll learn to handle what I've said to her. I've had the displeasure of doing this a few times to other people in the past, and I've certainly had stuff like this happen to me before as well. If Itsuki didn't care about what I said, most likely she wouldn't have reacted like that; people who truly don't give a shit simply accept their situation and either move on or do nothing about it - but if Itsuki's taken it that much to heart that she ended up crying from it, to me, at least, it shows that she does in fact care."

Fuutarou drops his gaze back to the rest of the quintuplets still with him.

"I don't know if she's told you what happened last night after she dropped me off, but after she ate dinner with my family, she told me that she was going to prove me wrong, that she didn't need me as a tutor. While I don't intend to step down just because of that, since this _is _still my job, after all, it does tell me that the motivation is there, that she _is _prepared to do what it takes to get her grades on track. And ultimately that's the end goal; not just for her, but for all of you."

"Don't try to sweet-talk us all of a sudden, now that you know you've made our sister cry, you jackass," Nino growls again. She's building up the confidence in herself to throw another fist at Fuutarou again with how much he's talking and how much she can't stand it.

"I'm not trying to. If there's any sort of a brain between your ears, you'll know that I'm saying this to explain myself and why I made her cry just now," Fuutarou relapses into his harsh attitude momentarily to silence Nino. "Like I said, the facts don't care about your feelings, and the most important fact to me is that I'm here to help you girls get your grades up and graduate safely without dropping out of school or having to transfer again like you just did. I've been given the 'by any means necessary' pass by your dad, and I intend to put it to good use."

Then, Fuutarou gives a deep sigh, closing his eyes and letting the exhaustion that's backed up in his head flood into his vision, which is temporarily blurred before correcting itself by the time he reopens his eyes.

"That being said...today's already been rough as it is, and for all my talk about facts and shit, the fact is that I made your sister cry, so I'll make sure to apologize properly to her at some point when she'll let me," Fuutarou says, his voice now emptied of its cold, brutal tone. "This'll be it for our, uh...'lesson' for today. You said you had friends to meet up with today, right? Is it too late for that? If not, you can get going. Tell your friends that some idiot held you up at home..."

"Y-You don't need to worry about me, jerk," Nino grumbles, but she does quickly go back to the table behind her to check the time on her phone, which tells her that she's still got a bit of time that she can use to meet up with her friends. So she leaves the living room for her own room to grab a few belongings so she can head out.

"Yeah, you really should apologize to her. Even if Itsuki _is _the crybaby out of us five, to see you go off on her like that..." Ichika gives off a big sigh of her own. "It was scary, you know? It doesn't help that you look pretty scary, now that I think about it. Well, these tufts of hair back here don't really help your image that much..."

The eldest quint tries flattening out the two tufts of hair but to no avail, since for some reason they just spring back up like weeds that refuse to be flattened.

"Don't worry about them, it's just a side effect of when my sister cuts my hair."

"S-Side effect...you make your sister's haircuts sound like they're some sort of drug."

"Well, there _is _a certain joy in knowing that your sister loves you enough to give you a haircut, so..._technically _you're not wrong...?"

Nino comes stomping down the stairs and swiftly vacates the premises, with Yotsuba and Ichika bidding her goodbye and safe travels. Once the front door is slammed closed, Fuutarou picks up the graded tests of the quintuplets and eases himself down on the floor on the short end of the table, going over them in depth.

"I guess what happened today necessitates me coming clean to all of you, and I hope that you'll let Itsuki and Nino know what I'm about to tell you three here," Fuutarou says, having restored his composure, "but this is the sort of person that I am, unfortunately. In just about everything I do, I'll be direct and get straight to the point without bothering to beat around the bush, to the point where, as you saw, I'm willing to trample all over people's thoughts and feelings just so that I make my point clear or to do my job, or in this case, both."

"But you couldn't at least be a bit nicer about it...?" Miku asks softly from the other end.

"I don't think so, no. I've been in situations before where I've tried being nicer than I usually am, but whenever I do that, people take advantage of that and do everything they can to exploit the fact that I'm giving them some leeway. It's not to say that you girls will necessarily behave like that, but just from my own personal experience, it's better for me to be safe and cover all my bases by allowing no such leeway."

Inserting the graded tests into his messenger bag and fastening the clasps, Fuutarou looks back up at the three remaining quints, of whom Ichika has resumed her seat next to Miku and Yotsuba has elected to sit on the couch this time.

"It's to the point where most of the time, I don't even bother going this far, if you can believe it. Today's the first time in a long while that I've yelled at someone into crying like Itsuki did, because I've learned a long time ago that going this far for most people isn't worth it, because I'm just not that invested in their situation, and so there's little reason for me to put in all this extra effort to point out what their flaws are. But I did it here because I do think that you girls have what it takes to improve to the point where graduation from high school will become a reality, not just because I'm a big fat asshole who enjoys yelling at girls and making them cry."

"_Just_ because..." Miku reels a bit in disgust. "So you _are _a sadistic bully, huh?"

"Okay, I don't enjoy that at all, how's that?"

"Too late..."

"Shit." Fuutarou rolls his eyes with Yotsuba giggling a little and Ichika smiling somewhat.

"You sure do have a lot of faith in us, though, you know?" Ichika points out sleepily, having returned to resting her head against Miku's shoulder. "Now that you've looked through all of our test scores from our old school and how much we _haven't _improved since then, it's a bit strange for you to talk big like that, isn't it? Saying that you have faith in us despite all this. You sure you aren't just saying this just to get cozy with us?"

"If that's how you wanna see it, then I won't stop you. After all, I _did _say 'by any means necessary', right? With how closely I'll have to work with all five of you, by that point, having to work with you all not just physically but emotionally will be important going forward. Even if I haven't gotten off to the best of starts with some of you..."

"Yeah, you really didn't," Miku nods in affirmation.

"Thanks for the confidence, I guess."

Getting up from his seat on the carpet and picking up his bag in doing so, Fuutarou pulls out his own phone to check the time.

"You'll be going for now? You don't want like a drink or anything?" Yotsuba asks, also standing up with him.

"Yeah, this test was all that I had planned for today. Now that I have a complete picture of where you're all at academically, I'll spend the rest of this week putting together lessons and figuring out how to structure them," he nods. "So because of that, I won't be coming in for the rest of this week. The next time I'll be by is next Monday, when I'll be starting my lessons for real. But just because I won't be here for the rest of this week doesn't mean you should all just slack off, either. Here - "

Reaching into his bag, Fuutarou produces five extra copies of the tests, along with an answer key for those tests, and places them on the table before him.

"Take these, review them, and try to see if you can raise your scores. Go over each problem carefully, mostly the ones you got wrong, but also the ones you got right, since you might get questions you got right before wrong the next time. This'll be your first homework assignment from me, and while I'm not going to force you to do it since there's not much of a point for me to force this on you like a teacher would, you all need to start somewhere."

The tutor gives the three girls one last surveying glance for the day.

"You have my word that I'll be committing myself to this responsibility of seeing you all through graduation. I may have been incredibly insensitive to you all so far, and even without that in mind, I understand that some random kid from your class coming in and bossing you girls around will come off badly to you, so while I still have the chance, I apologize for crashing into your lives like this without much of a prior notice. However, this all being said, I can't do it alone; a tutor can't teach if the students don't cooperate. You three - well, maybe except not Miku - may be willing to work with me more so than the others, so I'm thankful that you're giving me a chance. I'm not your parent; after today, I don't plan to force anything down your throats because that manner of teaching does more harm than good. But along that same logic, it's you five who are in control of your own fates; you five are the ones who'll determine whether or not you graduate in three years or get kicked out of school before that happens. I'm only here to put you all on the right track and help you stay there. Have a good rest of your week."

With a parting nod of farewell, Fuutarou departs the living room, with Yotsuba quickly following after him to the front door.

"Sorry that I made such a scene...that wasn't exactly how I'd planned things to go," Fuutarou apologizes in a low voice to the fourth quint, pulling on his shoes in the shoe lobby. "I got caught up in my feelings there, just like the others."

"It's - it's okay, I'm sure...I'm sure Itsuki will understand," Yotsuba nods hesitantly, still unsure of what to make of today's "lesson" herself yet. "But...maybe next time, yeah, be a bit nicer?"

"Will do. And...since you're the one I trust the most out of you five, tell Itsuki that I said I'm sorry."

"I'll try my best, but you'll do that too at some point, right?"

"That's what I said to Ichika, but...we'll see how Itsuki herself handles this. For all the stuff I said about being confident that Itsuki can handle this, I'm not so sure of that myself, to be honest. There's a definite chance that she just fucking hates my guts now and won't listen to another thing I say."

But Yotsuba shakes her head.

"I think she'll come through. Nothing you've said is wrong, Uesugi-san - she's a strong girl. All of my sisters are." Yotsuba gives him a smile, a smile that Fuutarou senses a degree of sadness hidden somewhere behind it. "So...please continue to have faith in her. I'll do my best to cheer her up and convince her that you're not a bad person, but please...don't abandon her. Please stick with her until the end."

"Oof, big words for my third day of tutoring," Fuutarou chuckles, causing Yotsuba to realize just how embarrassing she must sound talking like this and blushing wordlessly. "Don't worry about it, I was spouting big words myself just earlier, so I've just put a ton of pressure on myself too."

Opening the door and turning to bid Yotsuba one more goodbye, Fuutarou pauses in the doorway.

"Uesugi-san? What's wrong?" Yotsuba asks, noting his hesitation, but when he beckons to her to come closer, she obeys, unsure of his intentions.

"This, uh...might just be a nitpick from me, but..." Fuutarou says slowly, "but...just now, when we were talking about Itsuki, you said that all of your sisters are strong girls."

"Um...yes, and?"

Once again, Fuutarou puts his hand on Yotsuba's head, flattening her hair ribbon a second time.

"This just might be me looking too deep into it, but..." the tutor drops his voice down to a whisper so that the others still in the living room won't hear. "...don't exclude yourself from them. You're a strong person too, Yotsuba - so I have just as much faith in you as I do in everyone else."

Fuutarou notices that Yotsuba's standing still, her face hidden by her bangs as she refuses to make eye contact with him, so he pulls his hand away.

"S-Sorry, I hope you're not angry at me too all of a sudden. It's a bad habit of mine...you've been the nicest one to me so far, and I tend to, uh, say things like this to people who can get along with me..." Fuutarou apologizes. "Enjoy the rest of your day, Yotsuba. I'll see you tomorrow at school like always."

The tutor closes the door for Yotsuba this time slowly and softly, so as to not anger Yotsuba further, who listens to Fuutarou's footsteps on the other side walk away and subside.

Without meaning to, Yotsuba lets her head lean forward and bump softly against the front door.

"...you're wrong, Uesugi-san..." she mumbles almost incoherently. "...someone like me...I'm not strong at all..."


	7. Strawberry Crepe

**A/N**

**Scriptura: I have pre-written chapters for other fics of mine before, but so far not for this one. As soon as I'm done with a chapter, I put it up right away. Thanks for your kind words so far.  
**

* * *

The neat, scratchy etchings of pencil graphite against paper bounce about in the living room, not unlike sparks from a working blowtorch, from the small foldable table that the Uesugi household calls their dinner table.

"Onii-chan, can you help me with this? I don't get it..."

"Yeah, let's take a look..."

Stopping his own work on his side of the dinner table, Fuutarou shifts over so that he can get a better look at his sister's homework on which she is working, her class having been assigned homework over the weekend.

True to his word, Fuutarou has not visited the Nakano penthouse at the top of the high-rise for the rest of the week after the first three days that were, in his honest opinion, quite disastrous, both on his part and the girls'. Neither has he made much of an attempt to interact or socialize with them this week after his third day of "tutoring", only sparing a "hello" or "good morning" if their paths happen to cross and social interaction is demanded. Understandably, Nino and Itsuki have flat-out refused to speak even a word to him, ignoring his occasional greeting with fierce resolve, which Fuutarou does not care for, but Ichika and Yotsuba have at least been on talking terms with him, with Yotsuba giving him updates on the rowdier quints' mental and emotional statuses on the regular. Miku is the only true neutral, responding to his occasional greeting should the need arise but letting their relationship remain stagnant and standoffish as it has been.

While ostentatiously the days off he's given for both the girls and himself were meant more for the quintuplets so that they can have some breathing room to themselves devoid of his presence, Fuutarou's ulterior intention is to concentrate on putting together a cohesive, in-depth plan to tutor the quintuplets. It's already well-established now that not only do the Nakano girls either neglect or hate studying, or in Itsuki's case is just plain bad at studying, but they aren't quite aware of just how deep in shit they all are academically. Or, if they _are _aware, they don't care because they're all rich girls with a sugar daddy who can simply transfer to a different school if they don't improve their grades here.

And after dealing with them for the first three days, frankly, a part of Fuutarou wishes to see them flunk out and transfer again. Thinking about the situation, if it's gotten to the point where his main client, Nakano Maruo, has offered him a _tutoring _contract of all things whose main term is not to help the girls ace their tests, as would be the norm, but to merely drag them out of the pits of academic hell and dropouts and ensure their safe _graduation from high school, _the girls must be borderline hopeless.

Rich family problems...having worked for well-off clients in the past, the young freshman tutor has a solid grasp of just how annoying they can be to work for. And while this contract is by no means the worst he's accepted, if only for the fact that it is not immediately riddled with danger, the social interaction part of it is _really _making him work for his money. As a contractual mage, a magical mercenary, if you will, Fuutarou normally has little patience for things like this, as he himself specializes in the polar _opposite _of human relations. Therein stems the source of the small but simmering, bitter malice towards the quintuplets, specifically towards Nino and Itsuki who bear him the most ill will.

So since he now has a good idea of how his tutoring will go, Fuutarou is _not _looking forward to it. Since the quintuplets have demonstrated that they are either unwilling to or may simply be outright incapable of rectifying their own errors, he anticipates the same amount of resistance to his tutoring as this week, with perhaps only Yotsuba really willing to sit down with him and let him teach. Ichika is the only other quint who has at least a decent chance of accepting his tutorship, while Nino and Itsuki are immediate disqualifications. Miku is perhaps the biggest wildcard, since she doesn't seem immediately opposed to him as their tutor but clearly doesn't have the personality or attitude to secure herself under his tutoring wing; it's just rather difficult to get a proper read on Miku anyway, with how reserved and demure she is most of the time...with one unnerving exception, when the topic of her old school, Kurobara Academy, got brought up.

To put his situation in another perspective, 80% of his client base is not willing to work with him. Even if just one of the quints refuses to work with him, Fuutarou is immediately failing at his job, since the terms of the contract don't say to ensure any number of the girls graduates safely; it specifies that _all of them _must graduate safely. So the fact that Fuutarou cannot be certain about the majority of his would-be students on whether or not they'll actually take his lessons starting next week puts a daunting wall in the way of his progress.

And for all the tough talk and the cringeworthy pep talk that he gave to the girls on the third day in the wake of his mock evaluation test, Fuutarou isn't so sure of himself now, after having processed the tutoring situation thus far. Nino and Itsuki in particular, while he hasn't shown such sentiments physically, get on his nerves quite a lot with their attitudes, not because the girls are being hard to work with, but more so because they themselves are fully aware of their own shortcomings yet insist on refusing help hired by their own father.

So because of those two specifically, Fuutarou has entertained thoughts of simply terminating the contract on his side, just to see the quintuplets sputter out and transfer once more out of school. He has envisioned the sight of himself watching the Nakanos leave their homeroom class in the middle of school, walking out with miserable looks on their faces, and shuffle out to the street on the other side of the school atrium, where their father will be waiting by their private car to take them away to another school, where he can only imagine what the girls must do to ensure their own graduation, if their father will even bother with such an impossible task any longer.

But he goes no further with such thoughts. For as satisfying they may feel to dwell on, Yotsuba is the sole reason why he cannot see that vision through, because she alone is totally blameless. Just because the others might be at fault, there is no reason why she should feel the repercussions of her sisters' shortcomings. If there were a way to modify his contract by making it so that all he needed to do was tutor Yotsuba and only Yotsuba, his job would be five times easier. Alas, that's not the case, either.

Not to mention, it would be terribly ignorant of him to exclude himself from the list of grievances he has about his tutoring situation. All these years of shunning most forms of human interaction are coming back to bite him; Fuutarou knows just how horribly inept he is at interacting with other people, and much less with those of the opposite gender. It's clear that direct, blunt honesty is seldom the correct path to take when talking to the Nakano quintuplets, at least, but that's all he knows in terms of communication skills, so what other choice does he have? It's either that or lying to people with a straight face, but clearly that won't help at all.

Throw in the shit he pulled on the first day, and Fuutarou comes to realize that he's just as disappointed in how awfully he himself has handled the situation as he is in the girls themselves, minus Yotsuba. And the worst part about it is that he doesn't feel like he conveyed that properly to the girls, which, while to be expected given his own lack of proper communication skills, still bothers him regardless. For all the faults he can place on the girls, his own poor social decisions towards them is not one of them.

"Oh, I get it! Then this is actually a lot easier than I thought," Raiha nods enthusiastically down at her algebra question, thrilled that she can answer the rest of the problems on her own now that her brother has explained the first such problem. "Thanks, Onii-chan!"

"Anytime. After you're done with your homework, wanna come with me to the bookstore in town? I want to search for some study materials for my students," Fuutarou offers to Raiha.

"Can we go to the arcades? We haven't been there in a while..." Raiha asks politely for the best chance at winning her brother's heart over.

"Mmm, maybe another time, I have to get ready for next week because of these lessons."

Giving her brother a pout that's mixed with both muted anger and tired dejection, Raiha lays her head down against her homework sheet on the table.

"Awww...it's been so long, though...and today's a Saturday..."

"If you'd've asked me last week, we probably could have gone."

"But last week Dad wanted me to stay home!"

"Yeah, I know. But since you asked me now, I'll keep that in mind and take you there the next opportunity I get. But if you come with me to the bookstore, I'll buy you a crepe from that crepe stall you really like."

At the mention of delicious crepes, Raiha bolts up in her seat at the table and immediately sets to work on her algebra problems.

"That sure got your attention. And take your time, take your time, it's still only two right now so you don't have anything to worry about. You're gonna make mistakes on your homework and we'll be here even longer since you'll need to correct them."

"Are you sure you're tutoring the right person, Onii-chan?" Raiha grumbles, pursing her lips in Fuutarou's direction that looks disturbingly similar to the one Itsuki has given to Fuutarou many times in the past.

"While you're not quite the student I'm being paid to teach, you're giving me a good chance to practice how to teach the actual students I'm getting paid to teach," Fuutarou answers honestly.

"Then all I am to you is a guinea pig!"

"You're also my sister, who cooks curry for me and gives me haircuts. So no, you're not just a guinea pig to me."

"Hmph. I'd like to see _you _cook for the family once," Raiha focuses back on her homework, taking heed to her brother's words about slowing down with her math.

"I mean, you already have. And look how that turned out."

"But you _can _cook! You just need some more guidance, that's all."

"Now _you're _the one who's sounding like a tutor."

As the siblings banter back and forth, Raiha, armed with Fuutarou's advice and the prize of a delicious strawberry crepe that she can practically already taste, blazes through the rest of her algebra homework.

"Okay, Onii-chan, I'm done! Now let's go get that crepe!" the younger Uesugi declares, pointing in the direction of town through their office windows.

"After I'm done with this one last thing and I grade your math homework."

"Awww, can't you do that _after _we come back?"

"Nope, I gotta make sure you did your homework right before we leave. Your grades are just as important to me as my own students', if not a bit more."

"But you said that you're getting paid for teaching _them_, not me, so it shouldn't matter as much, right?"

"Whoa, whoa, since when did you get that smart."

"Onii-chan, that hurts, you know? I might decide to stop cooking curry for you - "

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Pretend I didn't say that."

"Fufufu ~ "

Raiha folds her arms and raises her chin victoriously as Fuutarou puts down his stubby pencil and picks up Raiha's homework sheet to grade it visually, as these are just simple algebra problems. But to his surprise, Raiha has answered all the questions correctly.

"Wow, you got all of them right. That's my sister for ya," Fuutarou puts down his sister's homework sheet and checks his phone quickly.

"Yaaaay! But it's mainly because you made it super easy for me to understand," Raiha smiles down at him, watching him as he gets up to his feet.

"Thanks, that gives me at least some confidence going into next week."

"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"

"I go back to tutoring Itsuki and her sisters next Monday. I just wish they were as smart and cooperative as you, though."

Raiha pats her older brother on the back. "The job must be tough, huh? Dad must be proud right now."

"I don't know exactly why, but I feel like you just dissed me..." Fuutarou glances over to the kitchen. "Oh, almost forgot, but do you think we need to hit up a supermarket on the way back? Is there anything we need to get for dinner, or...?"

"Oh, don't worry about that, Dad said he'll be picking up groceries on the way back."

"That...worries me. A lot."

"H-He's improved from before, seriously!" Raiha quickly pleads with her brother as the two of them step outside of the Uesugi consulting office and Fuutarou closes the door tightly to make sure the lock is enabled. "He's a lot better about getting the right stuff this time around. He even got everything for our curry dinner we had with Itsuki-san!"

"Oh, has he. Color me surprised..."

"Geeez! You and mistrusting Dad all the time!"

"Sorry, force of habit. He was a lot different back in the day."

"Don't talk like an old man, Onii-chan, you're gonna start sounding like Dad."

"Can't handle two Dads in the same house, huh?"

"Obviously not."

"Weren't you just defending Dad?"

"About the fact that he's improved at picking up groceries and not constantly buying the wrong stuff, yeah. Not the fact that he always goes off on his 'back in my day' tangents like he's forty years older than he really is."

"...has anyone told you that you talk like you're older than you are?"

"My teachers at school."

"That can't be good."

"Don't worry, they can't do anything if I just ace all their tests."

"'Atta girl. Doin' us proud."

"Ehehe ~ "

* * *

Because Isanari has taken out his motorcycle for work, and the public bus line has long ceased operating in the immediate vicinity of the run-down business park, the Uesugi siblings simply walk their way into town to their local Tsutaya Bookstore, which takes them roughly an hour and a half. When they arrive, the crepe stand that usually sits next to the bookstore to capitalize on the foot traffic that the bookstore naturally generates, Fuutarou and Raiha can plainly see that there are quite a few people lined up at the stand.

"Business really took off for them, huh? Guess it was bound to happen, them being right next to Tsutaya and all," Fuutarou notes.

"L-Last time we came, we were the only ones who bought from them, right?" Raiha reminds him breathlessly. "See, I knew that stall was super good! Now everyone knows about how good it is!"

"I thought you'd be more annoyed that there are so many people."

"Well...normally, I would be," Raiha smiles gently towards the small throng of customers lined up in front of the busy crepe stall, whose employees are working quickly and diligently to get the line moving. "But I want to say that I've grown out of that. After all, Onii-chan, _you _were the one who helped me learn what patience is."

Raiha's words resonate deeply within Fuutaoru, enough to cause him to put his hand on her shoulder.

"Sorry about that," he sighs heavily.

"Ah! W-Well, um, I'm - I'm just glad that the crepe stall is so successful now! They deserve it, really, their crepes are that good," Raiha quickly changes the subject back to the crepe stand. "But since there're so many people, we can come back later once you're done with whatever you need in the bookstore."

"Yeah, good idea."

So the brother and sister walk around the crepe stand line and enter the bookstore. Appropriately to match the city's rapid growth in recent years, this Tsutaya bookstore is built with the latest in modern architectural trends and interior decoration, with the traditional rows and isles of books, magazines, newspapers, and other paper-based mediums coexisting in harmony with indoor plants, reading sections, a fully equipped indoor cafe, stationery corner, and even a small bar built next to the cafe, with the second floor having video games, movies, e-books, and other such electronic mediums of entertainment.

The bookstore basically looks like the lobby of a 5-star hotel, the likes of which you'd perhaps only find in big cities like Tokyo or Kyoto, but while there are certainly lots of customers inside, the layout and atmosphere of the bookstore help alleviate the possible sense of crowdedness. People seem to move more slowly inside the bookstore, taking their time with books as they read them standing in the isles or sitting down at a desk or chair, enjoying a cup of coffee from the Tsutaya cafe.

"I'll be in the manga section, Onii-chan!" Raiha says excitedly, waiting on her brother to give her permission to go.

"Okay. I'll probably take like thirty minutes, maybe an hour. I'll meet up with you if I need more or less time."

"Okay!"

Seeing Raiha off, Fuutarou heads to his own objective, the isles that contain supplementary material for high school students, and upon reaching them, he takes his time picking out good reference books and other such materials to take with him back to a seat somewhere, finding one at the cafe and sitting down to begin poring over his books. The bookstore has a strict no photography policy, so as much as he would like to snap photos of the books themselves since he cannot afford such expensive books, Fuutarou would rather not make a scene out of himself getting the boot from the bookstore's staff.

Instead, when he finds a section that he feels will help him with the lessons he's crafting for the quints, either by contributing directly to the lessons he's coming up with for them or by being questions he could give them for homework or as quizzes, Fuutarou gazes down at the material and concentrates deeply on it, using his left hand to plant a small, almost invisible rune into the pages. The runes, the size of a drink coaster, triangulates with his eyesight and magically saves what Fuutarou is looking at and concentrating on, and by storing this rune, Fuutarou can pull it up later when he's safely back home to go over the reference books' contents. To passersby, it will simply appear as if Fuutarou is engrossed in the material, and his high school student uniform only reinforces his studiousness, so it is the ideal scenario that Fuutarou can exploit to do his job.

For the next half-hour he clandestinely studies the reference and supplementary books, magically saving various questions and entire sections at times out of them. He is going to move on to the next book when he hears a familiar voice:

"Let's just take a seat here."

That's Nino. Even without turning around to visually confirm, Fuutarou can tell by the way she talks that Nakano Nino is in the premises of the bookstore. His brain working swiftly to eliminate the possibilities that it might not be Nino, Fuutarou deduces that the only other possible quints would be Ichika, Yotsuba, or Itsuki, but judging from the conversations that he's overheard the girls have at school, Itsuki prefers to study at the library if she isn't already studying at home; Yotsuba wouldn't really know what to do in a bookstore like this; and Ichika would be taking her afternoon beauty nap at around this time anyway, though admittedly Fuutarou isn't sure if that still applies on the weekends. Regardless, the tone of this quintuplet's voice and the trendy setting of this neo-modern bookstore mainly point to Nino as the correct quintuplet, though Fuutarou is ready to correct himself in case he's identified her wrongly.

Fuutarou continues to busy himself with his books, making sure to maintain his air of studiousness to ward against detection, though his only problem is that it sounds like Nino and whoever she's with are taking seats at a table close by, directly behind him somewhere, perhaps two tables down, so Nino could recognize him, namely by the two tufts of hair on the back of his head. But then again, it sounds like Nino is here on some kind of serious business, business that Fuutarou himself may have an idea about, and so if that's the case right now, Nino wouldn't have time to call him out. Besides, he hasn't given any reaction to their arrival, so Nino should be under the pretense that Fuutarou simply hasn't noticed them there.

Just in case, Fuutarou raises his right hand up to his ear, pretending to rub it nonchalantly when in reality he's creating a rune inside his ear canal that will record what he hears.

"Okay, look, missie, like I said earlier today when we first met up, we don't have enough," a man's voice speaks next, lowered to attract less attention to him and Nino. "We have to serve our other customers first because they ordered first, it's a house rule."

"But _I _was one of your first ones!" Nino hisses quietly. "We've known each other for the past three years; I've always paid highest prices to make sure that I can get my hands on it. You can't just shift the queue around like this!"

"But this time, you didn't contact us in time. You missed the cut-off point, so you have to wait for the next cycle."

"Look, I didn't anticipate having to contact you today either. It's just that I must've misjudged how much I had left recently, since I didn't have quite as much as I thought I did when I checked earlier this week. I was one of your group's first customers, remember? You _have_ to do me a favor here! You can say 'first come, first served' all you want, but I know for a fact that you boys like to play favorites!"

The person she's talking to sighs deeply. "Look, as much as I do sympathize that you were one of our first buyers back then, which I do appreciate, there's nothing we can do about this cycle; all the purchase orders are already processed and finalized. It's not even about playing favorites by this point, it's more that our supplier won't contact us again until we have another batch of orders to send him."

Nino lets out a small groan of frustration, and a chair creaks, probably from Nino leaning back in it in annoyance.

"You can't do _anything? _Anything at all?" she argues quietly with her companion.

"Missie, normally I don't ask personal questions like this, but what's your deal exactly, anyway? Girls like you shouldn't even know about this stuff that you're tryin'a buy."

"What does _that _matter? I give you straight cash, you give me what I want; that's how it's always been. Why're you asking me this shit now?"

"You can't blame me for being curious, you know. Most our clients...let's just say that you're an outlier in the usual demographic that orders from us. And yeah, I've let this slide for the last three years because your business was valuable to us back then."

"And it still isn't?"

"Well, no, it still is, but - "

"Then like I said, as your long-time client, you should be able to do me a special favor and do something about this so that I can restock. Don't play dumb with me, I know how these things work. And what I do with it's none of your business; that's also part of your 'business' model, isn't it?"

Fuutarou hears Nino's chair (probably) creak a little again as she is perhaps leaning forward in her seat.

"And it's not like your 'business' is exactly entirely legal, either. So here's what I'll suggest: either you make this deal happen, or I'll let my dad know that there're a bunch of shady dudes in the city who're up to no good. How's that sound?"

"Fuck...you're really playing that card? Ugh...alright, fine, fine. Just...give me a minute...I'll see what I can do..."

A pause ensues after the man relents and agrees to Nino's demands. Fuutarou, having already established a passive rune inside the bookstore, still senses Raiha in the manga isle, meaning that she's still safe and probably enjoying her sweet time.

After about five minutes of silence, it's broken by the guy Nino is with.

"Okay...today's your lucky day, I managed to convince the other guys to get you your share. Like you said, this is a special favor - we aren't doing this for you again."

"Thanks. I'll be sure to put in more orders on time in the future."

"Yeah, please do...anyway, our shipment's gonna arrive tomorrow at nine in the evening. Because we're taking your cut directly from the shipment, you have to come out and meet us instead at our warehouse."

"That's fine, where is it?"

"It's on the other end of town. It's like an hour and a half away from here if you walk..."

"Other end of town? Oh, _that _side..."

"Yeah, where else did you think we'd be? It's perfect for me and the boys. Have you heard of Daikazoku Business Park?"

"No...?"

"Look it up, it should still be around, though I think there's only one office still running there...some dumb consultants for something, I dunno. But it's near there; it's the only nearby landmark that I can think of since, y'know, that part of town's mostly abandoned nowadays..."

"...you can't just send a courier or something to drop it off at my place?"

"The fuck do you think we are, Amazon? We don't do delivery services, missie, we're already running a huge risk operating out of this city as is. Because of this favor we're doing you, _you _have to be there at our warehouse in person if you want your cut; _that_ I can't dick around with for you. Either show up or stay home; girls like you shouldn't even be doing this anyway, and I don't care what your reasons are."

"Aw gee, thanks for worrying about me, asshole. Rich coming from people like you."

"Hey, you're the one buying from us, I'm just trying to look out for you since it's for your own good, but business is business, as they say. Then if we're done here, I gotta get going."

Fuutarou continues listening vigilantly as the man Nino is talking to gets up from his seat and leaves, his footsteps fading out into the background. Nino, however, stays where she is for whatever reason - Fuutarou can't imagine why she would continue to hang out here, and as much as he would like to stay to see what she'll do, the tutor senses his sister move from her usual spot in the manga isle slightly. Within a minute, his phone vibrates in his pocket, indicating an incoming text, and Fuutarou pulls it out to check; Raiha is asking where he is now.

The big brother seizes his chance and quickly texts back that he's sitting at the cafe and that Raiha can find him there; if Fuutarou himself gets up from his seat, Nino would more than likely glance over at him, recognize him, and think that Fuutarou was intentionally eavesdropping on them all this time, if she hasn't recognized him already. So the only safe way he can leave, other than waiting for Nino to get up first, which he's not sure if she'll do since she hasn't left by now, is to do so with a strong enough alibi, and Raiha is the key to providing such an alibi. In another minute's time, his sister pops out from behind a few shelves and rendezvouses with her family member.

"Onii-chan! Are you done yet?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Let me go put these books away and we can get you that crepe..."

Getting up from his table, Fuutarou minds his manners and pushes his chair back under the table, gathers his reference books, and carries them back to the isle where he found them to put them away, with Raiha tagging along. As he leaves, he can feel a gaze on him for a brief moment from Nino's direction, so Fuutarou puts on the impression that Nino is now aware of his presence in the cafe - hopefully she doesn't also conclude that he was listening in on their conversation.

Once the books are properly returned, Fuutarou takes his sister outside again to the crepe stand, where as predicted, the line is much shorter now, so they take their places in line.

"You aren't gonna buy those books, Onii-chan?" Raiha asks curiously.

"Oh gosh, no, of course not. Books are _super _expensive, especially those study prep books," Fuutarou shakes his head with a bit of a chuckle. "Buying even one of those books is basically like buying dinner for four days."

"W-Wow...studying is expensive..." Raiha looks deeply disturbed at such an enormous price tag.

"Hey, don't twist it in a way where you can get out of studying."

"I know, I know...I'm just _saying_..."

"Riiiight. Which one did you want again?"

"The strawberry one!"

Nodding, Fuutarou waits until it's his turn to order next.

"Next person in line, please! Hello, what can I get for you today?" the crepe stand clerk asks politely, though understandably he sounds quite out of breath.

"One strawberry crepe, please. With chocolate chips."

"You got it. One strawberry crepe with choco chips, please!" the clerk calls to his coworkers behind him manning the crepe grills. "That'll be 850 yen, please."

Even as the clerk is informing him of the price, Fuutarou's heart sinks as he opens up his wallet: there are no bills inside. With how busy he's been managing his tutoring work for the quintuplets and his own work throughout the city, he must have forgotten to take cash out of his bank account.

"I'm so sorry, I, uh, don't have any bills on me, do you by chance take card?" he asks the clerk directly, but to his dismay, he shakes his head.

"Not at the moment, no. Since our business's gotten really popular, we've been getting lots of requests to get a card reader, so we're working on getting one," the clerk replies, "but not right now, we can only take cash."

Nodding in understanding, Fuutarou considers his options quickly. Knowing this area, there isn't an appropriate ATM where he can go to withdraw money and return within reasonable time. He briefly dwells on the possibility of asking Nino inside the bookstore for money, but that would most likely not end well. If that were any other quint than her or Itsuki, then he'd actually take the chance, but it's Nino he's talking about. After the debacles of this week, there's no way she'll be willing to give him a hand out of the blue like this -

"I'll be paying for him."

Speak of the devil. Fuutarou glances to his left, and there stands, sure enough, Nakano Nino with an outstretched hand that offers the clerk a clean, crisp Noguchi Hideyo banknote.

"It's for your sister, right?" Nino reiterates for him, giving him a look of hesitant unwillingness. "Don't worry about it, then."

"...thanks, Nino," Fuutarou nods quickly, and the clerk receives the 1000 yen note, thanking Nino for her generosity. Fuutarou and Raiha move aside so that the other customers behind them can place their orders too.

"Is she one of your students too, Onii-chan?" Raiha asks, gazing up at Nino whose face she's seen before earlier this week, just on another person.

"Yeah. Easy to tell, huh?"

"Hey, what's _that _supposed to mean," Nino grumbles, taking a quick and irritated sip of her bubble tea that she holds in her hand.

"Well, Itsuki was by our place the other day, so it's a bit funny to me that my sister was able to tell who you were because you two're quintuplets," Fuutarou shrugs. "Oh, by the way, this is my sister, Raiha; she's in elementary school. Raiha, this is Nino; Itsuki who you met a few days ago is her sister, her youngest sister."

"Hello, Nino-san!" Raiha waves adorably up at Fuutarou's student. "I hope my brother's doing well in his tutoring thing. I told your sister this, but he's a super nice person and does his job really well! Even if he's a big jerk sometimes."

"Big jerk...yeah, that's _one _way to put it," Nino remarks, her look of subtle irritation kicked out in favor of a look of justified smugness in a blink of an eye; she even lets out a small "heh!" of victory to the side.

"If you have any qualms about my services, you're free to let me know. It's not like you haven't been doing that already anyway," Fuutarou darkly suggests.

"Oh, yeah, I will, don't worry about that." Nino gives her hair a quick tussle - Fuutarou wonders who started that habit of theirs first, Nino or Itsuki. "Anyways, fancy seeing you here. I'd never've thought that a tactless and plain guy like you would ever have a reason to come to a place like this."

"I mean, this _is _a bookstore after all. And I've been to the library already, and while it's got a few reference books, they're all really old and not up to date. So I figured a trendy and super-modern bookstore kinda like this would have more updated material, and sure enough they did."

"Sure taking your whole tutoring job seriously, huh?"

"Need you even ask? I have to earn my pay somehow, and that's the way I prefer it. Otherwise, I won't be able to buy my sister crepes like this."

Nino glances down at Raiha, who smiles happily back up at her.

"You still weren't able to, though," Nino snickers.

"I know, you don't need to remind me. I just forgot to withdraw some cash beforehand, that's all."

"Strawberry crepe with chocolate chips!"

With his order complete, Fuutarou collects it from one of the grill workers and gives it to Raiha.

"Yaaay! Thanks, Onii-chan!" she smiles even more radiantly as she opens up the crepe and marvels at its delicious contents.

"Don't thank me, thank Nino."

"Okay - thank you, Nino-san!" Thinking for a moment, Raiha momentarily hands her crepe back to her brother so that she can give Nino a big hug. "I love you!"

Unable to hide her embarrassment, Nino lets a blush slip through and looks away, not wanting Fuutarou to see her reaction.

"Th-That's enough, Raiha-chan, you don't...you don't need to thank me," Nino blurts out. "I was just - "

"Oh, oh, I know! You did it because of all the hard work that Onii-chan's been doing, right?" Raiha looks up at Nino with expectant eyes wide with admiration.

"Er...uh...y-yeah...that..." Nino finally looks back over at Fuutarou, who, to her extreme chagrin, is giving her a big, smug grin of his own. "W-Wipe that stupid grin off your face already!"

"No. This is fun."

"You big jerk! Using your sister like this to get all chummy with me - you're such trash!" Nino cries, but she's unable to either throw her usual profanities at her tutor or disengage from Raiha's incapacitating bear hug.

"Alright, that's enough, Raiha," Fuutarou calls after enjoying the sight of Nino struggling to resist his sister's amiable charm, and Raiha finally relinquishes the second quintuplet so that she can finally enjoy her long-awaited crepe. "I'll be sure to pay you back on Monday, by the way."

"Whatever, I don't care. I did it for your sister's sake, not yours," Nino mumbles, looking down at Raiha joyfully munching on her crepe. "Since I know the feeling of wanting to take care of your siblings and all..."

"I got the impression that you're the one who does most, if not all, the cooking at your place for your sisters," Fuutarou nods in agreement.

"And you're right, I basically do everything if they're not already eating out or something. I've tried getting my sisters to start cooking for themselves, but..." Nino sighs heavily, taking another sip from her half-filled bubble tea. "They're all hopeless at it."

"Just like their studies, huh."

"Did you _really _need to bring _that _shit up now? God, I can't believe you right now..."

"I mean, given that it's my whole job to worry about it..."

"It's the weekend, what gives! It's bad enough we had to run into each other here!"

"Well, it's not like we _meant _to, and I already told you why _I'm _here, along with buying my sister a crepe since she hasn't had one in ages. In fact, I should be asking _you _why you're here; you certainly didn't come here to _study_, did you?"

Upon being confronted with this sudden reversal, Nino tenses up for a moment, confirming Fuutarou's suspicions.

"I-I was just talking with a buddy of mine! We hadn't talked in a while, and - and this was the only place we could meet up at after I got my bubble tea!" Nino says quickly.

"That so, huh. I get that this place is pretty trendy and all that, but a _bookstore _of all places? Certainly not very romantic."

"He's not my boyfriend, okay? Just - just someone I know. That's all!"

"Fine, fine. Just stay safe out here."

"I can take care of myself just fine, thank you," Nino retorts angrily. "Just mind your own damn business."

"You'll yell at me for that too, since part of minding my own business is minding a bit of yours, too."

"Sh-Shut up!"

Chuckling, Fuutarou bids farewell to Nino as he and Raiha begin walking away, but they're immediately stopped by Nino calling out,

"Hey, wait, are you walking back home?"

Fuutarou turns around to see Nino hurrying over to them to catch up to them.

"...yeah, what about it? What's it to you?"

"But...but where do you live? There aren't any residentials anywhere in this part of the city in an hour's range from here!"

"Makes sense, 'cause it'll take us about an hour and a half get back home."

Gawking at him, Nino is at an immediate loss for words.

"If you're thinking about giving us another hand, we don't need it," Fuutarou shakes his head slowly. "You've already done enough for me and Raiha buying that crepe for us and telling me I don't have to pay you back for it."

"But _that's an hour and a half_ you'll be walking! At least let me call a cab for you or something!" Nino emphasizes. "You can't be serious right now!"

"Aren't we? Then how do you think we even got here in the first place?"

Whatever Nino had planned next to say gets caught in her throat as she's forced to accept the relatively unbelievable truth that Fuutarou is laying out before her.

"Wh-What about Raiha-chan? You're seriously gonna make her walk all the way back?"

"Don't worry, Nino-san! Onii-chan and I used to walk a lot everywhere because trains and taxis are too expensive. I've got strong legs!" Raiha pipes up reassuringly.

"See?" Fuutarou shrugs again. "Raiha's a strong girl, and I have confidence in her that she can handle things like this since I've known her for so long."

"I mean, duh, she's your _sister..." _Nino sighs with exasperation. "Okay, but, then - just - just where the hell do you live that makes you _walk _all the way here?"

"Daikazoku Business Park. Though I don't know if you know where that is, since that's not in a part of town that you should be going to in the first place."

Again, Nino freezes up. Perhaps that's a bit of a tic of hers.

"Yeah...yeah, I don't...I don't know where that is," she fumbles with her words haphazardly.

"Then don't worry about it and let us mind our own business. That's what you told me to do a few moments ago, right? And I told you that you'd get angry at me regardless, and look at where we're at now. This is just like you, Nino - saying one thing and then doing another. I'll see you next Monday."

Turning his back to Nino one last time for the day, Fuutarou beckons at Raiha to follow, and the two Uesugis head off down the sidewalk on their long journey home on foot, leaving the second quintuplet standing where she's been left.

Finding herself gritting her teeth harder than she's ever done, Nino forces herself to relax her jaws, lest she actually ends up damaging her teeth somehow.

"...Yotsuba told us how you apologized afterwards...and so I try being nice to you today, and...and this's what I get?" Nino seethes under her breath, her teeth-clenching anger instead transferring to her hand, which now begins to crush her cup of bubble tea. "...go fuck yourself, Uesugi...! God, I fucking hate you so much...!"


	8. Big Two

**A/N**

**Sunglare: I can see your point that I portrayed Nino/Miku/Itsuki behaving too harshly; the fact that since I'm writing this fic in English and thus have the liberty of using profanity amplifies their portrayal quite a bit as well, I'd imagine.**

**However, some counterpoints I'd like to bring up are that Nino drugs Fuutarou on the first day that they meet; while it's played for laughs in the manga, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that drugging someone the day you meet them and knocking them out is harsh all by itself.**

**I also think that Itsuki's behavior is still appropriate, not just because I have Fuutarou's lack of tact/social skill cranked up to max but also because Itsuki is the youngest sibling, and she may feel most vulnerable when she gets picked on, despite being the youngest out of quintuplets. We know from the manga that she's the one who's most prone to being a crybaby, and since she's the one who explicitly states wanting to be like her mom, for this fic I interpreted these aspects as a sort of inferiority complex that Itsuki harbors. And as a youngest child myself, I know firsthand what it feels like to not have my words taken seriously or having my argument shut down before it can even start, so while obviously I can't directly compare my own family situation to a character like Itsuki's, I do have a bit of a connection with her there that causes me to believe that Itsuki is capable of acting like how I've written her.**

**Miku is also like Itsuki where I can relate heavily with her character; she's an introvert with a few secrets to hide and loves headphones, all of which is also me. By far the harshest moment from Miku in this fic is the confrontation between her and Fuutarou, when the topic of her old school gets brought up; in this instance, since in the manga Miku states that she doesn't like thinking about her old school, clearly she has a few things to hide about it that she doesn't want Fuutarou to know about since it's none of his business. I've had my moments before where I can turn unusually antagonistic towards someone who brings up a topic that I don't want to deal with, even if they didn't bring it up intentionally or it's not their fault that it got brought up, and I've seen other people, both introverts and extroverts, react the same way or similar.**

**Hope this helps clarify where I'm coming at with their portrayals.**

* * *

"Ten of diamonds."

"Jack of clubs."

"King of spades."

"Ace of hearts!"

"Pass."

Engaged in a particularly fierce match of giappuniza, Fuutarou concedes his turn to draw a card from the draw pile as Raiha wears a confident look.

"Now for my secret weapon - " she announces, pulling five cards from her hand at a time and slapping them down on the discard pile before her, "straight, Jack high!"

"You've activated my trap card!" Fuutarou announces suddenly, matching his sister's flair, and he, too, suddenly throws down a five card hand of his own. "Heart flush, ten high!"

"P-Pass..." Raiha whimpers, reeling from the unexpected blow as she's forced to draw a card.

Seizing his newfound advantage, Fuutarou goes all-out: seeing that Raiha, after pulling the trigger with her straight, has only six cards left, and this is right after Fuutarou played a flush, meaning the chance that she has another five-card hand at her disposal is minuscule. He does not bother calling out his hands, so certain is he of his imminent victory, that he rapid-fires the rest of his cards down before a stunned Raiha: three-high full house, pair of Aces, a two of spades, and a final four of clubs to clear his hand.

"Uwaaaa...I was so close, too," Fuutarou's sister groans. She reveals the rest of her cards; sure enough, she did not have cards that could beat any of his own final hands. "That flush was the end of me, aaaaaagh..."

"You forced me to break up a straight flush from before when we kept playing pairs, so I think this time it was a lot closer than you might think. I just got lucky with one of my card draws that gave me what I needed to complete the flush just in the nick of time," Fuutarou reassures Raiha.

"You still beat me almost every time, though...you're too smart, Onii-chan."

"But you're getting better. You're taking more time with your cards, thinking about them more, like when to use them or sacrificing some hands to maintain an advantage."

"But that doesn't really mean anything if I can't win, does it...?"

"Well, this's just a game, it doesn't really mean anything to begin with. But no, it still does mean something; it tells me that you're getting smarter, and you can apply that to anything else, too. Doesn't have to be just about a game."

Pouting somewhat, Raiha gets up from the floor where she's tumbled backwards upon receiving her loss and sits up.

"You're just saying that to make me feel better about losing," she accuses her brother, watching him shuffle the deck after gathering up the cards.

"Well, no, that wasn't my intention, actually. And it's good to know that you're not satisfied with losing, either; that means you want to improve to reach a goal, which, in this case, is winning a game of giappuniza. Keep at it; you'll be better than me at this someday."

"That's a bit hard to imagine..."

"I mean, you've already beaten me a couple times, haven't you?"

"Yeah, but - but since it's a card game, that's just dumb luck sometimes! And not just that, Onii-chan, you're so good at this game that you can make mistakes or take randomness into account and still know exactly what to do! You just said earlier that you had to break up a really good hand to fight my pairs, right? I wanna learn how you make those kinds of decisions too."

"I could teach you that, yeah. It's an important skill to learn - knowing how to adapt on the fly and calculating risks and all that."

While Fuutarou starts to get fancy with his shuffling to distract Raiha for a moment, the two of them hear the floor-shaking rumbling of a very loud motorcycle engine decelerating as it approaches the office building near them before shutting off. After about five minutes, some familiar, heavy stomps clomp up the stairs outside, and soon enough, Isanari barges in through the front door, having unlocked it with his door key.

"Alright, I'm back! Raiha-chan, I've got the groceries you've asked for," Isanari booms at his children heading to the kitchen to put them away in their old, rickety refrigerator. "Also some actually good milk, too."

"Make sure you _drink _the damn milk on time before it expires, Dad," Fuutarou calls over.

"I got it, I got it, sheesh, you sound like Raiha sometimes."

"You deserve it, though. Also, didn't you _just _pick up groceries yesterday? Why again tonight?"

"I forgot a few things, so I went back tonight to grab 'em. Oh, and Raiha, Dad got you a special little treat." Ignoring his son's trademarked harsh manner of speaking, Isanari turns to Raiha to hold up a packet of meat. At the sight of it, Raiha's eyes light up like a Christmas tree.

"H-Hamburger patties!?" she squeals, launching herself off the floor to hurry over to her father to make sure she isn't seeing things.

"Yep! We'll be eating good this week! Or at least for tonight or tomorrow, whenever you feel like making it."

"Yaaaaay! I love you, Daddy!"

"Hahaha, I decided to splurge just a little bit since business's been better recently. It's been a while since you last had hamburger, right?"

"Yeah, yeah! And guess what? Today Onii-chan took me to the crepe stand near the new bookstore in town since he wanted to go there anyway for some reference books for his tutoring job, and he got me a strawberry crepe with chocolate chips!"

"Hot damn, that sounds amazing! Hey, kid, why didn't you get _me _one too, you dimwit?!" Isanari barks over at Fuutarou.

"You think I'm gonna buy a damn crepe just for you and bring that crap all the way here just for _you _to eat? You were even in town yourself, go get your own!" Fuutarou fires right back.

"Raiha...hear me out for a sec," Isanari spins around and firmly presses his hands down on his daughter's shoulders, looking her straight in the eye. "I've been thinking...it's time to re-educate your brother. He needs to learn how to address his father more properly, and treat him with more respect."

"Not a bad idea, yeah!" Raiha gives her dad a big smile. "But first, let me re-educate you to stop smoking, because you smell like cigarette smoke right now."

It is at this moment that Isanari knew, he fucked up.

"N-No! Raiha, this is - I was just - I was just hanging out with an old buddy of mine from high school! And - and - he smoked a cigarette! _I _wasn't the one smoking, Raiha, I swear! Besides, I-I bought you hamburger today, didn't I?!"

Raiha quietly pulls over the small stool that she uses to reach the kitchen counter and stove properly so that she can cook dinner, grabs a homemade slapstick made of old newspapers and taped at the handle with bright red masking tape that's standing on a nearby dish rack, and turns to her father.

"No! No, Raiha, anything but the slapstick! Anything but that!"

"Daaaaaaaaaaad..." Raiha drawls dangerously, her own black eyes losing light rapidly and taking small but ominous steps towards Isanari. "What did I say about smoking in this household?"

"But this happened _outside, _Rai - "

_**"GUILTYYYYYYYYYYYY! ! ! !"**  
_

Moving faster than any elementary schooler has any right to, Raiha unleashes a furious flurry of blows from her newspaper slapstick upon her dad, who cowers and shrieks as his own daughter lays down the law on her dad for breaking the rule of coming into the house smelling like cigarette smoke. Fuutarou is quietly glad that he has breath fresheners and showers to help get rid of his own cigarette smell from the other night as he enjoys the sight of his dad getting whipped by his sister and the subsequent cracks of the folds of old newspaper reverberating through the office.

"Okay, Raiha, that's enough, Dad gets the point now," Fuutarou calls over to his sister, who obeys and ceases her beating, huffing and puffing at her extreme exertion. Isanari sprawls out on the floor of the kitchen, rolling over and cringing in fake pain.

"F-Fuutarou...your...your dad...won't be with you for much longer..." Isanari groans, weakly reaching out a hand to his son. "You must...carry on the business...and - "

"Right, right. So what about the results?"

"You don't even care about your own dad dying?!"

"...but you're not dying."

"SHOOOOOOOOOOCK! ! ! !"

"Dad, stop shouting out sound effects, you're weird."

"Oh geez, you're no fun, are ya?" Sure enough, Isanari bounces back up to his feet, rummages through his pocket, and tosses him a flash drive, which Fuutarou catches. "Those are what we came up with, so you can check 'em out when you get the chance."

"Cool, thanks. Where's the sample now?"

"I left it with Maruo, he said he'll store it for you to research."

"Then I'll go tonight."

"You sure? Why not just stay the night? It's Saturday night, we can watch that one show about the sextuplets!"

Fuutarou scowls heavily at his dad. "...you sure you're not doing this on purpose?"

"On purpose? What do you me - " It then strikes Isanari. " - oh."

But Fuutarou shakes his head anyway, pocketing the deck of cards that he puts back into its small, worn-out box and picking up his backpack.

"You're leaving now, Onii-chan?" Raiha asks.

"Yeah, since we've already eaten dinner and all for tonight. I'll try to be back as soon as I can."

"Okay then! Stay safe!"

"Will do."

"What about the bike? You don't wanna use that?" Isanari asks as well, but his son simply shakes his head.

Waving goodbye to his family, Fuutarou steps outside and closes the door tightly behind him. Rather than walking along the second floor scaffolding to the stairs that will take him down to ground level, he simply swings his legs over the railing to mantle and drops straight down to the ground, saving himself a bit of time, and small blue runes expand and illuminate upon contact with his feet, cushioning the impact.

As he walks across the empty parking lot into the darkness, Fuutarou thumbs through his phone, pulling up a special app that displays for him each of the locations of the surveillance runes he's planted throughout the city. He selects the network of runes he's set down in the immediate vicinity of his home around Daikazoku Park and minimizes the app window, switching it over to some music instead. Finally pulling out his own pair of Audio Technicas from his backpack, Fuutarou zips it shut after putting them on, swings it back around his arms again to wear it properly, sticks his hands in his pockets, and sets off into the still, quiet Saturday night.

* * *

_"You can't go doing this to us, Jong In! Especially after everything we've been through!"  
_

_"I've had enough! I'm leaving - and don't bother to tell the rest of the family, either, since I'll know if you do!"  
_

Gathered at the couch armed with drinks and snacks, Ichika, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki are seated in front of their huge 70-inch TV, watching the latest episode of a Korean drama show subtitled in Japanese for their viewing convenience. Having been invited by the first and fourth quints, the third and fifth have reluctantly joined them, as Korean dramas do not appeal to them - or so they thought. Now, with the season finale episode airing, everyone is deeply engrossed in the show - Miku, who first started out playing a mobile game on her phone, has put it down to watch, and Itsuki, having busied herself with the snacks the most out of her sisters, has set aside the butter popcorn so that she can pay attention.

_"I thought by helping your family, I was doing something right in the world. Trying to improve myself, be a better person - but you were all just using me in the end!"_

_"Jong In! Jong In, listen to me! Listen to me, please!"_

_"What was I doing all this time, then, Hae Eun? What else do you think I was doing? And look what happened, look how everything turned out. And yet, even while knowing everything, you still ask me to listen to you? You're pathetic, Hae Eun! I've had enough!"_

The quintuplets watch with eyes wide with suspense as the female character in the show breaks down sobbing, with the male character walking away in the final scene before the credits begin to roll.

"Whew! That got the blood pumping, didn't it?" Ichika laughs excitedly, relishing the aftermath of the season finale. "They already announced a second season for this, so let's make sure to watch it together, okay ~ "

"How'd you like it? It was good, wasn't it?" Yotsuba presses on her sisters, grinning widely at Miku and Itsuki in particular and delivering them her trademark giggle that goes _"shi shi shi shi!"_

"It was great...I liked it a lot more than I thought," Miku nods eagerly, her thrilled eyes brimming with quiet excitement. Itsuki tries to hide her enjoyment, but her sisters already know what's up.

"I-It was better than I thought, I will admit," she replies, reaching for the bowl of popcorn to partake of it. "I still prefer my science shows, though!"

"Oh come on, it's always those science shows with you. Every time you're watching TV here, you're always on the Discovery Channel or something like that," Ichika chuckles. "It wouldn't kill you to watch something else every now and then?"

"Though, I _do _wish Nino were here to watch this with us," Yotsuba remarks while cuddling next to Miku, who leans her head against her younger sister's shoulder now that the excitement is wearing off and is slowly replaced by snack-induced drowsiness. "She loves these shows, doesn't she? She was really looking forward to this finale too, I thought."

"Yeah, Nino's reactions are always the best - she always squeals and gasps super dramatically and stuff whenever we get episodes like this," Ichika nods fondly, but that fondness does not last. "Actually, about Nino, didn't she say she was gonna be back by now? Like Yotsuba said, she usually makes sure not to miss episodes like this..."

"Didn't she say she was headed out somewhere to meet with one of her friends...?" Miku asks sleepily, tucking her chin further behind the arch of her blue headphones.

"Must be one of those days...sometimes she has nights like this when she does not return until very late at night. Honestly, even if it is a Saturday night, what is she doing outside so late..." Itsuki mumbles irritably as she pops a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

"Well, I sometimes come back pretty late myself with my friends, so I'm sure she's fine," Ichika reassures her sisters.

As her sisters are talking, Miku silently pulls out her phone again and unlocks the screen to check her text list. So far, Nino hasn't responded to any of the texts that Miku has sent her about them getting together to watch the K-drama's season finale tonight...rather uncharacteristic of a girl who was renowned at their old school for being one of the best at managing an IRL conversation and multiple text groups at the same time if need be.

"She's probably just venting about Uesugi-san to her friends, right? Maybe even about us, too, ehehe," Yotsuba suggests absentmindedly. "She's always been like that, talking about stuff with her friends that she can't really talk about with us since we're her sisters and all."

"It's fine though, I made sure to have it recorded so she can watch it when she gets back. I don't mind watching it a second time, it's so dramatic," Ichika swoons a little.

"Well, yeah, it's a drama..." Miku mumbles.

"Though, don't you think that the finale kinda hits close to home?" Awkwardly grinning this time, Yotsuba takes a pair of chocolate Pocky sticks from the open pouch on the table, offering one to Miku, who shakes her head in denial and prompts Yotsuba to simply munch on both at the same time.

"Not very. This is a TV show; it should not have to remind us of what is going on in our own lives," Itsuki replies shortly.

"Ah, there goes Itsuki again, talking like a grown-up," Ichika giggles. "But now that Yotsuba's brought it up, it's been a few days since Fuutarou-kun's been here. I was half-expecting him to show up more anyway this week, but man, I guess he really is a boy of his word. That's kinda rare these days..."

"But Ichika, how would you know about boys? We've only just started attending a co-ed school this week..." Miku points out, causing Ichika to flinch a little.

"Er, well, you know, I'm a bit of a socialite myself, aren't I? Not to Nino levels, but I know a lot of people from my part-time and all..."

"Sounds like you meet all kinds of people," Yotsuba remarks, still nibbling on more Pocky sticks like a squirrel nibbles on food.

"You could say that, yeah. But poor Fuutarou-kun, right? I mean, he's got to deal with us five all being potential dropouts and all ~ "

"You don't really sound that sympathetic, though," Miku again points out.

"Well, that's more because I'm just unmotivated to study. It doesn't help knowing that I'm already pretty stupid in school anyway. But maybe ~ " Ichika places a precocious index finger on the middle of her lips. "Maybe, when Fuutarou-kun returns on Monday, he can convince me to study..."

"Speaking of which, you've been hanging out with him a bit more and talking with him lately this week, haven't you?" Yotsuba recounts.

"Yep. Have any of you noticed what he's been doing in class?"

Yotsuba and Miku shake their heads, while Itsuki declines to respond and simply continues to shovel popcorn into her mouth.

"He's been working on the lessons he'll be giving us next week. He's not even paying attention to what our teachers are doing," Ichika giggles again. "I couldn't believe it myself either, so I talked to him after class one day just to see if that's what he was really doing, and sure enough it was. I didn't think someone was that crazy enough to ignore everything from all their classes just to focus on other people's lessons like that. I wonder if he's been a tutor for a long time?"

"Come on, Ichika, he's the same age as us. Unless he's some sort of child genius..." Miku murmurs, having gone back to playing her mobile game on her phone. "...oh nice, a Buster Brave chain..."

"He pretty much gives off the image that he is, too," Yotsuba agrees.

"Certainly has the arrogance of one too..." Itsuki adds immediately after.

"Itsuki, do you still have a grudge against Fuutarou-kun for the other day? You should really learn to let that go," Ichika says gently, leaning to the side a little so that she can better talk directly to her youngest sister. "Yotsuba already told us that he wants to apologize to you for going overboard himself. You should at least just get it over with and say sorry back and make up."

The youngest quint opens her mouth to speak her mind, but surprisingly, nothing is spoken, and Itsuki closes her lips, gazing down emptily into the popcorn bowl, about a third of which she's eaten all by herself.

"See? You're a nice girl, Itsuki; you're not the type who'll hold grudges like that for long," Ichika reminds her sister as the latter returns the popcorn bowl back to the table. "At least not to the extent that Nino does sometimes."

"Nino's on another level, you mean..." Miku snorts quietly.

"Well, yeah. Don't let Nino catch you saying that around her, though."

"I know."

Ichika clears her throat quickly. "But no, really, Itsuki, you should go talk to him at some point soon. You've been to his house before, right? Earlier this week? Go back over and just make up with him. He really is just trying to do his job as best he can, and since it's a boy from the same class as us, the least we can do is try to work with him, right? Otherwise it's gonna be super awkward all the time running into him during class and around school and whatnot."

But Itsuki stubbornly shakes her head.

"I do not want him as my tutor. I will study by myself - that is what I have decided," Itsuki staunchly declares with a quiet voice. "I will tolerate him tutoring the rest of you, but I will not let the likes of him teach me. Someone like him who holds his own words as absolute, not caring for what we think - we already have someone in the family who is very much so like that, and I do not have the patience to deal with another person like that in my life."

"Oh c'mon, Itsuki, don't be like that," Yotsuba groans a little, getting up off the couch to relocate over next to Itsuki so that she can hug Itsuki's left arm. "Uesugi-san's not like that, and you know that. Even if he were like that, he still wants to say sorry to you properly, doesn't he?"

"Then if that is the case, why has he not spoken to me at all this week?" Itsuki points out.

"Because he knows you won't listen to him..."

"That's right. He might be the type of guy who yells at girls and makes them cry, but he's not that dense to the point where he neglects their feelings all the time," Ichika adds. "He knows he hurt your feelings the other day yelling at you, and right after that happened, Miku and I scolded him a little for going overboard, and he agreed with us that he did. In fact, I talked with him about this yesterday, and he asked me how you were doing."

That last bit from Ichika makes Itsuki's lips curl uncomfortably.

"He asked me how you were doing, if you were feeling better. Like, Itsuki, you have to understand, he does really care about what you think about this whole tutoring thing," Ichika continues. "Everyone makes mistakes, right? People can get into arguments - you and Miku get into arguments with Nino all the time nowadays, pretty much."

"But we're sisters, so it's natural," Miku objects. "This one happened between Itsuki and someone from our class whom we don't really know that well."

"But arguments are still arguments, aren't they? I guess the one good thing about the arguments between you two and Nino is that since we're sisters, you can get over them pretty quickly."

"Exactly! How do you expect me to get over this with Uesugi-kun this fast?" Itsuki protests, finally turning her neck to face her oldest sibling directly.

"But is it really necessary to keep having this standoff with him for this long? Again, he hasn't done anything wrong, other than maybe rub in the fact that we're all really dumb, but not only is he still not wrong about that, because we _are _all really dumb, but he's already made it clear that he thinks he went too far too. You don't have to _not _forgive people who aren't your own family, Itsuki."

"...but it _is _certainly more difficult," Itsuki grumbles, turning away from Ichika soon after she's faced her.

"No one said it would be easy, either. And...don't take this wrong way either, but...you aren't exactly as outgoing as maybe me or Nino, or even Yotsuba. So it's not surprising that you'll have trouble getting over something like this."

"Well, _excuse me _for not being as popular and attractive as the rest of you." Itsuki fully turns away from her oldest sibling with a small "hmph!" and rests her head against Yotsuba's chest, the owner of whom begins to pat her reassuringly on the back.

Ichika pouts at her youngest sister. "You took the wrong way anyway! But no really, we're quintuplets, aren't we? You're just as cute as I am, so your potential for popularity's always gonna be there, you know!"

"She's just sulking, Ichika, let her be," Yotsuba says gently. "There, there, Itsuki."

"I'm not even crying, though..."

"But you _are _sulking," Miku says, still with her eyes fixed down on her phone screen.

"You do not need to repeat that to me!"

Smiling at the rare banter between Miku and Itsuki, two quints who usually get along with each other, Ichika feels her phone vibrate and pulls it out of her pocket to check, in case it's a text from her part-time work.

What she reads makes her immediately jump off the couch and hurry to the front door, removing herself from the house as she dials Nino's number. Her sisters, unable to even call out after her to find out what she's up to, simply stare at the front door that she closes behind her.

"...what is wrong with _her, _now?" Itsuki wonders aloud, feeling a creeping sense of unease starting to bubble up in her gut. "After all that talk, too..."

"I've never seen Ichika react like that before, what's going on...?" Yotsuba adds fearfully. "I just hope she remembered to bring her key with her..."

Meanwhile, once she's stepped out of the house, Ichika puts the phone up to her ear as she hurries to the other side of the thirtieth floor, where there is a private room that is usually reserved for special occasions like high-class dinner parties, since it is a crow's nest with a panoramic view of the city. And because the Nakano family owns the entire thirtieth floor of this particular high-rise, Ichika can use her passcard to let herself in at any time, which she does to get a view of the city.

The call connects, and Ichika, stopping before the large windows, tightens her grip on her phone.

"Nino? Nino, is that you? What's going on, this better be some kind of joke!"

_"I'm afraid it's not a joke, miss."_

It's Ichika's heart's turn to drop like a rock in her chest.

"Who are you? Where's Nino?" Ichika demands, letting her voice rise in decibel level. For all the work she's done for her part-time, it sure isn't helping her at a moment in time when she needs it the most.

_"She's here next to me, don't worry. Nothing's happened to her either...yet. Hey, take off the tape and let her talk."_

Ichika cringes a little when she hears a terribly loud ripping sound of tape being torn off someone's mouth.

_"You fucking shits! Using my sisters as bait like that - I can't believe you assholes!"_

"Nino?! Nino, are you okay?!" Ichika shouts into her phone.

_"Ichika?! Don't come here, it's dangerous! Whatever you do, don't listen to that guy, he's gon - "_

_"Aight bitch, that's enough from you!"_

A different, burly male voice shouts over Nino's before being followed up by a frighteningly loud smack of a hand slapping Nino, presumably in the face.

"Nino! Nino?! You said you wouldn't hurt her, damn it!" Ichika shrieks, unable to control her speech.

_"We didn't. What, can girls not handle a single slap to the face nowadays? Well, my time is valuable and I'm sure yours is too, so let's just cut to the chase, shall we? First things first, since you've called your sister's number, I'd like to assume that you read the text I sent you, but just to make sure, have you read it fully?"_

"Yes, I have."

_"Good, then you know what to do. I will give you exactly one hour to arrive at that address that I texted you, with all of your sisters. If you do not meet our demands within this time, I cannot guarantee your sister's safety, the one we have on us right now."_

Clenching her own fist as well, Ichika can't stop her hands from trembling. As young teenage girls belonging to an affluent family, perhaps the Nakano quints should have been aware of situations like this, but now that something like this is finally happening for the first time, Ichika can hardly believe it.

"Why? Why are you doing this?" the eldest quint hoarsely asks, unable to stop her voice from beginning to quiver. "Is it money? Is it money that you want? We can pay you if that's what you want! Just let Nino go!"

_"If money were all we wanted, then I wouldn't bother asking for all of you to get here, would I? Time's ticking, miss - oh, and don't make the mistake of trying to call anyone, you hear? We'll know if you do - and if you do, we'll make your sister here tell us where you are, kill her, and then come find you ourselves. And you don't want that."_

And the call is shut off, leaving Ichika isolated in the crow's nest, staring blankly into the nighttime skyline of the city.

* * *

"Here's your stop, ladies."

A taxi cab hailing from the same cab company as the one that drove Itsuki and Fuutarou to the latter's house at Daikazoku Business Park earlier in the week stops at an abandoned warehouse complex. Several dim streetlights still vigilantly illuminate the sidewalks of this forlorn, emptied sector of the city, left in the wake of the city's expansion as the financial landscape of the city shifted and evolved, causing businesses that once thrived in this neighborhood to pack up and leave in favor of the city downtown or elsewhere, with only a few survivors still clinging on to their decaying homes.

Ichika, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki close the doors behind them as they step out of the taxi, gazing with extreme nervousness at the warehouses before them that they've been instructed to arrive at.

"Um, so I don't want to poke my nose into other people's business, but whatever you girls plan to do around here, you shouldn't stay here long," the taxi driver warns them with a noticeable degree of apprehension of his own. "This isn't exactly the nicest part of town."

"Can't you wait here for us in case anything happens?" Miku asks quietly.

"As much as I'd like to do that, I can't, I have another client who's booked a ride right after you girls," the driver shakes his head. "And I'm not sure when another cab will be available tonight, tonight's been pretty busy for us. Just don't stay here long."

Bidding the girls safe travels, the taxi driver pulls his vehicle away to hurry to his next client, since the Nakanos' route is unusually far removed from his usual routes.

"We - We really should've just called the police. We should at least call Dad!" Yotsuba insists in a hushed voice.

But Ichika shakes her head. "The guy said they'll kill Nino if we try anything. We can't take that chance, Yotsuba!"

"But we cannot give them what they want, can we? All of us coming together, that's what they want," Itsuki reminds her sisters.

"What other choice do we have?" Miku murmurs fearfully. "We just have to hope that we can pay them off."

"Then they will keep blackmailing us! And besides, how on Earth will they know if we try calling someone?"

"Look, Itsuki, it's Nino's _life _that's on the line, I don't want to do _anything _that risks her life!" Ichika whips around and hisses back at Itsuki, who shrinks somewhat under the pressure of her big sister, who sighs heavily with a look of heavy stress on her face. "Why is this happening...? Nino, just...just what did you do to end up like this...?"

Fully aware of the tenseness of their situation, Yotsuba gathers her courage and plants herself in front of the rest of her sisters.

"We have to go in there and save Nino. If we're the only ones who can, we have to do it!" she declares with as much confidence as she can muster. "Mom always said to stick together, didn't she?"

Ichika nods emphatically, realizing that she needs to resume her position as the eldest of the quintuplets. "Yeah, exactly. Even during times like this, we have to stay together."

"But even if you say that...it was easy to say that before...this is something way more serious," Miku whispers uncertainly, eyeing the warehouse hesitantly.

"Don't worry, just let Ichika-Onee-San handle the bad guys!" Ichika taps her chest with her fist, but even as she does this, Ichika can feel the sweat returning to her palms as her heart pumps at an accelerated rate. "Stay behind me and let me do the talking. Even if you see them mistreating Nino, don't say a word, you have to be patient, since getting Nino back is our highest priority."

Yotsuba nods heartily, but Miku and Itsuki do not share the same enthusiasm as they follow Ichika to the front of the warehouse directly before them, as was instructed by Nino's captors. As they approach, the warehouse doors suddenly pull apart, pushed open by two men wearing plain, dark cargo pants and equally plain white tank tops, and a third man watches the girls slowly approach them.

"You must be Nino's sisters, huh? Come in, I'll take you to where she is," the man, dressed surprisingly neatly in a sky-blue button-up dress shirt and fresh Levi's to go with his neatly kept mustache. Seeing no other choice, the four quintuplets inch their way inside, gazing warily at their surroundings as they enter the warehouse. Itsuki and Miku note with conspicuous fright that the two men behind them close the warehouse doors behind them as they come in and lock the doors with heavy latches that look far too heavy for girls like them to lift on their own.

"Are you the friend of Nino's who she keeps meeting with on nights like this?" Ichika demands, not bothering to hide the anger and stress that's built up in her chest.

"I don't need to answer that. All you need to know is that since Nino is a long-time customer of ours, I've been doing some special favors for her, one of which is what I'm doing right now. If it weren't for me, you probably wouldn't _have _a sister to find by the time you got here."

The quintuplets follow their escort without another word, Ichika frightened into silence by the man's own ominous words. For looking like a shoddy run-down warehouse from the outside, the inside is still furnished with scaffolding and pallets, with lots of boxes and various kinds of miscellaneous merchandise on display across the warehouse floor, though there isn't much in the way of foot traffic, since it's late at night on a Saturday.

Leading them across the warehouse, Nino's shady acquaintance takes them to the rear exit, and beckons at the four girls through the exit. At the rear of the warehouse, the girls now find themselves in the shipment reception bay, equipped with four truck loading docks that are all currently empty. A few 40-foot shipping containers rest on the other side of the reception bay, having been unloaded of their cargo and sitting off the side to wait for pickup back to their respective terminals.

There also sits a single white unmarked van, whose rear is facing them with its trunk open. Three more men dressed similarly to the two who opened and closed the warehouse doors to let the rest of the quints in stand guard around the van, and the two men from earlier also bring up the rear, closing the exit door of the warehouse behind them.

Inside the van lies -

_"Nino!" _Ichika cries out, hurrying forward, but one of the men near the van steps in front of Ichika's path, towering over her with his superior height and body mass.

But to Ichika's relief, Nino, hearing her sister's voice, sits back up swiftly, her hands bound behind her back tightly and her feet together so that she can't attempt escape on her own.

"You fucking idiots, I _told _you all not to come here!" Nino screams at them, almost hysterically. "What the fuck were you all thinking?!"

"W-What do you mean? We can't just leave you here!" Yotsuba shouts back, but Nino's acquaintance claps his hands once to get the girls' attention.

"Touching reunion, I'm sure, but now's not the time for that, maybe later," he says. Ichika turns to face him instead.

"If it's money you want, here!" She pulls out from her pockets thick wads of Fukuzawa Yukichi's, offering them to the neatly-dressed man. "Just give us back our sister!"

The man takes one look at the two thick wads of cash in Ichika's hands, looks her straight in the eyes, and laughs.

"You're supposed to be from a rich family, right? Nino's told me as much, and that's _all _you're offering?" he rolls his eyes incredulously. "Not like I was going to accept that anyway, but you _really _can't do better than that? That's pocket change for us - but maybe you girls wouldn't know much about this kind of thing, since unlike your bratty sister over there, the rest of you four are actually good girls. Well, I'd hope so, anyway."

"But you are all just criminals who want money! What do you mean, you will not accept this?" Itsuki blurts out.

"Well, now that you're here, I guess I can explain. This isn't the kind of thing we normally do, but we've been hired out by a particular client of ours who's taken a specific interest in Nino over here, and I guess by corollary the rest of you quintuplets," the man reveals. "So I apologize for this, but I'll be having you four cooperate with us as well."

The man gestures at the girls, and two men from the van and the two men at the warehouse exit approach the rest of the four quintuplets.

"Huh!? Wait, what're you - wait, stop - !"

But there's no way the high school freshmen girls can fight back successfully; with the one exception of the big guy at the van, while the rest of the men are of average height and build, they easily restrain the girls and force them over to the van as well, with the last thug equipped with red rope to bind the rest of the quints' hands and feet, like Nino before them. Once they're all restrained, Ichika and Itsuki are forced to sit inside the open trunk of the van, while Miku and Yotsuba have to sit down for the time being on the ground near their sisters.

"You fucking shits! You can't do this to us!" Nino shrieks and hollers the entire time that the men are tying up her sisters, and continues to do so even after her sisters join her in the van. Her right cheek is slightly swollen from the slap she received from her acquaintance during Ichika's call. "You fucking tricked me, you son of a bitch! This was supposed to be just between us two! Why'd you have to involve all my sisters, huh, you fucking loser!"

"Hey, believe me, I feel bad about having to do this, but money is money, and it's a whole lot more than this that your sister tried bargaining with," Nino's acquaintance smugly retorts, having picked up the money that Ichika brought in an attempt to bail Nino out and counting through it anyway. "A million yen...not bad, actually, I thought it was less. Sorry miss, seems like I misjudged you a bit - if we weren't already under contractual obligation, I'd actually be happy with this and give your sister back, but like I said, we can't do that tonight."

"Who's the one who bought you guys out, then? At least tell us that!" Ichika shouts back, sitting at the edge of the van's trunk next to Nino.

"Telling you won't do you any good, so there's no point," the man shrugs as he taps in a number in his own phone and raises it to his ear. "Yeah, we've got the customers. Sedate them or nah?"

The quintuplets all freeze in horror at the word "sedate".

"Understood. We'll get to your hideout in twenty." The neatly-dressed man cuts the call and pockets his phone, nodding at his men. "Sedate them."

One of the men, already prepared for this possibility, has retrieved a gray metal lockbox from the shotgun seat and opens it to reveal its disturbing contents: an array of needles and vials containing a strange, murky white liquid.

At the sight of the needles, both Nino and Itsuki, their eyes widening in utmost fear, begin to scream in fright as two of the men work to fill the needles with the white liquid in their vials.

"Oh for fuck's sake, shut the fuck up!" one of the men near the van, annoyed at the girls' shrieking since he's had to deal with Nino's crap all evening long, turns and pops the closer of the two screaming quintuplets right in the face, which happens to be Itsuki. She reels and crashes backwards into the interior of the van, yelping with acute pain, and all four of the quintuplets simultaneously call out their sister's name.

**_"ITSUKI!"_**

"Hey, boss, these girls are hella annoying. Can't'cha just let us have some fun with them at least if they're gonna be this bitchy?" the guy who's punched Itsuki in the face complains to the well-dressed man.

"You're already crossing the line hurting one of them like that," he snaps, watching Itsuki curl up and face the side of the van so that she can hide her heavily bleeding nose where the thug smashed her. "That's tonight's pay cut from you right there."

The offender throws his hands up in the air. "But that bitch deserved it! Actually, I should've smacked _your _bitch ass," he points to Nino, who glares hatefully back at him with all the anger that she can draw from within her. "Fine then, if I'm not gonna get paid for tonight, don't mind if I just have some fun with that bitch for all the shit she's made me deal with!"

"Hey, wait, stop - " Nino's acquaintance tries to get him to stop, but he knows that his own underlings are much stronger and more experienced in street fighting than he is, so once Itsuki's attacker goes over to Nino and grabs a hold of her shirt to pull her out of the van, there's nothing the boss can do but hope that he'll be quick about it.

"No, stop, stop! Don't take her, leave her alone! Just take me instead!" Ichika also screams out, trying to plead with Nino's molester.

"That's real cute of you miss, but your bitch of a sister's annoyed the shit outta me all day today, so I'ma teach her specifically a lesson in fuckin' humility. Don't worry, I'll be a _real _nice tutor, hahaha!" the thug laughs gleefully, and pinning her down on the ground before them, he grabs the collar of Nino's shirt with both hands and tears it in half down the middle with a mighty heave, exposing Nino's undergarments.

"Fucking - stop! Stop, you shitty creep!" Nino bellows all the while, putting up as much of a struggle as she can. "Why aren't you telling this fucker to get off me!? You're gonna let this happen when you promised me nothing would happen to me?!"

"I _did _say that I wouldn't do anything to do," her acquaintance shrugs, watching the other thugs finish up filling the needles with the mysterious sedative. "As in, not me personally."

Nino stares with dead eyes up at her acquaintance.

"Don't look at me like that, Nino. After all, all these years I warned you that you shouldn't be in this kind of business because of how dangerous it is," he sighs. "This isn't something that a student like you should get involved in, this isn't something you should be buying, blah blah blah, all those things - I tried being a nice person to you and dissuade you, but since business is business, I let you do what you wanted, hoping that you'd just stop doing this once you realized what kind of danger you'd put yourself in potentially. But now it's too late, and now you've even gotten all your sisters involved. You should've seen this one coming."

_**"GO FUCK YOURSELF!" **_Nino shrieks at the top of her lungs. _**"EVERY ONE OF YOU, FUCKING GO TO HELL!"**_

"Sure!" the man on top of Nino laughs, grabbing hold of Nino's bra this time. "But not before I fuck _you _first, bitch!"

The man's head suddenly jerks unnaturally slightly to his right, and before Nino or anyone else realizes what's happened, the thug collapses quietly to his left, sporting a single ordinary playing card jammed halfway into the side of his head. A two of spades.

"Can I ask you something, Nino?"

An almost shadowy figure stands among the quintuplets and the thugs, all of whom now snap their attention to this new voice that wasn't with them a moment ago. It wears plain black dress pants, a half-kilt behind the legs like a trench coat, a black hoodie zip-up jacket sporting the kanji 毘沙門天 on the back underneath the hood, and a black cap whose visor sports a stylized white logo with six strokes.

Uesugi Fuutarou, with his left hand in his hoodie pocket and his right hand by his side, knuckling an Ace of spades, peers down at Nino lying on the ground with her torn clothes.

"How do you _always _get yourself into situations like this?"


	9. Solitary Warrior

Not even the quintuplets can believe their ears, so shocked are they to find anyone they know come to their rescue - and out of all the people it could've been, it's their classmate and hired tutor whom they've barely known for a week. In Nino's case, she also can't believe her eyes, for as much as Fuutarou looks different in this street getup, that is most definitely him and his voice that she hears and finds unbearably annoying, even now.

Bending his knees to stoop down to the ground momentarily, Fuutarou first pockets his Ace of Spades, then reaches down and picks up Miku's blue Audio Technica headphones, which have fallen off her neck after being knocked askew by the thugs who've trapped and restrained her and her sisters. He takes advantage of the surprise value of his undetected entrance that's left everyone around him stumped into silence by retrieving Miku's headphones, brushing the dust off the exterior of the earcups, and pulls out his phone to sync with it wirelessly.

"W-Who the hell are you?" the well-dressed boss finally speaks out, completely unsure of what to do. The thugs don't know what to do either - if Fuutarou had simply shown up without doing anything, they would have confronted him immediately, but this is a guy who just tossed a normal playing card so hard at one of their buddies that it's stuck in his brain.

"Who am I..." Fuutarou murmurs, still paying more attention to his phone than to anyone around him as he pulls up his music playlist and thumbs through it to find an appropriate track. "Oh, right...I'm these girls' _actual _tutor."

Uesugi pauses for a moment, pulling on the headphones properly and holding them by their earcups briefly, causing them to glow mysteriously with blue light. Miku doesn't remember her headphones having such a light-up feature before...

"And a really _bad _one, apparently," he adds as a side comment.

"I ain't heard of a damn tutor who shows up throwing cards at people to kill them!" the mustached boss cries in disbelief. "Look, kid, you're getting in the way; I don't know what these girls are to you, but if you think you can just walk up and rescue them like you're some sorta white knight, you're fucking wrong!"

But the boss is silenced again by the sound of Uesugi giving off a small chuckle of amusement.

"'Think'?" he smiles over at Nino's acquaintance, who scowls deeply and barks at his underlings.

"We don't have time for this - if you wanna get paid, get this motherfucker outta my sight!"

As the boss relays his new orders, Uesugi finds and selects a track before stowing his phone away in his right pants pocket, and the song starts pumping lyrics into his ears through Miku's headphones just as the thugs around him approach him threateningly.

_"Oh, I see you feelin' yourself! Hahaha...that type 'a pride ain't good for your health - c'mon!"_

"As you wish..." Fuutarou mutters...in English.

The first thug, the big man, reaches out his left hand to grab Fuutarou by his jacket sleeve, but Fuutarou withdraws his left hand from the jacket pocket that it's been hanging out in with a speed that's far too fast for the average street thug to react to, grabs tight hold of his adversary's wrist, and tugs him suddenly to the right, forcing the thug to stumble forward despite his superior body mass and weight. Simultaneously, Uesugi angles his left elbow and pops him in the face quickly but crisply, putting just enough strength behind the elbow stab that smashes into the big thug's nose and swiftly breaks it.

Reeling backwards from the surprise counter and the shock of having his nose broken so easily, the big man grasps at his profusely bleeding nose, instinctively trying to stop the bleeding. The other thugs, alarmed that their big man has been repelled with such ease, stiffen up and make sure to close the distance around Fuutarou together to properly utilize their numerical advantage. Two men then charge at him, with the last man staying behind to cut off any avenues of escape should the quintuplets' classmate attempt to disengage.

Equipped with faster feet, Fuutarou puts them to good use to counter his numerical disadvantage and swiftly sidesteps the straight punch from the thug to his right, ducking his head low enough underneath the attacking punch so that Miku's headphones don't get knocked off his own head, too. Before the thug can turn to face him properly, Fuutarou lets rip a quick straight to his opponent's exposed left side, causing him to reel; his head is forced to lower from the pain of Uesugi's strike, and Fuutarou grabs the thug by the face and tosses him backwards like he's flinging a stuffed doll across the room, buying himself a bit of time so that he can deal with less enemies at once - even just a few seconds of having less bad guys to think about at the same time can be critical.

The second thug who's attacked first changes course and raises his right leg, attempting to step kick Fuutarou in the gut with his left leg without waiting for the third thug behind him to coordinate another attack with him. Uesugi simply reacts to the kick and literally slaps the foot to the side with his bare right hand, causing his enemy to get knocked off balance and crumple embarrassingly on his left hip. The third thug then comes in to assist, but it's far too late for a coordinated attack, meaning Fuutarou is able to fight three one-on-one duels in a row, and the quintuplets' tutor blocks a punch aimed at his chin, catches his wrist as well, and tugs his enemy towards himself so that his right hand can grab him by the neck.

Lifting him up for a moment and slamming him down against the ground at his own feet, Fuutarou stoops down again, this time to deliver a series of rapid-fire knuckle strikes with both hands against the thug's face, repeatedly causing his head to knock back and forth between his fists and the hard asphalt. It doesn't take very many of these to knock the thug out, and Fuutarou swiftly stands back up once this is achieved, leaving the man unmoving and unconscious at his feet, with a small pool of blood beginning to form beneath the back of his head.

Slowly beginning to realize that maybe his underlings really don't have a chance against this freak of a tutor, the mustached boss takes out his phone again hurriedly to dial a number, but Uesugi pivots and draws his Ace of Spades in one fluid motion and fires it with a sharp reverse wrist flick. Nino, who's still laying on the ground where she'd been pinned by the first thug who is now dead, spies a sudden, brief, but noticeable flash of blue light that wraps around the shape of the card as it's held between Fuutarou's fingers before it rockets out from them. The boss yelps in surprise as his phone is knocked out of his hand, and he turns to look at what just happened to it, only to find the Ace of Spades lodged right through it.

"Call your boys off and leave. I won't ask this again," Fuutarou quietly issues his ultimatum to the boss, slowly lowering his card-flicking hand as the thug he tossed behind him confronts him again, albeit at a further distance away. But the mustached man grits his teeth, unwilling to back down.

"It's just one guy, goddamn it! What the fuck are you idiots doing? Take him down already!" he barks again.

The three remaining thugs regroup for another attempt to take their intruder down; the big man, while unable to stop the bleeding, opts to help his boys since the faster they can bring Fuutarou down, the faster he can treat his broken nose. Again, the thugs close the distance, and this time the big man stays behind to let his smaller coworkers spearhead their charge, who attack from opposite sides of Fuutarou rather than directly at his front.

Seizing his own initiative, Fuutarou sidesteps directly _at _the attacker to his right, slipping past his left hook aimed for his liver and riposting with another hard elbow strike, jamming it against the enemy's throat at an awkward angle. The thug begins choking and gasping terribly, stumbling backwards and trying to breathe properly, and Uesugi pivots quickly to find the other thug, whose pincer attack is thwarted due to Fuutarou's sidestep, lunging at him to grab him by the legs so that the big man can come in to do some damage.

Uesugi bends his knees to lower his center of gravity that will help him maintain his balance as the thug crashes into his shin, failing to knock the tutor off his feet, and Uesugi drives his knuckles down against the thug's forehead, forcing him to let go of his legs. The big man finally steps back in, brandishing a big hunting knife whose blade is longer than the length of Fuutarou's hand.

"Fuutarou!" Miku cries out at the sight of the dangerous weapon in the big thug's hands.

But Fuutarou does not heed her, though whether it's because he's not concerned about the knife or because he simply can't hear her over the music blasting in his ears at the moment is not clear. Nevertheless, the thug steps in and roars, swinging his knife at Fuutarou, who dodges, ducks, sidesteps, and back-steps to avoid the strong swings. The big thug adapts quickly, ditching his powerful swings in favor of weaker but faster jabs, pokes, and stabs instead, but for one particularly deadly stab, the young tutor does not opt to dodge it and instead stands his ground, letting the knife come aimed at his left eye.

_PING!_

A strange, somewhat high-pitched metallic ringing sound is emitted and echoes briefly through the warehouse reception bay. The big thug cannot believe what he's seeing - he's pressing his knife against the back of Fuutarou's raised left hand, which is bare and is in clear contact with the sharp point of his big hunting knife. However, as hard as he might try, he can't push the knife further past the skin to do damage.

Without warning, Fuutarou steps in and buries his right knuckles into the tall thug's gut, causing his knees to buckle slightly and his grip on his knife to loosen, which the high school freshman capitalizes on by snatching the knife right out of the thug's hand by the blade before he realizes what Fuutarou is doing. But he's not done with the knife: tossing it shortly up into the air so that he can catch it with his thumb and index finger on his right hand, Uesugi turns and chucks it at the thug whose throat he elbowed a few moments ago as the latter is trying to get back up to his feet while still gasping for air. The knife blade cleanly angles itself for the man's face and pierces his skull squarely through the middle of his forehead, with the sheer size of the tracker knife splitting the frontal lobes of his brain and swiftly ending his life.

When the big thug tries getting back up to his own feet behind him, Uesugi once again puts him out of commission by re-pivoting and ripping a powerful left hook into the thug's right side, striking him dead center against his liver, which flexes and smashes painfully against the center of his body, shocking his vagus nerve sufficiently to force the big guy to his knees, then to the ground as he clutches his liver, groaning terribly and gasping for air painfully.

The final thug, having developed a black eye from the punch he's received from Fuutarou following his unsuccessful tackle attempt, finally manages to land a punch, but in his desperation he doesn't choose his target carefully and merely hits the freshman on the back of his left shoulderblade, which is largely ineffective. Simply shrugging it off, Uesugi retaliates with a devastating backhand blow that catches the final thug on the chin, and while it's not strong enough to knock the guy out cleanly, it does make him lose control of his body for a split second, and he stumbles, catching himself before he fully collapses again.

But the backhand blow to his chin is enough to seal his fate: Fuutarou calmly walks up to the thug, who gets back up to his feet as quickly as his body will allow and throws out a punch wildly in true self-defense this time, but Uesugi catches this punch for a third time. And this time, he catches his fist with his right hand, pulls his arm closer to himself, and swiftly jams the base of his left palm against the back of the thug's elbow. A gut-wrenching _crack _splits the air as Uesugi's left palm strike completely shatters the man's right elbow.

Not even giving him time to scream in agony properly, Fuutarou, still holding onto his injured opponent's broken arm, steps to the thug's right a bit, raises his foot, and then stomps his right knee at an angle from the front. Because the thug's right leg is outstretched since he's propping him up with his arm, another swift _crack _shatters the night air behind the warehouse.

As the thug is going down for good with both a shattered right elbow and right knee, Fuutarou still doesn't let him touch the ground again just yet. Still holding him by his right arm, Fuutarou pulls him up by his neck, gets a solid grip on his face, and delivers the coup de grace of a clean, painless neck snap.

The quintuplets watch the body of the gangbanger crumple lifelessly like a puppet with its strings suddenly detached at Fuutarou's feet, their innocent blue eyes tainted with fear mixed with awe, amazement, and horror. Fuutarou walks by Nino over to the last thug left alive, the big guy, who's trying his best to deal with the liver pain and is almost back up to his knees. He's tall enough that even on his knees, Fuutarou can comfortably put his hand on the guy's chest if he wanted, albeit at a low angle.

So he does exactly that.

A blue circle appears quietly over the tall thug's chest, specifically directly over where his heart should be. It's a small circle, and the light that it gives off is not very bright at all, to the point where only the quintuplets, Fuutarou, and the boss looking on can see it clearly but not the thug himself.

Fuutarou puts his right hand out and places his outstretched fingers pointed directly at the rune he's planted over his final enemy's heart.

"You're done."

Performing a one-inch punch, Fuutarou smashes his right fist straight through the planted rune, shattering it into oblivion as the blue lights fall like shards of glass before disintegrating into the air as they fall. The tall thug doesn't move at all from the punch, with the exception of the initial contact of the strike, and he looks up at Fuutarou, confused as to what he's done.

But just like his fellow gangbanger before him, the big guy slowly crashes like a giant to his side without warning. Fuutarou has stopped his heartbeat - the empty, glazed look in the dead man's eyes confirms it for him.

Raising a single hand up to Miku's headphones, the blue lights from before light up around the earcups again, but this time with one of the earcups exposed, tiny blue runes can be seen rotating mechanically around the earcups, after which Fuutarou removes the headphones.

Having witnessed his entire crew get slaughtered by a single boy who looks the same age as the girls he was trying to kidnap, the mustached, neatly-dressed boss takes a fearful step backwards, unable to take his eyes off Uesugi as he walks with the same chillingly calm gait over to the van and drapes Miku's headphones back where they belong, around her own neck, before turning to him and approaching him.

"G-Get away! Get away, stay away from me, damn you!" Nino's acquaintance shrieks the moment he realizes that Uesugi is headed for him, but the tutor clad in almost entirely black, save for the white dress shirt underneath his hoodie, cares not for the boss's demands.

"Moving into this city, establishing a drug trafficking hub, bringing in gangbangers from outside the city - all of this, on _my _territory," Fuutarou growls softly, stopping near Nino, who by this point has sat up to watch the scene unfold in its entirety, so that he doesn't leave any one of the quintuplets too exposed in case the boss tries pulling a fast one on him. "Never mind what you _tried _to do to these girls tonight, give me a reason why I shouldn't just end you right where you are."

"A reason - oh yeah, that's right! A tax, right? You want a cut of our profit for operating on your territory? We'll give it to you, we'll give you a cut of our profits! We can work something out, man, c'mon, what do you s - "

Nino glances back over at Uesugi...who is no longer standing next to her. Instead, the quintuplets hear the boss have his breath cut short as he, too, collapses to the ground without a word after Uesugi, somehow appearing right in front of the man, has jammed his right heel against the mustached man's right femoral artery, shocking it enough to disrupt his nervous system and render him unconscious.

Keeping his silence and being content with giving the boss he's knocked out a deep frown of disapproval, Fuutarou reaches down and drags him back over to the van, tossing him down against the rear left tire so that he can dump him into the back of the van later, but he does first pickpocket him, taking his wallet and phone and pocketing them himself. He also searches the bodies of the dead thugs for the key to the van intended to kidnap the quintuplets with, which he finds on the body of the guy whose neck he's snapped.

As he works on removing the girls' binds, Fuutarou dials a number on his own phone while the silent quintuplets, afraid to even utter a single word, let Uesugi do his job of freeing them. When he's done with Itsuki's binds, Fuutarou gestures for her to look at him directly so that he can examine the severity of Itsuki's bleeding, which has thankfully stopped for the most part but still needs tending.

"Uesugi reporting. Drug traffickers at the old storage warehouses...they caught one of the quints and used her to bait the others to coming over to kidnap all of them at once," the tutor says quickly, holding his right hand over Itsuki's nose as his hand begins to glow with the same soft blue light as before while his left holds the phone to his ear. "4 CKIA, one down, one detained. Send cleaners over, need to extract hostages to safety."

Not even waiting for a response from the other end of the line, Fuutarou pockets his phone once more and pulls his right hand away, having treated the bleeding to halt it fully.

"All of you, get in the seats up in front, now," Fuutarou orders, pointing at the front of the van. "We'll use this to get you all back home, once I'm done with this place. I'll explain everything when we get back to the high-rise, this isn't the place to talk."

As the girls comply and vacate the back of the van, Uesugi grabs the unconscious boss, ties him up with the red rope and slaps tape from inside the van over his mouth, and tosses his ass into the van, closing the door down after him. He then picks up the dropped needles filled with the strange white sedatives, puts them back into the metal lockbox from which they've been taken, shuts and secures the lockbox, and brings it with him into the van as he enters the driver's seat. Soon, the unmarked white van's engine revs to life, and it swiftly pulls out of the reception bay through the open gate and vacates the premises, leaving the bodies of the dead thugs in its wake.

* * *

Having parked the van directly outside the luxury high-rise and leaving it unlocked with the keys still inside after phoning instructions to his cleanup crew to retrieve the van overnight, Fuutarou escorts the quintuplets up to their penthouse, carefully scanning the lobby and thirtieth floor upon arrival to double and triple-check that there isn't a surprise ambush waiting for them, which thankfully there is not. Still having his own passcard to the Nakano penthouse, he unlocks the door for them and holds the door open for them, beckoning them into their own house and closing and locking the door once everyone, including himself, is inside.

"Itsuki, sit at the sofa, I'll be there in a second. Somebody get a small towel and bowl of water, fill it up halfway," he calls over to the girls while planting a rune on the front door to help reinforce it in case of a follow-up attack on the penthouse itself, as unlikely as he thinks it will be. The rune planting doesn't take long, and he rejoins the girls in the living room, though he does take a minute to repeat the rune process with the sliding window doors that lead out to the veranda, which the girls watch in silent intrigue.

"...is...is that..." Surprisingly of all people, Miku speaks up first. "...is that..._magic...?"_

"Yes," Uesugi says directly, feeling no need to beat around the bush as he lowers his hand once the defensive matrix is set and bleeds into the windows themselves to hide itself from view. Turning around, and approaching the girls again while Ichika returns with the half-filled bowl of warm water, Yotsuba already having brought over the clean hand towel. "I'm what you'd call a mage."

Uesugi notices that Nino hasn't bothered to go to her room to replace her clothes, probably because she, like her sisters, is having trouble processing the events of tonight. While understandable, this means Nino's torn shirt reveals just how ample her chest is, so Fuutarou swiftly removes his black hoodie jacket and drops it on her lap on the sofa, where she's sitting next to the bloody Itsuki.

"Give it back when I need to leave," Fuutarou remarks, kneeling down and taking the hand towel from Yotsuba to dip into Ichika's warm bowl of water.

Carefully wiping the caked blood from Itsuki's face, Fuutarou makes efficient use of the towel, making sure to get as much dried blood off with as much of the towel's available surface area as possible before having to dunk it back into the water basin beside him to wring the blood out. Since it's just the first cycle, Fuutarou reuses the towel to get the last bits of dried blood off, rendering Itsuki's face free of spilled blood from her punched nose. Itsuki does her best not to look down at the bowl of bloody water; Nino, too, shifts uncomfortably every time she hears the towel touch the water when Fuutarou needs to clean it off, tightening her grip around the zippered halves of Fuutarou's hoodie and forgetting that she can simply zip it up to hide her goods.

"And then next..."

Murmuring to himself mainly, the tutor puts the bowl of bloody water carefully on the low glass table behind him and turns back to Itsuki.

"You're fine for the most part, but since you got hit pretty hard by the looks of it, there's a chance you'll have more nosebleeds later," he explains shortly, raising his right hand over Itsuki's nose and pressing it gently but firmly against it, causing Itsuki to whimper with the lingering pain. "It'll hurt a bit now, but give it a minute."

The quintuplets look on as Fuutarou's right hand glows again with the same blue light from before.

"So..." Nino, unable to stand the awkward silence any longer and desperate to find something to talk about, tears her eyes off the fascinating blue light coming from Fuutarou's hand and looks directly at him. "So, magic - it really does exist? It's not just magic, as in like people doing magic tricks?"

"Maybe what I'm doing looks like a magic trick to normal people, but ask how Itsuki feels after I'm done and see if it really is just a trick," Uesugi retorts. "But no, magic does exist in this world. But not in the way you'd think."

After a minute of healing, Fuutarou removes his hand.

"Better?"

Itsuki slowly and uncertainly raises her left hand up to her nose, gingerly pressing it to check for any pain, of which there is none any longer, so she nods.

"...yes, it's...it is better now," she mumbles, unable to look at her would-be tutor directly in the eye.

"How's your head, by the way? The dude threw you down on the ground pretty hard, didn't he?" Fuutarou asks Nino, gesturing at the back of his own head.

"I-I'm fine! I don't need anything!" she hisses back.

"Good. Magical treatment isn't exactly easy..."

Turning around, Fuutarou grabs the bloody water bowl and the hand towel inside and takes it back to the kitchen to dispose of the water and wash the towel clean. Still unsure of what they ought to do or what they should expect next, the quintuplets wait for Fuutarou to return, which he does in short time, but this time with the small jar of fine white powder that he's taken from the cabinet directly above the kitchen sink. At the sight of the jar, Nino freezes up again, pointing at Fuutarou and opening her mouth to interject, but no words come out in her shock that Fuutarou has found her drug.

"Like I said, I've got a lot of explaining to do," he sighs heavily, not looking forward to having to do this as he stands before the girls again, much like how he did when he administered their evaluation quiz earlier this week. "First things first, this."

"H-How?!" Nino finally is able to blurt out her shock, but that's really all she can muster, and Uesugi simply scowls back down at her.

"That's supposed to be _my _line, Nino. How the fuck did you get your hands on something like this?"

"That's the drug that Nino uses to knock people out, isn't it?" Yotsuba asks tentatively, nervously looking back and forth from Fuutarou to Nino.

"Yeah, the same shit she slipped in my water earlier this week to knock me out. Well, she _tried _to, anyway."

At this, all five quintuplets display varying degrees of shock on their faces.

"Y-You didn't get knocked out from that? Uh oh..." Ichika murmurs, glancing nervously over at Nino, who looks positively scared out of her mind that her drug has failed to do its job.

"But that's the best roofie they had! It should be able to knock out anyone in seconds!" Nino can't stop herself from blurting out the thoughts on her mind, so turbulent is the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions in her head. "It's never failed before! And you're telling me that day, when you drank that water I spiked, it didn't do anything?!"

"It would have, but as you can guess from me treating Itsuki's nose just now, I'm what they call a medic mage; I specialize in treating wounds, both physical and magical, inflicted on the human body," Fuutarou explains, doing his best to maintain his patience. "Part of my medical knowledge also covers drugs, poisons, curses, and other afflictions that have effects on the human body. Which is why I know exactly what this shit is...and why I'm so pissed off that you have this in your possession."

Fuutarou raises the small jar of white powder for the girls to see.

"If you think this's just a regular roofie that's just really good at its job, Nino, you're horribly wrong," he says to the quintuplet in question. "This is called Heisei, it's a drug made from a secret recipe of other drugs that are the basis for your every day roofies and stuff, but it's magically processed so that its effects are enhanced a ton. Normal roofies don't knock you out within seconds of ingesting unless you have a damn near overdose or its potency is really high, but this shit does, and you only need a tiny bit of it to do that. I'm sure this sounds pretty familiar to you right now, huh?"

Unable to deny Fuutarou's words, Nino forces herself to look away, gritting her teeth again but this time more so in embarrassment that her open secret is now being fully exposed.

"So it...it wasn't just a regular drug..." Miku mutters broodingly. "I had a hunch that it wasn't..."

"Right. This stuff is dangerous - a big enough dose can cause a normal person to go into a coma for up to three or four months depending on the exact dosage. And anything noticeably more than that, and it just flat-out stops all your brain activity and makes you go to sleep forever. Turns you into a vegetable, as some people like to say - effectively, it straight-up kills you."

Fuutarou raises the jar of Heisei again to examine its contents again. Itsuki finally raises her head to pay attention to Uesugi, as his talk about the dangers of this drug and its effects on the human body catches her attention.

"It's a great soluble...what that means is - "

"It dissolves in water really well."

The quintuplets all turn and stare at Itsuki, who blushes fiercely and puts her hands over her mouth.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't - mean to - " she stammers, hiding her face behind her hands.

"Very good, Itsuki. Even if your grades are still terrible overall, I did notice that your best subject is science," Uesugi rewards her with an amused grin as Yotsuba and Miku pat Itsuki reassuringly on her back. "Yeah, it's what you said - this drug dissolves in water extremely well. Nino, when you first got a hold of this, you were probably told to put it in people's water whenever you use it, right?"

Still pouting irritably, Nino does at least nod back at him.

"Of _course _you'd turn this into a freaking science lesson," she grumbles. "I can't believe you right now..."

"Hey, if you think about it, this is the first time I'm able to have all five you in one place willingly, so I'm about to teach you as many things as I can so that I can do my job for once," Fuutarou chuckles. "But back on topic - Heisei is odorless and very soluble. But it also has a slight taste to it if you know what to look for, and if you put it in water, it'll make the water taste a bit metallic, even more so than your average tap water. But that's not normally an issue because for most people, by the time they taste it, it's already too late."

Fuutarou once more turns to Nino, showing her her own jar of Heisei.

"Now, answer me. You clearly weren't aware of just how dangerous this stuff can be, and I'll assume that the guy I dragged with us and dropped off at my place before coming here was your dealer for this shit. When did you first meet this guy? And how did you get in touch with him?"

"Wait, wait, wait!" Nino suddenly experiences a brief epiphany and interrupts Fuutarou. "Yesterday, at the bookstore - you were listening to us the entire time?!"

Fuutarou nods. "It was pure coincidence, to be fair; I didn't know that you and the guy were going to meet there in the bookstore, but that's why I asked you what you were doing there too, since it seems rather strange to meet a guy at the bookstore of all places. In any case, yeah, I did listen in when you two sat down near me once I realized it was you I was hearing."

Twisting her lips, Nino hides her eyes from Fuutarou by lowering her gaze to the floor beneath her socked feet.

"Nino, is that why...?" Ichika asks hesitantly, with a soft voice. "All those nights when you'd head out by yourself over the last couple years...was that why? To meet that guy to keep buying that Heisei stuff?"

A tense silence follows Ichika's inquiry, and Nino keeps her head down still, more or less confirming this uncomfortable revelation.

"Let's try to keep the family business for later, since you girls can work things out after I'm done with what I've got to say," Fuutarou mediates calmly. "Nino, just answer me for the time being. I know from the conversation that I overheard between you and the guy that you've been meeting with him for the past three years or so. How did you meet this guy? I'm not asking this to embarrass you in front of your sisters, I'm asking this because I need that information."

After another tough pause, Nino finally drops her hands from her Gendou pose, though she doesn't want to look back up at Uesugi.

"I met him at the beginning of middle school, back when we first entered Black Rose," she mumbles. "You know me, Uesugi, I'm the popular one among us, the type of girl who knows about everybody at school. Some of the friends I had back then had older siblings of their own who did drugs, and they told me that if I were ever interested in buying some for myself, they could hook me up. F-For the record, I've never had an interest in trying drugs, I know they're bad, okay? But - but because I was so popular, obviously there were some girls who hated me for it, and they'd threaten me whenever I passed them in the halls or something, saying stuff like 'you better watch your back' or 'you've got such nice hair, shame if someone were to burn it off'..."

At this, her sisters begin looking horrified - with the one exception being Miku, whose expression doesn't change much, only looking mildly surprised.

"Y-You never told us about this, Nino!" Yotsuba is the first to exclaim, staring at her older sister in shock. "Why didn't you tell us? Why keep something like that all to yourself?"

"I'm about to explain why, gosh!" Nino gestures back in annoyance. "So, like, I didn't really pay much attention to them at first, right? Since, you know, it's just their jealousy talking and I shouldn't have a reason to take them seriously. But one time while I was out with friends shopping, we ran into some older guys, probably high schoolers at the time, who started hitting on us and were really annoying about it, following us around and stuff and just being super creepy about the whole thing, so I called the police on them, and that blew up badly..."

"Oh yeah, that...yeah, Dad had to get involved..." Ichika nods tiredly, remembering those particularly difficult times. "...it wasn't pretty."

"Papa scolded me for resorting to having to call the police for something like that," Nino grumbles, also recounting the unfortunate memory. "But I had the feeling that stuff like that was only going to continue, and if Papa didn't like me calling the police for things like that, and since Papa himself is never around for us for the most part, I knew I had to do something on my own, especially if the next time this happened, it might happen to one of my sisters instead."

Looking down at her torn shirt and realizing that she can just zip up the front finally, Nino zips up the front of Uesugi's black hoodie jacket quickly.

"So I went to those friends who said they could hook me up and asked them to get me in contact with whoever their dealer was, and that's how I first met that guy. I still don't know his name, now that I think about it..." Nino sighs, rubbing her brow. "Not that it matters now, that fucking cuck, betraying me like that. But anyways, that's how I first met him. I told him that I wanted something that would be able to knock someone out cold super fast, since the way I figured I would deal with guys hitting on me or my sisters is to spike a drink or something and give it to them somehow, depending on the situation, and so that way I can get them off us and leave without creating much of a scene. Or if it does, I don't have to stay around to deal with it, you know?"

Nino then points back at the jar of Heisei that Fuutarou holds down near his side.

"And he gave me that. He said it was one of his newest products, and that it was one of the most expensive things he had. I was like, shit, I don't care, I'll buy it if it's as strong as you say it is, and he said I'd better see it in action for myself. And sure enough, when I got the chance to use it, it worked like a charm."

Turning to grab the couch cushion behind her, Nino hugs it tightly, resting her chin on the top of the sturdy cushion.

"He never told me just how dangerous it was. He never even told me what its name was - I guess he didn't need to, since that's all I ever bought from him. I'm not lying to anyone here when I say that I didn't buy anything else from him. I didn't buy that stuff for selfish reasons, I swear. I bought it because I wanted to help protect myself and my family from potentially dangerous situations where we'd get confronted by guys who might come after us to hit on us or because they know that we're rich girls. And I didn't want any of you guys to know either since I didn't want you to worry about it," Nino adds, turning to her sisters hesitantly. "Since I know you'd want to get involved too. Same thing with what happened tonight - I didn't want you guys to come after me and just stay at home."

"Oh come on, Nino, you _know _we cannot do that," Itsuki urges with her sister. "What kind of sisters would we be if we did not go to help you?"

"But that was too dangerous of a situation for us all to have gone into like that!" Nino rebuts. "And before you start yelling at me, I'm fully aware that I shouldn't have gone tonight either! I know it's my fault for letting you end up getting hit like that, Itsuki! That's why I just didn't want any of you to come to help, because that's exactly what they wanted! They didn't have any intention of negotiating or bartering with you, asking all of you to come in like that!"

"But what else could we have done...?" Ichika also sighs heavily. "The guy who called me with your phone, he specifically asked us all to come in, and he said that if we tried calling anyone for help, they'd know, and they'd just kill you on the spot. I've never been in this kind of situation before, none of us have. So I didn't want to take that risk, any risks at all."

"At least we had Fuutarou to save us," Miku mentions, and all of the quints except her instinctively glance over at the standing Uesugi, who gives them a small wave back with his free hand.

"But we can't rely on him! Even if - even if he did save us for tonight!" Nino stammers, unable to stop her cheeks from reddening again.

"Actually, you can," Fuutarou speaks up again.

"Huh? Wha, what do you mean?"

"You girls were wondering why your dad hired me as your year-long tutor, right? For a year straight, all of a sudden like this?" Fuutarou points up at himself. "He didn't hire me to be _just _your tutor. I'm your bodyguard, or...something."

Oddly, the girls don't seem terribly surprised at this, but they do have an air of understanding about them when Fuutarou reveals this.

"Yeah, that makes sense, after everything that's happened," Yotsuba nods sagely, her clover-shaped hair ribbon also nodding with her.

"But Yotsuba, every time you say that, you don't actually get anything at all," Ichika gently pokes fun at her.

"No, no, I'm serious, it really _does _make sense! I really do this time!"

"Is it because you or Papa knew that something like this was going to happen to us? What happened earlier tonight?" Miku asks softly, gazing back up at Fuutarou.

"Not this exactly, but earlier this week your butler, I think his name was Ebata-san, was found murdered in his car after he dropped you off at home."

"Oh...oh no..." Itsuki raises a hand up to her mouth in horror, her eyes widening with the same sentiment, and her sisters also show similar reactions. "So...that was why..."

"Yeah. That was how your dad knew that you girls are being targeted right now. So he's hired me to find Ebata-san's murderer because we suspect whoever they are, they're coming after you girls. That same guy was probably the same guy who hired Nino's dealer and his cronies to try to kidnap you. So my job is twofold: one, be your tutor and help you all get your grades up to the point where you all can graduate without too much issue, and two, keep you girls safe and out of danger while I track down whoever's targeting you."

"But - but then why didn't you just tell us this to begin with?" Nino points out. "Why wait until something like this happened to tell us who you really are and what your true purpose was?"

"What are you saying? If I told you that I was a mage and that magic legitimately exists in this world, you'd just laugh me out of your house. You already didn't want me here before, so how would that've changed anything?"

Stumped by Fuutarou's seemingly peerless logic, Nino struggles to come up with a counterpoint.

"Y-You still could've warned us ahead of time! But because you didn't, Itsuki ended up getting hurt!"

"Oh, so you're saying it's my fault now when just a few minutes ago you said that it was yours?"

"But, but none of this would've happened if you intervened earlier! You said you overheard my conversation with my dealer at the bookstore, right? Why didn't you tell me what was going on after I bought your sister the crepe?"

"Because you seem like the type of person who'd just yell at me to mind my own business," Fuutarou coldly answers. "Nino, and also you too, Itsuki, since I told everyone else, but you two weren't there at the time, and right now's the best chance I have to repeat myself, but I'm not going to stop you, any of you girls, from doing whatever you like. I may be the person your dad hired to be your tutor, and now your bodyguard, but that doesn't mean I suddenly have the jurisdiction to force you girls to do whatever I tell you to. I'm not your damn parent, your dad is, so I'm not going to stand here telling anyone here that oh, this is your fault, you shouldn't have done this, whatever. I'll be here to teach you _school _lessons, but I'm not here to teach you a _moral _lesson. You girls are all old enough to be making your own damn decisions, and while some of them are pretty questionable, you just need to learn from them and make sure something as bad as this doesn't happen again."

Giving a deep sigh of his own, Fuutarou slips the jar of Heisei into a rune that appears beneath his hand, and the rune swallows up the jar, causing it to disappear into thin air.

"And besides, if I told you girls who I really was, that would change your behaviors around me drastically," he adds. "I'll admit to using you girls as bait in an effort to draw out the guy who killed Ebata-san so that I could catch him, but it looks like he played it safe tonight and used a third party to try to get you girls. Not only that, but we mages, even the bad guys, don't want to show magic if we don't need to, otherwise it'll attract unnecessary attention to us that we don't want. If possible, I actually didn't want to tell or show you girls that I was even a mage at all, but the shit that went down tonight kinda ruined those plans."

"You never wanted to show us...?" Miku asks wide-eyed. "But...why not?"

Shaking his head, Fuutarou removes his logoed cap briefly.

"The magic world isn't something to show normal people. As long as you don't know that it exists and as long as you don't end up doing less-than-legal things, most likely you don't need to worry about whether or not something from the magic side of the world will affect you. Though, like with anything, there can be exceptions, like tonight. But regardless, magic isn't what you think it is. Forget the usual preconceptions of it that you have, that normal society might've imposed on you about it. It's not about unicorns and rainbows and pointing magic wands at each other and yelling _wingardium leviosa _like an idiot - no, it's not pretty. You're better off not knowing anything about it if you can help it."

"But still, why not? Can you...tell us more about it, at least...?" Finding herself more and more deeply invested in this topic from an emotional standpoint, Miku leans forward in her seat a little.

"I _just _told you that you shouldn't ask...fine, I can at least tell you this much, now that you all know that I'm a mage, I guess," Fuutarou grumbles with muted frustration. "Right now, the magic world is dying off. Mages are inherently selfish people, first and foremost - the universal goal of all the mages in the world, at least in the eyes of most of them, is to achieve some sort of nirvana or immortal state, some kind of post-mortem state of consciousness that they can use to essentially live forever. They all have different ways of going about it, but they're all gonna fail in the end because none of them understand that immortality is an impossibility - or maybe they do, but they don't want to accept the truth. But still, they'll try - and they'll do whatever it takes to try pulling it off. Stealing, pillaging, murdering, anything they feel like doing to accomplish whatever their goals are, they'll do it. And it's because of that destructive behavior that's been going on for God knows how many thousands of years that the magic world is now at the point where there are simply not enough mages left in the world."

Fuutarou gazes back at the quintuplets, who, for once, are an attentive audience.

"Too many mages acting in their own self-interest, and too little acting for anyone else's. Because of all the magical conflicts and feuds and the unwillingness to cooperate for the sake of the survival of magic as an institution, magic is now in actual danger of dying out; we mages are a dying breed. Hell, I can say the same about myself, you know? No matter how I try to paint myself, I'm a mercenary, a hired gun. While right now I'm being paid to keep you girls safe and to tutor you so that you all don't fail school completely, I've been hired to do all sorts of things in the past, and a lot of them aren't pretty. And especially nowadays, when it's not a secret to us mages that magic is slowly dying out, what mages _are _still around, instead of trying to preserve magic and ensure its survival in the future, are working even _harder _to reach their goals of immortality or whatever else stupid plans they have, so ironically the situation now is even more cutthroat than it has been."

Ending with a small shrug, Uesugi stuffs his hands into his pants pockets.

"But then what about _you, _Uesugi-kun?" Ichika asks. "You're still a mage too at the end of the day, aren't you? What about yourself? What made _you _become a mage? Or is it one of those things where you have to be born as one?"

"Yeah. And...why did you become a medical mage?" Itsuki adds on.

"No, I wasn't born as one. There are certain mages who come from really old magic families who have bloodlines and all that, but nowadays they're really hard to find. Most mages these days are people like me, people who either stumbled upon it on accident and taught themselves or had another mage they know teach them." Uesugi pulls out his phone to check the time briefly. "And why I became a medic mage...mainly it was to differentiate myself. Remember that I have a family to support, my dad and my sister. And I'm a very young mage compared to most others out there, so I have to have something in my resume that will stand out to my clients when they're deciding on which mage they want to hire for whatever it is that they're doing. The medical side to magic isn't very popular since it's pretty boring compared to everything else you could potentially learn about magic. Like, think about it, why bother learning about how to magically stitch a big cut on your arm, for example, when you can learn how to blow someone's head off with magic if that's what you wanted?"

"But you still went through with it, even if becoming a medic mage or whatever is really that boring," Ichika points out.

"Yeah, that's true, because even if it's boring compared to other stuff that I could've learned in its place, it's one of the most useful fields of magic. Anyone can learn how to hurt people using magic, and honestly it's not that hard to do. But not as many people know how to heal the wounds that magic can make - and that's exactly why it's a valuable skill, because not everyone has it when it really matters. Not that it's seemed to've done much favors for my family's financial situation, though..."

Uesugi smirks in self-derogatory humor off to his side, creating another uncomfortable atmosphere for the quintuplets who sit in their privately owned thirtieth floor and the expensive penthouse in which they live.

"But that's it from me, I've talked enough about magic at this point. Don't expect me to bring it up again like this, and don't ask me about it either," Fuutarou warns the girls. "That being said, I want you girls to stay home for tomorrow so that I can spend tonight and tomorrow making sure that the coast is clear for you all for the time being. Since I'm our class rep, I'll bring you girls your assignments and homework and class notes and whatever else, so don't worry about it."

"Er, but Uesugi-kun, I have my part-time job tomorrow..." Ichika says hesitantly.

"If it's that important, I'll escort you there tomorrow," Fuutarou swiftly replies. "Is that alright with you?"

"Um...er..." Ichika scratches her cheek uncertainly. "I-I think it should be...? I don't know what my manager'll think..."

"I'll handle that. I've got my ways of negotiating with people..."

"D-Don't do anything dangerous, okay!"

"You should be telling Nino that."

"Oh c'mon, you just _had _to bring that up again, did you!" Nino shouts out, causing her sisters to chuckle awkwardly with some contextual humor.

"Speaking of which, actually, Nino, don't go buying drugs like this again," Fuutarou turns back to her for a third time with a firm voice. "I might've said that I'm not your parent so I won't tell you what to do for the most part, but something like this I have to tell you not to do because it's a serious problem that I'm trying to handle. This city's got a serious drug trafficking problem because of all the rapid growth and expansion that the city's been experiencing over the years, and while it's great for the city of course, some parts of the city have been neglected or just abandoned altogether."

"Like...like the business park that your family lives in?" Itsuki mumbles quietly.

"Right. But we were always poor, so that area being abandoned didn't really change things for us. I guess if anything, it's nice living in a part of town that's always quiet, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still a shady neighborhood where thugs like the ones from earlier tonight hang out in to sell drugs and do other criminal shit."

"Oh yeah, earlier back at the warehouse, you said to the dealer guy that this is your territory or something? Something like that?" Yotsuba mentions, strangely being more quiet and attentive than her usual bouncy, willy-nilly self.

"Yeah. One more thing about mages, I guess, mages like me are typically very territorial; mages sometimes have their personal little plots of land that they live in and operate out of, and whenever another mage comes in and screws around in it, they'll try to kick that invader out. I'm sort of like that...this city's been kinda like my territory, I guess you could say. Not that mages can't also be nomadic and travel around from place to place, but..."

Clapping his hands once to end the conversation, Fuutarou beckons to Nino to have her give his jacket back.

"So, just to reiterate: don't leave home for a full day. I've set defensive runes on the door and on the windows over there in case anyone finds out where you live and tries breaking in; even if anyone comes close to this high-rise, I'll know about it. I'll bring you all your homework and class notes from class tomorrow, and - " Fuutarou pauses to catch the black hoodie that Nino tosses back at him, covering her chest as best she can so that Fuutarou can't cop a look at her partially exposed chest. " - tomorrow'll be our first _actual _tutoring lesson. Ichika, when's your part-time?"

"Um...at five."

"Then I'll come in at one so that you girls can have lunch first; I want tomorrow to be a bit longer than usual since it'll be our first lesson."

Fuutarou gives everyone a good surveying look.

"You all _will _let me tutor you for once, yes?" he asks with a somewhat disgruntled tone, putting his cap back on. "Because I don't want to sound like I'm asking you for favors just because of what happened tonight, but at least let me do my damn job."

"Fine, fine..." Nino, finally relenting, grumbles under her breath while looking off to the side at the window doors. "...I'll be there...I guess."

"...me too," Miku nods slowly.

Itsuki maintains her silent vigil, but she can't look Fuutarou back in the face properly still.

"That's about the time when I take my nap, but I can just sleep in if you're telling us to just stay at home for tomorrow," Ichika smiles. "But are you sure it's okay for us to miss school like this? What will Dad say?"

"I'll explain the situation to him. That, and I'll let the school administration know that you've got a, let's say, a 'family emergency'."

Putting on his jacket, Fuutarou glances one more time at the second quintuplet.

"Final thing I wanna say, for real this time," Fuutarou mentions. "Please don't blame Nino for anything that happened tonight. Because whatever she did that might've been questionable, she's not wrong when she said that it's more my fault for why you all ended up in that situation like you did - if I hadn't been somewhere else at the time, no one but Nino would've needed to get involved and I could've brought Nino back home without hassle. As the guy your dad hired to keep you all safe, I feel like that's something I need to mention, which means I'm not really doing my own job very well right now either. I'll make sure I start doing a better job from now on, though."

To Fuutarou's quiet surprise, Nino doesn't react or get mad at him for bringing this up, merely sitting on her side of the couch with her head bowed slightly and gazing back down at the floor again. The tutor-mage, having said everything he's needed to say for the night, heads for the sliding window door and opens it.

"Huh? Wait, Uesugi-kun, where are you - !?" Ichika, suddenly realizing what Fuutarou might be doing, gets up from the single-seat couch and hurries over to the veranda, and Miku and Yotsuba also get up, though they elect to watch from the couches.

"It's faster this way. Make sure you lock that door behind me," Fuutarou calls, shutting the window door behind him. And before Ichika can stop him, he mantles over the veranda railing and plummets out of sight.

"Uesugi-kun!?"

Throwing open the window door again, Ichika leans over the veranda railing quickly, but there is no sight of Uesugi Fuutarou's body hurtling down to the ground thirty floors below anywhere. He has simply vanished.

Having no choice but to return, Ichika makes sure to lock the window door behind her as she turns and looks upon her fellow quintuplets.

"Well then...tonight was...something," she awkwardly states, unsure of what to do now. The rest of her sisters certainly don't, either.


	10. First Lesson

**A/N**

**Possibly the last chapter for around two weeks. There is a small chance that I'll squeeze in another chapter within that period but don't expect too much.  
**

* * *

Monday morning, 7 o'clock. The moment the second hand on Nino's alarm clock that sits next to one of the numerous stuffed dolls that keep the second quintuplet company in bed, the clock goes wild, blasting its routine fanfare all throughout the room.

Nino's right hand comes swinging down on the snooze button on top of the clock, swiftly terminating the ringing. The clock also expects its owner to simply roll over in bed and go straight back to sleep, as she almost always requires more than one round of alarms to convince her to get out of bed, so it has a second and even a third round of alarms stocked for just that occasion.

Strangely, today is not one of the usual days, for Nino's right hand also shifts behind the clock and switches off the follow-up alarms set in five-minute intervals, one after the other. The second quintuplet does not in fact go straight back to sleep - instead, having woken up and stretching her arms out in bed, Nino lets herself stay in bed, gazing up at the ceiling with her near-sighted blue eyes.

The events of the previous night are still vividly fresh on her mind, as it is on everyone's, she's sure. So many things happened all at once, and so quickly, too, especially during that last hour. Her blunder of trusting her drug dealer enough to meet with him at a shady warehouse in the abandoned boondocks of the city, her detainment at the hands of her dealer and his cronies, the capture of the rest of her sisters even though she'd warned them not to come for their own sakes, Fuutarou's dramatic entrance and fight against the thugs, and then the reveal of his true identity and secret role behind his tutoring job - it's so much to take in, so much to process. It almost feels like the events of last night could be packaged into one very long, very bad dream.

The one thing that keeps it from being a dream for Nino, though, is the pain. The wildly vacillating emotions. She's had dreams before, of course, but dreams don't leave her with such strong and clear memories of what transpired in them. But even now, as she dwells on each memory while staring up at the ceiling of her room, Nino recalls the anger she felt throughout the night - anger at her dealer for tricking her, anger at the thugs for mistreating her sisters, especially Itsuki, anger at that one guy who tore her clothes in an attempt to violate her, and right in front of the rest of her sisters too...

...anger at Uesugi for having to get involved. Anger at him for arriving too late to stop Itsuki from getting punched in the face and getting hurt. Anger at him for making her feel like she and her sisters owe him for bailing them out of their dangerous situation. Anger at him for being the usual bossy classmate who's thinking about how to do his job all the time without fail, even during an emotionally turbulent time like this. Anger at him for being so...so...

_**...cool.**_

_"Hnnnnnggg...! ! !"_

Stifling a miserable groan by grabbing the pillow behind her head, hugging it tightly, and forcing her mouth against the top of the pillow, Nino throws a tiny tantrum with her legs that kick up and down on her bed. Nino is the type of girl who can sometimes kick her own blanket off herself while sleeping, and since she's done that over the night, she doesn't need to worry about kicking off her blanket now, since it's already hanging off the side of her bed frame.

Now that her mind has brought up the topic of Uesugi Fuutarou, Nino suddenly finds herself unable to get her mind off him. And what makes her feel so extremely embarrassed at herself is that she was like this all last night too, after Fuutarou rescued her and her sisters; while he was driving them back to their penthouse, Nino, who ended up sitting shotgun because she felt too ashamed to sit with the rest of her sisters for the trouble that she'd put them through, couldn't bring herself to look at Fuutarou during the drive home, though she did steal a few glimpses of him after trying her best to talk to him to get him to explain what was going on and how he managed to find them at that particular warehouse.

The way Uesugi made his entrance, saving her from the thug trying to assault her, the way Uesugi fought off all the thugs with such confidence and skill...even when they arrived back home and Nino briefly watched him treat Itsuki's bloody nose, the way he looked so serious and concentrated on taking care of her...

Rolling over to her right side, still hugging her pillow, Nino buries her face into her pillow.

"...I can't believe it..." she finds herself whispering with agitation, her pillow muffling her words unnecessarily. "...a guy like him...Uesugi's seriously..._my type_...?"

Not even Nino can believe herself and the unbelievable proposition that she's telling herself. Uesugi Fuutarou...it's barely been a full week yet that he's become anything relevant in their lives, and on this Monday morning, she can't seem to get him off her mind, and she's internally furious with herself at this inability to purge him from her own thoughts.

But what can she do against her own words that speak her truth? As much as she tries to deny it mentally to herself, Nino has always had a strong affinity for delinquent guys ever since she was old enough to know that she had a type. Delinquent boys who could hold their own in a fight, meaning that, if she were to ever hook up with one, they would be able to protect her physically from potential problems. She also has an unabashed taste for traditional love stories, stories of the white knight in shining armor riding into danger to save the life of a damsel or princess in distress.

And much to her chagrin, Uesugi Fuutarou has ticked off almost every box in this list. A freelance maverick, perhaps even a vigilante, dressed in street clothes that not even Nino could have ever pictured him wearing before last night, with his snapback cap, hoodie jacket, and the half-kilt behind the legs, equipped with superior street fighting skill and prowess that clearly included honed martial arts skills and even the ability to throw playing cards and use them as weapons. Swooping down on the bad guys without proper introduction and eliminating them with impunity for the sake of keeping her and her sisters safe, even taking them home and healing Itsuki's injury and giving her his jacket in consideration of her ripped shirt last night.

What makes Nino feel even worse about it is the fact that up until now, up until last night, she has never met someone who fit her type as well as Uesugi did. Delinquents are delinquents for a reason; seldom are kids who are delinquents or have streaks of delinquency good people. Sure, they might look cool and carry themselves with an air of rebellion that Nino finds herself attracted to, but when push comes to shove, most boys like that simply run away or fail to stand their ground in the face of pressure or hardship. And they certainly aren't good people to be with either, doing bad things and being a nuisance or even a danger to society. Ideally, Nino wants the best of both worlds; a boy who may carry himself like a delinquent and do relatively harmless delinquent things like smoking cigarettes while underage, but inside have enough integrity to man up and face adversity head-on, whether it be for himself or for someone else's sake like hers.

So with Uesugi stepping in to finally fill that void that she's subconsciously been looking for all these years, Nino finds herself extremely flustered and at a total loss for what to do, what to think. Here's a boy whom she's known for exactly one week with whom she's never had good relations because she was so fiercely opposed to his tutoring, to the point where she even tried to drug him just to show him that he wasn't welcome in their household, which ultimately ended up not working, as the boy himself revealed to her last night. And even if it ended up being part of his other job of being their bodyguard or whatever, Nino can't help but feel completely miserable at the fact that that same boy still came to their aid when she and the rest of the quints needed it the most. No matter what she may feel about the whole tutoring situation or how absurd that everything that's happened so far seems, the fact is, Uesugi Fuutarou bailed not just her, but all of the quintuplets out of what could have been a terrible fate, and he did so in a manner that she'd sometimes secretly dreamed of in her idealized visions of adolescent romance.

"...just why did it have to be _you_...?" Nino whispers again, gazing absentmindedly across her room, still laying on her right side in bed. "...you don't even have blonde hair..."

At her own mention of blonde hair, Nino immediately tries to envision Fuutarou with dyed blonde hair before she can stop herself. His haircut with the two tufts of hair in the back seem odd, but if she just gets rid of that...

Cringing in embarrassment, the second quintuplet stuffs her face back into her pillow. It's not that she tried thinking of such a sight that makes her angry at herself, it's the fact that she _wants _to see Fuutarou with blonde hair that she can't deal with.

But then...what does she think about his true identity, that of a mage?

Perhaps that's the one thing about him that Nino is truly not sure of, and to her relief, because she is unsure of what to think about this particular aspect of Uesugi Fuutarou, she is able to calm her erratic thoughts and finally have a coherent train of thought about this unknown side to their tutor that, before last night, they would have never guessed existed.

A delinquent mage who's self-proclaimed to specialize in medical fields of magic and is able to fight off multiple bad guys at once and beat them all?

Wait a minute, doesn't that just make him..._even more cool?_

"...waaaaaaah..."

Moaning with embarrassment again, Nino lets go of her pillow finally to hide her reddening face with her hands instead. She'd never thought much about magic at all - if any one of them, the quintuplets, were into that, it'd more than likely be either Miku or Yotsuba. And even then, before last night, if you were to bring up the topic of magic to Nino, she'd probably just think of your stereotypical witches and wizards running around in weird hats and waving wands or brooms around, perhaps, if she had to decide.

Even with the preconception that actual magic doesn't exist, she's never even considered the possibility that if magic really were to exist, it didn't _just _need to be people in long robes with big pointy hats and chanting spells and all that kind of stuff, because Fuutarou couldn't be further from that kind of stereotype if he tried. Besides, as Nino recalls sheepishly to herself, Fuutarou didn't even have to chant anything to use his spells, those blue rune-looking circles that showed up a few times whenever Uesugi was around. And more often than not from what she saw last night, Fuutarou didn't even rely on that much magic; he just went around beating people up with his bare hands, though admittedly her near-total lack of understanding about magic could mean that there was more going on behind the scenes than she or her sisters realize.

The scene of Uesugi walking up to the big thug and delivering the fatal one-inch punch straight to the heart, with his succinct but lethal line of "You're done" flashes before Nino's eyes, and Nino once more flops over to her other side in bed, trying to wave the sight out of her eyes. It's as if her own mind is knowingly trolling her by showing her memories of Uesugi's gallant actions that it knows Nino will swoon over, despite Nino not wanting to do so over someone she's supposed to hate to stay in character.

Having had enough of constant flashbacks to the events of last night, Nino compels herself to get out of bed, lest she stay there and constantly torture herself with embarrassment. She should already be up by this point anyway in order to start fixing breakfast for herself and the rest of her sisters; it's just that with Uesugi's instructions to stay home for their own safety in the aftermath of last night, Nino's allowed herself some extra time to sleep in. She's sure that her other sisters will take advantage of this forced day off and enjoy their brief luxury of being able to sleep in on a school day, so Nino takes her time changing clothes and combing her hair. She debates with herself whether or not to put on makeup, but decides against it, since it would be a waste when she isn't even supposed to be headed out anywhere.

As she sits at her desk in front of her make-up mirror, Nino pauses briefly.

"...what the heck, why am I being so comfortable with what Uesugi told us to do," she wonders aloud to herself.

But it's not like she can even answer her own question with how she's been acting to herself so far this morning, so Nino, shaking her head and pinching her cheeks to help her mind refocus, gets up from her desk and leaves her room, freshly dressed and combed, to head downstairs to the kitchen to start working on breakfast.

But to her surprise, someone is already seated at the table, and it's one of the two whom Nino didn't expect: Miku sits with her legs pulled up so that her knees hug her chest and her feet grip the edge of her seat. Still in her pajamas, she sits as if sleeping in her chair at the dinner table, with her eyes closed and her blue Audio Technicas over her ears as usual. Nino actually can't tell if Miku is legitimately sleeping like this or if she's just so engrossed in her music that she hasn't noticed her sister walking down the stairs. Why go to sleep here, of all places...

Walking carefully so as not to make a sound in case Miku really isn't sleeping, Nino inches past the dinner table to reach the kitchen - well, then again, Miku will know that she's here once she gets to work on making breakfast, so what's even the point of sneaking past her here in the first place? Nino does glance over at Miku's phone, since it is sitting on the table in front of Miku, but while it's been left with its screen unlocked, there's nothing about it that catches her interest.

As Nino is about to move on, she stops in her tracks to glance back over at Miku's phone. The wallpaper - it seems different. Usually Miku has some sort of crest on her phone as her wallpaper; all of her sisters know about it even if Miku herself thinks that she's keeping it a secret from them, though for what reason exactly, no one's really sure.

Instead of a crest, the wallpaper now displays a picture of some kanji that Nino doesn't even remember ever reading before, at least not in this combination. Something about it is familiar -

The back of Uesugi's jacket, Nino remembers suddenly. Those exact same kanji were on the back of his hoodie; that's why it looks familiar.

Remaining where she's stopped, Nino drops her gaze once she comes to this revelation. As far as she knows, Miku appeared to be the most neutral out of the quintuplets in regards to their stances on Fuutarou and his attempts to tutor them, though Yotsuba had told her the other day about how she and Fuutarou had a bit of a standoff on the day that she tried drugging him, while she was baking cookies for her sisters, when the topic of their old school got brought up.

Nino feels her own hands ball themselves into fists, but slowly, because it's not out of anger that they do this...not outright anger, anyway. But Nino doesn't know what she's feeling. On one hand, she's secretly relieved to see that at least one other sister of hers was awed enough by Uesugi's appearance and actions from last night that it's visibly showing; in Miku's case, it appeared to be enough to compel her to change her phone wallpaper, which she hadn't done since middle school, even when the quintuplets all got new phones somewhat recently. It means that Nino isn't weird or too caught up in her romantic ideals, that she isn't the only one who feels embarrassed just at the thought of the boy who's saved her life. At least, she hopes this isn't the case.

But on the other hand, Nino feels this creeping sense of annoyance at the possibility that Miku is perhaps experiencing a similar train of thought and emotions regarding Uesugi. Although she and Miku don't always get along due to their polar opposite personalities and lifestyles that couldn't be more different even if the two tried, Nino is fully aware of her protective instincts over her sisters that are kicking in as these particular thoughts are running through her head. If Miku is also finding herself being slowly drawn to him for one reason or another, then that doesn't sit right with Nino. Even if her opinion of him is changing against her will, Nino still manages to maintain the sense that Uesugi, no matter what he's done for them, is still an outsider, and that's how he ought to remain. And Nino isn't about to let some random outsider who's barely known them for a week come in and steal one of her sisters' hearts.

Even thinking this, though, Nino can't help but to grin sheepishly a little. Such tough thoughts coming from a girl who was freaking out silently in her own bedroom over how cool a boy who's supposed to be their tutor first and foremost seemed while fighting off bad guys. Out of the five of them, if Nino, the one most vehemently opposed to Fuutarou's tutorship, suddenly starts having a change of heart, how's she supposed to set an example for the rest of her sisters?

If she can't resist Uesugi - no, her own rose-studded romantic fantasies - and allow him to permeate into the rest of the aspects of their daily lives, whether it's part of his "job" or not, then how can she keep the promise she made to her sisters all those years ago...the promise that she would keep them all together, keep them all safe?

Nino's grips on her fists tighten more and more. Finally, she's able to tap back into the original source of antagonism she's initially had towards Fuutarou, and she's able to do it because she's realized that if her sisters end up fully accepting him as their tutor, then the daily lives between just the five of them would be forever shattered. Coming in every day, or if not every day then frequently every week, hanging out with her sisters, interacting with them, teaching them...

Yotsuba is already on good terms with him; Ichika doesn't seem so opposed to the possibility either, even if she's merely teasing him. After last night, Itsuki certainly seemed to have a change of heart of her own; Miku here clearly has been affected. And if Nino herself can feel her own opinion of Uesugi changing, if only a little, that means any of her sisters can and perhaps will open up more and more to him.

And in the worst case scenario, her sisters will end up wanting to hang out more with him. They'll start to enjoy his company more. They'll want to be with him more than her. And...slowly, slowly but surely, Nino will find herself isolated from her sisters. She'll be the only one left behind, because she's the one who needs to maintain her front of opposing Uesugi as their tutor.

And then what? She'll simply end up as an extra. A foreigner in her own home. She'll just be her sisters' cook, that's all. She'll be the Cinderella of the household - just doing the chores while watching her sisters move forward with their lives, with an intruder to her home that they never asked for, that _Nino _didn't ask for.

Uesugi Fuutarou will eventually invalidate that promise with his presence and time alone, the precious promise that she holds dear to her heart. And isn't that more or less the same as breaking her heart?

But...breaking her heart would imply that Nino would have to accept him as their tutor first for their relationship to get anywhere. So it's not like_ she _needs to worry about it, with how she plans to behave towards Uesugi now.

Nino still feels terribly bitter about this possibility. No way can she afford to accept him - not yet, not now. This is more than about just herself - she has a promise to keep, a promise to protect, and sisters to make proud. She cannot afford to succumb here.

Her resolve steeled, Nino raises her eyes - only to find Miku, turned her way, gazing at her hesitantly. Miku's phone is turned off, and her headphones are back down around her neck.

"...is something wrong, Nino? What did I do...?" Miku asks timidly, unsure of why Nino was looking so angry for the past few minutes.

Her cheeks flushing, Nino quickly turns to hide her face, having totally forgotten that Miku was right in front of her this whole time and paying for her neglectfulness with a fresh wave of embarrassment.

"I-It's not you. I was just...I've got a lot on my mind right now, is all..." Nino mumbles back.

"Just to make sure, you're not...mad at me this time now, are you?"

"No, you idiot, I'm not. You're about to make me mad at you though."

"Well, it'll happen one way or another..."

Miku turns away, but Nino doesn't walk away either, so the two sisters simply sit or stand still, not knowing what their next course of actions should be. For as academically challenged as they are, the quintuplets do at least make sure to attend school diligently, so being able to simply stay at home on a school day has admittedly thrown a huge wrench into their usual behaviors for the morning.

And to carry on this theme of unusual occurrences, Miku speaks up first.

"...have you been...thinking about Fuutarou a lot over the night, Nino?"

"H-How do _you _know..."

"You're pretty easy to read."

"That doesn't tell me anything."

"You're acting like that first thing in the morning. That's not like you, Nino," Miku clarifies quietly. "Your alarm goes off at 7 in the morning every day, even on weekends, and by 7:15, you're down here making breakfast. And right now is..."

Miku presses the power button on her phone to make the screen light up with its digital clock.

"...7:30. And after what happened yesterday..." Miku glances back over at Nino. "...I can only assume it's because of what Fuutarou did for us."

"A-And what about you? I saw your phone as I was walking by, and...and you changed your wallpaper to that kanji that Uesugi had on the back of his hoodie," Nino returns fire quickly, causing Miku to swiftly lock her phone screen and hide the phone itself with her hands.

"No, that's...that's not it. You saw wrong..." Miku stammers.

"Then fine, let's call it even. How's that?"

"...sure. For now, though."

Miku beckons for Nino to come sit at the table next to her.

"Everyone else's sleeping in, since Fuutarou said we shouldn't go to school today," she tells Nino. "So you don't need to make breakfast so soon, it'll cool off anyway and you'll need to reheat it when everyone wakes up. And...I want to talk with you, Nino."

Recognizing the validity of her younger sister's words, Nino, suddenly having nothing better to do, somewhat reluctantly takes a seat next to Miku.

"...so what did you want to talk about?" Nino asks, folding her arms. "I have to admit, this is kinda rare, coming from you."

"Given how we usually are? I know," Miku gives a tiny smile, but it disappears quickly. "But...you probably already have an idea of what it is that I wanted to talk to you about."

Nino breathes deeply, as if giving off a sigh. "It's about Uesugi, isn't it."

Miku nods. "When we went to bed last night...you kept moving around in bed."

"Ugh...that's right, I keep forgetting our beds are literally on opposite sides of the same wall..." Nino closes her eyes while her hand presses against her face for an irritated facepalm.

"Yeah...so I kinda already knew...that something was bothering you."

"I mean, come on, who wouldn't be...?" Nino clicks her tongue in slight annoyance. "Think about it, Miku. A guy we haven't known for more than a week suddenly came into our lives, _literally_, might I add, when he snuck into the house before we did last week. He's in the same class as us, too. And then last night, some shit goes down, and he's the guy who saves us. Of course something's bothering the crap out of me about that."

Miku nods slowly in agreement. "So...we do see eye to eye on this."

"W-Whoa. When's the last time we've agreed to something right away like this?" Nino says in a hushed voice, staring at Miku in authentic amazement.

"Don't know either. But...anyways..."

Resting the bottom half of her face against her tucked knees and wrapping her arms around them to help hold them in, the middle quintuplet gazes down at her phone on the edge of the dinner table.

"I've...decided to take Fuutarou's lessons," Miku says softly.

"...and what's that got to do with me, exactly?" Nino narrows her eyes back at her sister.

Briefly, Miku's and Nino's eyes lock gazes.

"...I'd like it if you would take them, too," Miku murmurs.

Nino keeps gazing at Miku for a few moments, then finally turns her face away.

"And why should I do that..." she mumbles, gazing straight ahead at their aquarium and the fish swimming about inside.

"Because," Miku says, raising her voice a little bit, "I want you to...be with us, when Fuutarou teaches us."

Nino says nothing at first, so Miku takes this as an opportunity to keep talking her piece.

"I still remember the promise you made us...right after Mama died," Miku says in such a soft voice that she's almost whispering, but Nino's used to Miku talking like this so she picks up everything Miku is saying anyway. "How...you wanted us to all stay together. I know that you still...really feel strongly about that promise from all those years back."

"But taking Uesugi's tutoring lessons together...that's not what I had in mind when I made that promise to you guys," Nino replies.

"But it's still us staying together, isn't it?"

"You can think that if you want, but that's not what _I _think is right for us. That's like saying...oh I know, like last night, when you all showed up to the warehouse anyway even though I warned you all not to come. If you wanna say stuff like that, Miku, you might as well say that it was a good thing that we all ended up being together, despite the fact that we were about to have God knows what happen to us."

"That's not what I'm saying. You're just using an extreme example..." Miku points out.

"Extreme example or not, nothing will change the fact that Uesugi is an outsider. Plain and simple. He won't be able to do anything for us anyway, as far as tutoring goes, with how dumb and how bad at studying we all are."

"But he always says to give him a chance," Miku reminds her sister. "And so far, we haven't given him any."

"Yotsuba's already told us that enough," Nino scoffs quietly. "Don't need to keep repeating what she says, I get it already..."

"Is that so? Then start studying with us this afternoon."

"That's not what I meant by that!" Nino turns suddenly to her sister. "Then let me flip the question on _you_, Miku. What changed about _you? _Last I checked, you weren't exactly gung-ho over him either. What gives? What, did him saving us from those crooks sway you? Did he steal your heart away or something?"

The words she's spitting at her younger sister are among the hardest words Nino has ever had to utter.

And to her mild surprise, Miku slowly shakes her head.

"...it's not that...not exactly. I mean, if...if I had to say something about it, then...obviously I'm grateful, that he came in to stop those guys before anything bad happened to us."

"Grateful? Just grateful? C'mon, surely there's more than just that."

And again to Nino's surprise, this time Miku nods her head.

"There is...but it's not what you might think. Remember that day when you drugged Fuutarou? Or, tried to..."

"Yes, yes, I remember very well, thanks very much..."

"Then you also remember Yotsuba telling us about how hard he's been working, right?"

Her face contorting somewhat with discomfort again, Nino turns away, facing the long fish tank underneath the bookshelves for a second time.

"At first, I didn't think much of what Yotsuba was telling us. I thought that...Fuutarou could just be one of those super smart people, natural geniuses, if you will, who just ace all their tests and don't care about school because they're busy doing whatever they want to outside of school. Even when Yotsuba pointed out to us that the reason why he's been sleeping in class all the time is because he's been busy with whatever he needs to do, I didn't really believe her. I thought, like, how busy can he really be? He's just a freshman in high school, like we are. Even if he is really smart, and we're super dumb...just how much of a difference could there be between us?"

Miku hugs her knees against her chest a little bit more tightly.

"Last night...really drove home, at least to me, just how big of a difference there is. Fuutarou doesn't sleep in class because he's lazy, he doesn't sleep in class because he has nothing better to do or because he's trying to be rude - he sleeps in class because that's the only time of the day that he's got to sleep. And...the reason for that is because..."

"...he does stuff like what he did for us last night," Nino uncharacteristically finishes Miku's thought.

"You knew what I was going to say," Miku smiles again briefly. "Maybe we really _are _quintuplets."

"As if we weren't before...!" Nino once again turns to her sister, this time resolving not to use the fish tank as a source of distraction. "Okay, I get that Uesugi's a busier person than any of us could've imagined. But that's not our problem, is it? Whatever he's doing as a, what, a mage or whatever - that's got nothing to do with us. Don't let that bother you or change your stance on this! Whatever he's doing, that's _his _problem, not ours. _He _chose to be in that position, and so those are _his _responsibilities. We already have enough problems of our own to worry about, let him handle his own."

"Oh?" Miku's smile is erased once again. "Tell me, Nino, exactly what kinds of problems do we have right now? What kinds of problems do _you _think we have?"

Nino opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out of her throat, so Nino ends up softly biting her lower lip. Miku sees this as an opportunity to continue talking.

"We're five teenage girls, living in a penthouse of a luxury high-rise, on the thirtieth floor that _we _own, even the crow's nest on the other side of the floor. Even if we don't get to see him every day, Papa pays for everything and even gave us all credit cards to his name so that we can go buy whatever we want without even needing to ask him for anything."

Gazing straight back at Nino's eyes with those exact same eyes, Miku pauses in case Nino has something to say, but for now, she still doesn't.

"The only problem we have is the fact that we're all about to be high school dropouts if we don't do something about our grades soon," Miku answers for her unusually silent sister. "And it just so happens that this problem that we have is also a problem that Fuutarou shares, because now it's become _his _problem too, thanks to Papa hiring him to be our tutor."

"But we never asked for him to be our tutor. We should've at least visited Papa at his office to have a talk with him!"

"And you honestly think that would've done anything?" Miku challenges. "We all know how he is, and yet you're the only one who keeps acting like talking to him will change anything. Why, Nino?"

Gritting her teeth back at Miku, the second quint struggles for the right words in her head.

"Y-You never know until you try!" she finally blurts out, finding nothing better to respond with.

"Then feel free to try, if you insist," the third quint simply shrugs.

"Then...you're just gonna let Uesugi tutor you? Just like that? Just after a single night?"

"To tell you the truth, I figured at some point Papa would do something like this," Miku sighs exasperatedly, as trying to have an extended conversation with Nino always stresses her out like this. "I mean, we might all be book-dumb, but even we should've seen this coming. Especially you out of all of us, Nino. It just...happened a bit sooner than I thought it would."

Miku breaks eye contact with her sister slowly, finally putting her legs down properly on the cold floor.

"And I don't know about you, but I've tried studying by myself. You know, to improve my grades and such. Or at least I tried, I really did."

"I don't know, don't you usually just play games or watch anime all day in your room anyway?" Nino snickers, finally having something to say that doesn't put her on the back foot immediately.

"I'll admit to doing that a lot, yes, but - but I really do study sometimes...!" Miku pouts back at her sister.

"Clearly not enough, then."

"Yeah, and...that's exactly my point. Either I'm just not doing enough studying, or...I just suck at studying. And we've always taken tests throughout school, so it's not like any of us get super nervous during examination weeks, either, so it's not really about being nervous. Whatever the case, clearly by my test scores, whatever I'm doing isn't enough...and maybe a tutor is what I need, even if I might not agree with it."

Miku then gazes up at the second floor, towards the directions of her sisters' rooms.

"And if I'm having this kind of trouble, and I'm still the highest scoring of us five on average even with the studying that I do, I can't imagine anyone else doing better or improving on their own, either." Miku once again sets her piercing blue eyes back on Nino's. "And in this instance, you can't use your 'you never know until you try' excuse, because we've all tried already. Studying by ourselves doesn't work; something needs to change. Whether it's us directly or not."

Briefly pausing to stretch out her arms to ward away her morning drowsiness, Miku puts her hands on her lap.

"And...one last thing," she says, easing the tension in her voice. "You saw Fuutarou's house when we stopped there so that he could leave your dealer in his garage, right? He doesn't have much. We might not know exactly what he does on a day-to-day basis, but it's obvious that he works hard, way harder than we might ever know. Itsuki told us too, didn't she? After she had dinner at Fuutarou's place...that their situation didn't seem all that great."

"Ugh, see, _this _is what I'm talking about, what I was afraid of," Nino groans, rolling her eyes.

"No, you only said that about how he came in and saved us from those bad guys. I'm not talking about that - forget about the whole rescue part," Miku mutters assertively. "Personally, what bothers me more is the fact that Fuutarou seems to be so hardworking to the point where class time is the only time for him to get any sleep, while the only problem _we _need to deal with is whether or not we're going to graduate school. You've seen how bloodshot his eyes are all the time, right?"

"But again, like I said, that's not our problem. Why let it bother you?"

"I can't help it, Nino. It didn't bother me before...before last night. But now that we know a bit more about him, I...can't stop thinking of it this way. How long as Fuutarou been doing this, working all night long and still having to go to school, and still somehow finding the time to study on his own to get good grades? And then now Papa's hired him to start teaching us, so that's yet _another _responsibility he needs to take care of. And despite all that, despite how much work Fuutarou seems to be doing, his situation doesn't seem to be making much of a progress, and he and his family's still poor. While us, on the other hand - "

"We don't even know much about him for you to say that. Just because he and his family look poor doesn't mean you should let that guilt-trip you into feeling bad for him," Nino replies. "I do feel bad for Raiha-chan, but since it looks like they've been in that kind of a situation for a while, clearly they should be used to it. Let Uesugi handle his own family problems, like I keep saying."

"And for him to do that, he needs to tutor us to get paid and support his family," Miku points out. "You weren't there when he told us this because you left to go hang out with your friends afterwards, but on the day he made us take that evaluation test, he told me, Yotsuba, and Ichika afterwards that he doesn't want to force any of us to take his lessons; we need to take them willingly. We're the ones who're paying him, even if Papa's the one providing the actual money. If you really do feel bad for Raiha-chan, then let Fuutarou tutor you, too. It's the least we can do, isn't it?"

Getting up slowly from her seat, Miku pushes in her chair and turns to face Nino.

"And you might not believe me, but I'm not even considering Fuutarou's whole mage identity right now. He's even told us last night that he doesn't want to get us involved in anything like that; remember when I asked him to explain to us about magic and stuff, he clearly didn't look like he wanted to but he did it anyway. So for his sake, let's not even take that into account - I just want to graduate school without having to make anyone worry, and now I've come to the conclusion that I need help to do it because I'm too incompetent to do it alone."

Miku leaves Nino at the dinner table to start heading to the kitchen nearby.

"And if I'm the one saying I feel incompetent at studying, like I said earlier, what does that mean for everyone else?" she finishes. "I'll make breakfast today, by the way. I need to practice making omurice..."

"Oh no you don't, you're gonna give everyone a stomachache again!" Nino immediately bolts up from her chair and chases her sister into the kitchen. "We really don't need _that _first thing in the morning!"

"I've been practicing while you weren't here, don't worry. I've gotten a bit better..."

"A _bit _better isn't good enough when you already sucked at cooking! Also, is _that _why I've been finding dirty pans and plates and stuff in the kitchen every time I came back this week from hanging out with my friends!? You could at least wash them for me!"

"Sorry...I'll start washing them next time..."

"Ugh. Fine, since we don't need to worry about school today, let's help you practice making some omurice...no one else's even awake right now anyway..."

"Thanks, Nino."

"Sheesh, I can't believe you. First you drag me into some monologue of yours, then you want me to help you make omurice..."

"Hehe...sorry about that."

* * *

"That'll be it for our first tutoring session for today, thanks for joining me. I've already given you all the class notes I made for you today, along with your homework, so make sure to review those and complete your homework assignments for school tomorrow."

Back in his normal school uniform, Uesugi Fuutarou concludes his first successful tutoring session with the quintuplets, only three of whom are actually present at the low glass table in the living room: Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba. Itsuki is in her room, having elected to study by herself, as told to Fuutarou by Yotsuba, and Nino, while she hasn't officially joined the tutoring group, has spent the last three hours sitting at the empty dinner table on her phone, but Fuutarou considers that good enough for now since Nino can clearly listen to the entire lesson anyway; he did say that he'd rather have everyone be willing to be taught, so if that's what Nino is comfortable with for now, he'll just have to roll with it.

"Wow, that wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it'd be," Ichika laughs, stretching out her arms and yawning greatly, having skipped her usual afternoon beauty nap for the sake of taking Fuutarou's lesson. "Though I'm still getting really sleepy, haha."

"That's just your narcolepsy acting up, Ichika..." Miku says, organizing her papers surprisingly neatly.

"It's only been the first day and I feel like I learned more today than all of my school years combined!" Yotsuba cheers in relieved celebration. "I'm already feeling confident about graduation and that's not even for another two years, assuming I don't get held back because I'm stupid, haha!"

"L-Let's not go around saying worrying things like that," Fuutarou hesitantly remarks, putting away his own papers and files into his messenger bag. "And you're exaggerating, Yotsuba."

"Hm? What am I exaggerating about? I'm being serious, you know!" Yotsuba pouts back.

"Well, about the whole 'I learned more today than all of school' thing you just said."

"No, yeah, I - I'm serious. I don't know if it was because all the teachers I've had sucked or if it's just me being dumb, but having a tutoring session like this, I can already tell that this is what I'll probably need," Yotsuba says with complete seriousness so that there is no room for doubt in Fuutarou's head about her sincerity. "But it's most likely just me being a dummy, ehe ~ " She rounds out her thought by knuckling herself on the side of her scalp, causing Fuutarou to let out a small sigh.

"It's true. Even we can tell that you're a good teacher, Fuutarou," Miku smiles kindly to Fuutarou, and while it's not a big smile by any means, it's certainly the warmest one their tutor has seen her wear.

"Though, we've still got a long way to go, don't we. And this's just the beginning..." Ichika yawns again. "Not to mention, we've got two other girls we need to convince to join us. The more the merrier, after all ~ "

"I'm fine staying right here. It should be good enough that I'm even listening at all," Nino calls over dryly, not even looking up from her phone that she's using to text her other friends from school.

"Let them be, we'll work on convincing them to join over time," Fuutarou agrees. "Just because some of you girls don't want to get tutored, doesn't mean I shouldn't go ahead and start with everyone else who does."

"I guess you're right. But man, Uesugi-kun, you were just like an actual teacher there, it's honestly kind of scary," Ichika chuckles, also offering him a friendly smile. "Did you have to tutor other kids like us before?"

"Technically, yes. I tutor my younger sister all the time," Fuutarou nods. "So I guess you can say that I've already had lots of prior tutoring experience."

"Oooh, I see. Yeah, that makes sense - what was her name again? I know Itsuki mentioned it, but I think I forgot - "

"Raiha."

"Right, Raiha-chan. And how much younger is she than you?"

"Three years, she's in elementary."

"Aha, then that's why," Ichika pulls on a sharp look of understanding. "You're used to explaining things."

"More importantly, I know how to explain stuff to people who aren't on the same level mentally," the tutor says, taking a swig of water from his glass that Nino did not poison, now that Fuutarou has confiscated the rest of her Heisei. "And before any of you start, I'm not saying that to insult anyone here. It's just that, whenever I need to teach Raiha, I have to try to think about stuff from her point of view, from a perspective that she's familiar with; that way, she can easily grasp whatever it is I'm trying to teach her. Obviously there'll be times and material where that doesn't work as well, and all I can really do is just teach her how to do something and hope that she catches on, like with some of the more technical subjects like math and whatnot."

Yotsuba nods fervently. "Yeah, that makes sense."

"But it's a lot easier with Raiha since, y'know, she's my sister and all that, I know her very well. But I don't know the rest of you all very well, so it'll be a learning process for me too as I figure out each of you and how best you'll learn the material on an individual basis."

"But for us to all feel like you taught us really well today, better than any of our teachers ever did..." Miku looks up at Fuutarou.

"That so? Black Rose isn't exactly the prestigious all-girls' academy that everyone makes it out to be, then..."

"You're telling us...it wasn't any different from just your average middle or high school, honestly..."

The extraneous voice of Nakano Nino calls from the dinner table, and Fuutarou, Yotsuba, and Ichika glance over at her sudden interjection. Realizing that their attention is now on her, Nino shrinks a little in her seat.

"W-What're you all looking at me for? I'm just adding on to what Uesugi said," Nino grumbles, quickly looking down at her phone.

"Well, if you'd like to talk with us that badly, maybe next time you should consider joining us," Fuutarou suggests.

"Over my dead fuckin' body, Uesugi."

"Hah, didn't think so, huh. Worth a shot."

"There, there, better luck next time," Ichika pats her tutor on the back. "But still, great work today. It's really clear now why Dad hired you as our tutor. Though I wonder how he found out about you? You don't exactly seem to be the type to put out advertisements for your tutoring work or whatever."

"Hm, I guess I can say that much. I know your dad through my work as a mage," Fuutarou reveals. "I'm a medic mage, remember? So he has me come into the hospital every now and then to assist with stuff. Operations and whatnot."

"Oooh, so you're like an assistant surgeon! That's amazing."

"I don't actually do live operations like that very often, it's actually on the rarer side of things; I mainly help with technical stuff - hospital IT, for the most part. In exchange, since his hospital's one of the best in the country with the latest state-of-the-art medical technology, he lets me use some of the hospital equipment for my own work whenever I need to use it. He figured that I could tutor his daughters, so he offered me this as a side job - along with making sure that nothing happens to any of you, of course."

"Speaking of which, Uesugi-san, um, did you tell Dad about...yesterday?" Yotsuba asks worriedly, shedding her happy-go-lucky persona temporarily, and Fuutarou nods.

"Yeah. I'm contractually obligated to report whenever something like this happens - needless to say, he wasn't happy with me. Like, at all," Uesugi chuckles awkwardly. "Gave me the whole 'why the hell do I pay you' speech and all that..."

"But - you still helped us, why did he - ?" Miku protests, but stops when Fuutarou raises a hand to silence her.

"Don't worry about it. And I already mentioned this yesterday, part of why everything happened last night was because I was somewhere else where I didn't need to be. I even knew about Nino's meeting with that guy on Sunday night, yet I didn't act on that, or at least not quickly enough. My neglect almost made you all get into some deep shit. I'm glad I didn't lose my job entirely because of my mistake."

"Well, no harm no foul, right?" Ichika asks reassuringly.

"If only that's how things were all the time..."

"Yeah, didn't think so. Sorry that Dad's being harsh on you - he's just always been like that."

"I know. Though..."

Taking a deep breath, Fuutarou gazes down at the papers he's given to the girls, specifically the set of papers sitting in their neat stack in front of Miku.

"...it really makes me wonder how on Earth he let the five of you get to this point..."

None of the girls respond at all to this; something about his voice sounds off.

"But enough of that." The young tutor looks back up at his students. "I know I said I wouldn't try to bring this up, but just out of concern, how are the five of you holding up?"

"Well, nothing happened to us, so we're fine for the most part, I'd say," Ichika answers first, perhaps by age obligation. "Though...you have to agree that everything that happened last night - it was just a lot to digest."

"Yeah, sorry about that."

"It's nothing that you need to apologize for. I mean, if you think about it, the rest of us should've known that Nino was doing something shady to get that drug."

Still able to clearly hear the ongoing conversation, Nino, wanting to defend herself so badly, barely manages to keep her mouth shut, focusing intently on her phone to keep her distracted.

"What about the fact that I killed those four guys back at the warehouse?" Fuutarou brings up. "Maybe this wasn't something I should've brought up, but I still am curious to know, if morbidly. Does that not bother any of you?"

Miku is the first to respond by shaking her head. "No, not really."

"Wow, you're ruthless."

Pouting back at Fuutarou, Miku leans forward a little to emphasize her pout.

"I'm just trying to make you not worry about me. Besides, it's not like we could concentrate on those guys when we were watching you the entire time."

"And not to mention, it was pretty dark for the most part except for a few lights around the warehouse," Yotsuba points out.

"Hmm...yeah, fair enough..."

"And besides, even if we did have a problem with you killing people, in this case you had to do it to defend us, so what can we say against it, exactly?" Ichika gives a slight shrug of her own. "Though, if there were one of us who'd be most affected by that, it'd have to be..."

The quintuplets, excluding Nino, all gaze up at the second floor, at the furthest room door to the right.

"Makes sense that Itsuki would be a bit disturbed by everything from yesterday," Fuutarou sighs. "I really hope she doesn't hate my guts after all that. Though I can understand if she does."

"We've been trying to get her to join us, but she hasn't said anything," Yotsuba says with concern. "The weird thing is, she won't talk to us. Even at breakfast and lunch today, she hasn't said a single thing. She's never acted like that before..."

"Probably because of me, I'll bet. Not a surprise that I'm coming in frequently to tutor you girls, and one of your sisters starts behaving in a way that you haven't seen before."

"Geez, not everything is your fault, Uesugi-kun!" Ichika leans over and bops her tutor lightly on the head. "You're gonna sound like a depressed old man if you keep talking like that all the time. Girls don't like that, you know."

"They don't?" Uesugi flashes a thumbs up back at Ichika. "Good. I like acting like a depressed old man."

"Y-You alright? Saying that with such seriousness, you sure you don't need to go see a therapist?"

"I did that already, actually. Later on, I found out that the therapist I went to had to go see his own therapist."

"I...don't know whether you're serious about that or not."

"It's not. But what _is _true is that I feel like a depressed old man sometimes." Fuutarou raises his hand and waves it around, miming an old man waving his walking cane around, and with a strained, stereotypical old man voice, he croaks, "All these young'uns needing tutors to graduate school - back in my day, we were all Ninomiya Kinjirou, carrying firewood and reading from home to school, _both ways!"_

Both Ichika and Yotsuba crack up at Fuutarou's ridiculous acting, and Miku turns her face, trying to hide a growing smirk on her face.

"But no really...I hope Itsuki is doing alright. I'm willing to give her about a week to calm down, but if she still keeps this up, I'll have to talk to her myself," Fuutarou declares softly. "It won't even be about tutoring, I just want to make sure she knows that I'm here to help."

"We'll do our best in the meantime too. Like we said earlier, you've gotta believe in her," Yotsuba nods emphatically. "Everything will be okay, Uesugi-san! If the mighty Yotsuba says so, it'll be so!"

Fuutarou grins back up at her. "Thanks for the confidence boost as always. Oh, and before I forget, I've spent last night after leaving making sure that the city is safe again, so you girls are safe to leave the house now."

"Awwww, can't we just stay home from school? Today was so relaxing, being able to sleep in and alll ~ " Yotsuba whines, deflating and sprawling over her side of the table.

"So much for that confidence boost, Yotsuba!" Fuutarou exclaims indignantly, and this time Miku can't hide her smirk and laughs out loud, joining Ichika who can't stop herself from laughing either. "I believed in you, Yotsuba! And now you just wanna stay at home like a shut-in?!"

"Yeaaaaah...! And watch anime in bed at nine in the morning, ahahaha ~ " Yotsuba drawls contentedly.

"And you're a freaking otaku to boot! I've never felt this level of betrayal in my life!"

Then, Yotsuba's hair ribbon spikes up on her head, much like a light bulb going off over someone's head.

"Oooh, oh oh oh oh! I just got the bestest idea!" Yotsuba announces, snapping up her posture. "How about we just quit school altogether, and just let Uesugi-san home-school us?"

_"Then what's the point of trying to get you all to graduate?!"_

Reaching over, Fuutarou pinches Yotsuba's cheeks and tugs on them lightly, but even still he's unable to force Yotsuba's beaming grin to subside.

"Ehehehe, iss aass aarsss a haaaa..." Yotsuba says incoherently.

"What?" Fuutarou stops tugging on her cheeks.

"It was worth a shot ~ " Yotsuba repeats.

"No it wasn't! Do your homework and make sure to show up at school tomorrow!"

"Awwwww, Ichikaaaaa, Uesugi-san's being mean to me nowwwww!"

"Yotsuba, just because you don't like doing homework doesn't mean Uesugi-kun's bullying you over it," Ichika giggles.

"Oh, speaking of which..." Fuutarou glances up at the clock behind him built into the wall, which now reads 4:14 PM. "Ichika, you have your part-time at 5, right? We should get going."

"Goodness, you're right. Yeah, let me get ready real quick," Ichika also notes the time and gets up, hurriedly gathering her notes and papers to take back to her room. "But since you said it should be okay for us to leave the house, you don't need to follow me anymore, right?"

"Hmm...yeah, you've got a point," Fuutarou nods back at the eldest quint. "You won't be late to it, will you? I feel like I've kept you for a bit too long."

"It's fine, it's actually not that far from here, so assuming traffic isn't too bad, I'll be okay."

"Don't lose those notes I gave you in your room, either! I know what your room's like!"

"Then feel free to visit me in my room to see if I still have them ~ " Ichika coos seductively, causing Fuutarou to just shake his head and look away, and she giggles again at his reaction. Once Ichika heads into her room, Fuutarou himself stands up with his packed bag.

"Well, since that's it for me today, I'll get going too. Good work for today, you two and Ichika," Fuutarou nods, and as usual, Yotsuba, getting up from the table, trots after Fuutarou to see him off as usual. After he puts on his shoes, Fuutarou looks up and blinks at Yotsuba.

"Hm? What's up?" she asks him with a friendly smile.

"No, it's not you..." Fuutarou stands up straight, still looking past the fourth quint. "You need something, Miku?"

"Eh?" Yotsuba spins around, and sure enough, her older sister is right behind her, having followed the two of them to the door. "Ah, it really is Miku!"

"...I just want to see you off too," Miku says simply, dropping her gaze shyly. "It's...the least I can do..."

"You don't have to force yourself," Fuutarou replies simply.

"I'm not..." But Miku does force herself to look back up at her tutor. "...and...Fuutarou, you didn't sleep at all today, did you?"

His cover blown, Fuutarou gives off such an exhausted chuckle that Yotsuba feels Fuutarou's chuckle sapping even some of her own strength.

"You can tell, huh? Yeah...I need to get home and catch some sleep," he groans slightly, rubbing his eyes with the back of his right hand.

"U-Uesugi-san! You need to take proper care of yourself!" Yotsuba pouts, but her voice is filled with genuine concern. "Teaching us is great and all, but you can't keep doing this to yourself! You won't last long doing this, you know!"

"Can't I...I've been through worse, so I can handle this much at least."

"Um, Fuutarou?"

"Yeah, Miku?"

"...just out of curiosity...do you sleep in class because...you don't have time to sleep during the night?"

"More or less." Fuutarou grins tiredly at Miku. "You're really good at figuring people out, huh?"

Miku shakes her head. "It's just...kind of obvious, I thought..."

"Ouch, I'm that transparent of a person, huh. I'll work on that for next time."

"Well, no, it's just..." Miku hesitates.

"Just what?"

"...just...please...take care of yourself."

Betraying a small smile in response to Miku's request, Fuutarou takes a step towards her and, just like with Yotsuba the previous week, puts a hand on Miku's head.

"Thanks for worrying about me. I'll be fine."

Turning to Yotsuba, he repeats the process.

"And thanks to you again, for supporting me all this time so far," Fuutarou nods, and bidding the two of them goodbye, he closes the door behind himself to head home.

"Geez, that Uesugi-san...!" Yotsuba pouts lightly, blushing in his wake and shaking her fists a little. "Giving us headpats all willy-nilly like that - the hearts of us girls are more delicate than you could ever know! Right, Miku?"

Yotsuba turns around to find Miku hiding her lips behind the earcups of her Audio Technicas, her bangs draped over her most of her eyes and her cheeks, which are beginning to brim with red.

"...Miku?"


	11. Opportunity Cost

**A/N**

**Dws0nn: Yes it was, good catch. I sprinkle in references every so often in my fics, try to see if you can identify them.**

* * *

The whirring of a centrifuge fills the dull air of a moderately sized laboratory room. For the past thirty minutes the centrifuge has polluted the air with its incessant vacuum-like noises, though the noise pollution is of no concern to what few contents reside within this laboratory, for besides the centrifuge, only a humble amount of medical equipment, furniture, and accessories occupy the space within. A small closet containing extra clean white laboratory coats sits in one of the corners, a somewhat diminutive whiteboard hangs on the wall near the closet, and an LED X-Ray Viewer of similar, if not identical, size hangs out with it. There are no chairs in this room, so unnecessary is the need for the luxury of sitting; there are only tables, a single countertop built into the far wall of the room that holds a metal lockbox now only half-filled with syringes and vials containing white sedative, and a lone rolling table that holds typical surgical equipment like scalpels, scissors, and tweezers.

Just as simply furnished is Uesugi Fuutarou, who stands near the working centrifuge holding a tablet while donning one of the clean white lab coats from the closet in the corner directly over his school uniform. No calls for any operations today, so there is no need for him to change out of his school uniform for a fresh change of clothes, allowing for the simple luxury of being able to toss on a lab coat at will, which is rather convenient, given what he's working on today.

After tinkering with his tablet on and off for about fifteen minutes, Fuutarou silently turns to his left to face the empty, plain white wall across from him which the countertop is bolted into. He raises his left hand up at the wall casually, his right hand holding the tablet up still, and out of the wall bleeds eight magical blue panels that flicker with images, photos, and news articles from online newspapers.

"A Possible Underground Drug Trafficking Ring in the City?", "Police Uncover New Drug Cache", "As The City Grows, So Does The Underworld"...headlines with these and similar monikers all stare back relentlessly at Fuutarou as if they're playing the staring game with him, and of course they will emerge the victors, for Fuutarou drops his gaze back down at the tablet in his hand. He opens up a custom app at the menu screen, which produces a fully interactive 3-D model of the city for him to view at his discretion, first starting with a fully aerial view of the city that centers on his location at the hospital, and Fuutarou slowly and calmly studies several areas of the city, the tablet app zooming in on his areas of interest and even switching to a live feed of these areas, thanks to all the surveillance runes he's planted throughout the city over the past few weeks.

It's been another five days since his first actual day of tutoring the Nakano girls, or at least the ones who bother to show up. Itsuki and Nino are still keeping the Anti-Fuutarou Social Club alive and running by refusing to join, and while it's fine for now that they don't, at some point Fuutarou knows that he needs to convince them to join somehow, and he hasn't found the solution to that yet. Now that today's a Saturday, he's finally been able to take today to concentrate on his own work, which is arguably just as important, if not more.

Fuutarou taps another area of the interactive city map, in the northern outskirts of the city, pulling up a feed of a small throng of policemen and Special Judicial Police Officials investigating a drug cache mentioned by one of the newspaper articles pinned on the wall via magic panel, and he watches them for the time being while waiting for his centrifuge to finish its work.

Nino's drug acquisition, the local media's proliferation of drug-related articles and news...finally the time has come where the city's growing drug trafficking is rearing its ugly head. Having monitored the city's growth for some time, Fuutarou knew that a time would come where the general populace would become privy to this unfortunate phenomenon, though for the sake of the city's image in the face of its fantastic growth over the years, the mayor and the city government would probably either censor the news or bribe the press to go write about other stuff instead, like the bustling night life of the downtown that, lately, is even being given the name of "New Shinjuku".

Having watched enough of his fill of the policemen and officials confiscating the drugs from the cache on his tablet, the Nakano tutor exits out of the app, turns off the tablet screen, and sets it on the counter a good distance away from the syringe and vial lockbox to wait for the centrifuge to finish, as it only has about ten more minutes left to go. In the meantime, he packs up the homework that's been sitting at the edge of the countertop that he's completed a little while ago while waiting for the centrifuge to finish its work, packing his wireless headphones in with the papers, notebooks, and textbooks into the backpack that he alternates with his messenger bag on days when he feels like bringing his headphones along for some music. Once all this is packed, then he packs the tablet last, making sure that the tablet is well protected against the headphones by being placed in a separate pocket big enough to fit the device.

As he zips up his backpack, a short, curt knocking comes from the only door into the laboratory, and tossing his backpack back onto the counter from beneath it on the floor, Fuutarou points with two fingers on his right hand at the door, and another magic rune that swivels into place filters the door behind it away to reveal his guest behind the door. Identifying him, Fuutarou pulls his hand down, and the door unlocks itself rather loudly to allow his guest to enter, who does and securely closes the door behind him after entering. A plain man, also donning a white doctor's coat underneath his formal business clothes and the stereotypical stethoscope around his neck, gazes piercingly back at the formerly sole occupant of this scantily equipped laboratory.

"Good afternoon, Uesugi-kun," the man greets the high schooler. His voice is dry and humorless, as dry as the sterile air of the hospital in which they work, and Fuutarou's eardrums feel like they're being dehydrated simply by listening to this guest. Fuutarou sighs quietly and leans lightly against the side of the countertop behind him, crossing his arms.

"Same to you, Nakano-san. The centrifuge's almost done, I'm just waiting for it to finish."

Nakano Maruo directs his slit-like eyes down at the centrifuge to his left as he shuffles a bit further into the room. His parted black bangs, exposed forehead, and slightly gaunt appearance from all the long hours he's worked here at the hospital given him a striking, stoic appearance, as if his piercing gaze that could drill holes through the side of an armored car weren't enough to leave an impression.

"I see," is all he answers with for now.

"So what's the occasion today?"

"A few things, in fact."

"Surprising. When's the last time we've had an actual conversation?"

"Better question is, is that relevant?"

"No, but I can't help but wonder, you know? Seeing that you're my employer and all."

"I wasn't aware that employers needed to have established relationships with their employees."

"Maybe not, but..." Fuutarou trails off, tempted to bring up the issue of the head doctor's reputation among some of the hospital staff, but he decides against it for now. "...I guess all I'm trying to say is that it wouldn't hurt getting to know your employees a bit more."

"I see, your feedback is noted. For starters then, how about I ask you how my daughters are doing with your lessons?"

Fuutarou can't help but widen his eyes somewhat in surprise, raising his own gaze back up to meet Dr. Nakano's.

"I didn't think you'd be serious about taking note of my feedback," Uesugi scoffs lightly.

"Most of the time what feedback you _do _care to give to me is irrelevant, but this time it happened to coincide with my own interests. And I think it is natural for a father to be concerned with the academic states of his daughters, no?"

_About time_, Fuutarou thinks to himself discretely, but he shows no physical sign of that thought.

"Do you want the abridged version, or the full version? Since I know you're typically really busy..."

"The full, if you will please. My schedule today is more backloaded towards night shifts, so I have a bit of time now."

"Fair enough, then." Fuutarou clears his throat quickly. "Convincing them to agree to the tutoring didn't go smoothly at all at first, as I warned you beforehand. Initially only Yotsuba was outright willing to participate, and I had to spend the first week mainly trying to get them together at all. Admittedly, part of why that was the case was my own fault."

"Your own fault? Explain."

"It was the day you gave me a keycard to the penthouse, when you called me in to deliver their new school uniforms in person. I ended up arriving early, and so I decided to try to make an appearance that would leave some sort of impression on the girls...but that ended up backfiring rather badly."

"Just for my own curiosity, I'd like to hear the details."

"It's nothing much - I just waited for the girls to come home, and when they were taking off their shoes, I just showed up out of nowhere for them from the living room and introduced myself. Nino and Itsuki didn't take kindly to that very well."

A brief silence ensues, with the two men staring at each other following Fuutarou's anecdote.

"...what? That's all there is to it," Fuutarou shrugs with a scrunch of his eyebrows.

"...pardon me. I figured there was something more to it..."

"Uh, do you mind if I ask why...?"

"Well, that just seems very boring..."

"I wasn't trying to _scare _your daughters or anything, if that's what you were hoping."

"I see. Then continue."

Giving the quints' father an odd look, Fuutarou continues his report. "I was able to give them an evaluation test that I made using questions from the old tests that they took from their previous school that you gave me, and it determined that none of the girls really made much, if any, academic progress since Black Rose Academy, so naturally they've all got long roads ahead of them. Luckily, Ichika and Miku joined Yotsuba in my first actual lesson for them at the start of this week, and so far we've been having good lessons."

"What about Nino-kun and Itsuki-kun?"

Honorifics, huh.

"They're refusing to cooperate at the moment; Itsuki insists on studying by herself in her room, and Nino insists on _not _studying at all," Fuutarou answers crisply and honestly. "I'm still trying to find a way to convince them to join the group."

"If you would like, I can give the two of them a call and - "

But Fuutarou raises his hand to stop his employer.

"That won't be necessary."

Maruo gives Fuutarou a tilt of his head. "Hm. You feel that you can resolve this issue on your own?"

"I have to. I've explained this to you before, but I assume you've forgotten about it since you have more important things to worry about usually."

"And you'd be correct. Do refresh my memory, if you'd be so kind."

Crossing his arms again, Fuutarou stands up straight and stops leaning against the countertop behind him.

"Your girls are all horrifically close to _not_ graduating high school. To put it bluntly, right now in the state that they are, they're all screwed, and they're better off flunking out of school now and go get a nine to five at a black company if only to save them the time that they'll be wasting _in _school," Fuutarou reiterates for the doctor. "So if they don't want to do that, which I'm sure they don't, this means that my teaching methods need to be more focused and intensive than your average school teacher for them to progress at all, because clearly conventional schooling isn't working for them, whether because of their own efforts or lack thereof."

Maruo's eyes do not blink once while Fuutarou is speaking, but the latter, accustomed to the doctor's silent but oppressive body language, simply glares back with equal impunity.

"While you didn't need me to tell you any of this, I'm sure, what you might not realize is that I would much rather convince Nino and Itsuki to come join the tutoring on their own volition than have you call them and tell them to start studying with me. I would much rather teach willing students who'll treat my efforts as valuable and worth their time because that way, they'll make the most of it; I refuse to teach those who are unwilling for whatever reasons they might have, and while you might not believe me on this, I do speak from personal experience, and I think you'd agree with me on that anyway. On top of which, the girls already have an idea that the two of us communicate like this, so if you were to call those two and tell them to start taking my lessons, they might obey you, but they won't listen to a thing I say. It'd be counterproductive."

"And how likely do you think that those two are unwilling to take you as their tutor because of what happened over last weekend?"

"Figured you'd bring that up. If I'll be brutally honest, that incident was a blessing in disguise."

"Because now the girls think of you as their savior? How crafty, Uesugi-kun."

"Very rich, coming from someone like you, Nakano-san," Fuutarou retorts back and continues without missing a beat. "But you're right, there's certainly a good chance that they now see me in a more favorable light due to my intervention during that incident. But I'm sure you know where I'll go with this, given what I've been talking about..."

"You would rather have them respect you as a tutor, rather than some sort of guardian angel."

"Right. And for as much as you don't care for what I say at times, you should at least remember me telling you that had I not decided to stop by the hospital that night and simply stayed at home, that incident would have never gotten that bad in the first place - only Nino would've been affected and I could've just told her to keep the incident a secret from her sisters, but here we are."

"But you cannot deny that it seems to be more than just a convenient coincidence that your first successful lesson with my daughters, or at least some of them, followed that incident?"

"Oh, I'm sure there's at least _some _degree of that going on. And even if I stand here telling you all this crap about how I'd rather focus on the teaching side of the job, I have to admit that that incident not only had some nice timing behind it but also might've been a factor in giving Ichika and Miku a bit of a push. Whatever the case, and regardless of how this all happened, what I have right now is three of your girls who attend my lessons. Ichika still sleeps through like half of them, though."

"Does she? She came off as the most alert one of the five..."

Fuutarou imagines himself rolling his eyes, as much as he wants to do so physically right in front of his own boss.

"Regardless, it appears you are making some progress, so my commendations to you on that. How is their actual progress, then?"

"Too early to say. They seem to be taking my lessons well, but that might only be because all the teachers they've ever had before weren't good or they never bothered to pay attention in class. I haven't started reviewing any of the material that I've been teaching them either, so we'll see how well they're actually studying. It's barely been three weeks into the school year, after all."

The centrifuge has been slowing to a halt for some time now, and it finally comes to a full stop while Fuutarou is talking. He walks over to it while still speaking and opens it up to withdraw the five vials of filtered sedative and sets four of them in a nearby test tube rack, holding the fifth one up in front of his face so that he can analyze it. Maruo remains silent as Fuutarou examines the filtered substance, which has successfully parted white dust from the rest of the clear liquid.

"No doubt about it," Fuutarou grumbles, scowling at the contents that he sees. "That's Heisei."

Dr. Nakano also scowls, having come to the realization himself as well. "Liquid Heisei, huh..."

"It's been around for a while, actually, almost as long as standard powder Heisei has. It's probably much more difficult to make, given its extreme rarity compared to normal solid Heisei, so the general populace shouldn't have access to it, and the government probably doesn't even know that this exists," Fuutarou shakes his head, now holding the vial between his thumb and middle finger to have a tiny blue rune scan the vial from bottom to top.

"I presume it's a magical compound, then."

"That's a safe assumption, yes. Initial diagnostic detects no magical signature, but just because it doesn't have a magical footprint doesn't mean it wasn't somehow magically produced." Finishing the rune diagnostic, Fuutarou places the vial into the test tube with the other filtered vials. "I'll be shipping these to some experts I know in London; they'll be able to verify whether or not it's been magically tampered with."

"But Heisei is already a magically produced drug; why is there a need to verify if it has been 'magically tampered with'?"

"It could be a new strain, a more potent version. Heisei is already bad enough; if this kind turns out to be stronger, we've got a real problem on our hands. And to think that I got this off those gangbangers from that incident last weekend..."

Fuutarou then carefully puts the filtered vials back in their lockbox on the countertop to store them safely.

"So this is the state of the city now..." Maruo sighs shortly, raising his piercing slit eyes up at the news panels that are still displaying its media contents on the plain wall before them. "The city has grown so fast that illegal activities such as drug trafficking and drug use cannot be contained. What say you, Uesugi-kun? Should it not be the responsibility of one who has proclaimed this city as his 'territory'?"

"Magically speaking only, Nakano-san. I don't give two fucks about drugs, drug trafficking, or drug use so long as it doesn't involve me or anyone I care about. The city's problems are not my problems; I'm not here to babysit an entire city if that's what you're asking me to do; we mages don't have time to do that like we're heroes of justice or the like. However..."

Fuutarou joins the doctor in viewing the news panels once more, watching them scroll through their contents slowly at a reading pace.

"...now that Nino's been in contact with people who run stuff like Heisei, I'm obligated to tackle this particular problem. It'd be a bit of an issue if one of my students is trying to drug her own tutor with the strongest roofie on the black market, after all."

"Indeed. Though, on the subject of drug use, should you not be more concerned that your students might have possibly been using such drugs for their own personal recreation?"

Fuutarou looks dead straight into his employer's eyes for a few seconds.

"Of course I'd be concerned with that aspect too. If it comes down to it, I'll intervene," he responds swiftly, disengaging and snapping his fingers suddenly to cause the news panels to disintegrate, leaving no trace of themselves behind. He removes his lab coat, stows it away in the closet neatly, and tosses on his backpack before retrieving the syringe and vial lockbox. "I'll be sure to relay to the girls your plans for them during Golden Week on my way back home."

As he heads for the door, Fuutarou stops right next to Doctor Nakano. Without so much as a twitch of his neck, he says:

"But first and foremost, that should be their parent's concern. Or at least, I hoped it would be - for a father who didn't know his own daughter was a drug user until last week."

The air is empty, dry, and dead. For exactly one second, the two men stand side by side, facing opposite directions.

"Have a good rest of your weekend, Nakano-san."

Shoving the door open with his shoulder, Fuutarou exits the room and heads out of the hospital with the metal box in his arms.

* * *

Roughly an hour and a half later, Uesugi Fuutarou is still walking to the Nakano penthouse at the luxury high-rise. The metal lockbox isn't heavy normally, but it is somewhat bulky, and after all this time carrying it while walking across the city, its weight is certainly making an impression on his arms. Fuutarou bears with it though and trudges on silently - he's starting to wish he at least had his headphones on while walking so the trek wouldn't be as boring.

"Uuuueeeeeesuuuuugiiiiiiiiiiiiiii - _SAN!"_

Timing herself with the honorific, Yotsuba shoulder-slams herself into Fuutarou's back through his backpack, causing the latter to stumble forward from the enthusiastic force. Fuutarou makes sure to roll with the strength of Yotsuba's shoulder-charge so that the contents of the lockbox inside won't be as affected.

"Goddamn it, Yotsuba, now wasn't a good time for that," Fuutarou groans, turning around to face one of his students who catches up to him worriedly after seeing just how far he's stumbled away from her because of her playful tackle.

"I-I'm sorry! I-I don't know my own strength sometimes, I thought that was just a little push, I swear!" Yotsuba cries in apology as she catches up to her tutor, but her voice trails off when she takes one look at what Fuutarou's carrying in his arms. "I-Is that...?"

"The box from last weekend, yeah. I was at the hospital an hour and a half ago finishing some tests on it."

Having taken a knee to set the box on the ground, Fuutarou opens it up to check the integrity of its contents. Thanks to the magical reinforcing that he's cast on it to further protect its contents, the vials of filtered and unfiltered liquid Heisei are preserved, as if nothing has even happened, but seeing their preserved conditions for himself gives Fuutarou a bit more peace of mind. He closes up the box again and stands back up when he notices Yotsuba's understandably hesitant expression, mixed haphazardly with both regret and fright.

"Don't worry about it, you didn't break anything inside. No harm, no foul - are you coming back from somewhere? You kinda sound out of breath."

"Oh, yeah, right, uh, I was - I was filling in for someone on the basketball team," Yotsuba says quickly, now that she has a question to answer. "I got an offer from the basketball team to act as a substitute, and today apparently one of their members couldn't make it due to a family emergency. So I've been doing my best there!" Yotsuba gives herself a cheer by punching the air with her right fist.

"Good to hear. But you did make sure to study today, right?"

"Eh - "

Both Yotsuba's fist and the ears of her hair ribbon shrivel downwards at Fuutarou's vibe check, and eventually, so too does her gaze as her blue eyes can't help but drop to the ground at her tutor's feet. Fuutarou simply squints in disapproval at his student.

"Yotsuba...?" he says slowly.

"Ah, aha, ahaha, y-you must have gotten the wrong quint, I am afraid!" Yotsuba starts to laugh mechanically, trying her best to do an obviously terrible Itsuki impression by formalizing her speech, which is like listening to a cat attempt to bark like a dog. "Y-Yes, I - I am Itsuki! See, look, I shall go buy something to eat right now!"

And with that, Yotsuba pivots on her foot, just like how a basketball player in action would, and scrams to a nearby convenience store to escape Fuutarou's line of sight. Uesugi can physically hear the comedic sound effect of an engine of some kind in his head watching Yotsuba bolt away and out of sight. Although, he can't help but think to himself, out of all the quintuplets she could've tried to impersonate, why Itsuki? Is she just that easy of a target to make fun of? He doesn't really get it himself...maybe it's just a quintuplet joke.

Jokes aside, though, Yotsuba's speed is actually quite impressive. While he hasn't had very many opportunities to witness her physical prowess in person, Fuutarou has been hearing a few rumors starting to creep up around school about a freshman girl who is apparently tremendously gifted at sports, and that the school's sports teams were considering finding out who this mystery freshman was to try to recruit her. Perhaps the basketball team has come out on top with that little competition, given that Yotsuba's been putting her time in with them, though given the fourth quint's indecisiveness, she's probably going to bounce around from one club to another.

The quickness and smoothness of her pivot, her perfect, natural, and efficient running form while she sprinted away, and the speed that followed - it's no wonder that she's normally so full of energy all the time. Well, at least outside of the times when she's interacting with him. Fuutarou sighs - even if Yotsuba is technically the nicest one out of the quintuplets to him at the moment, he does hope that the two of them can at least get to a level where Yotsuba can feel comfortable being her normal bubbly self around him too. It doesn't sit very well with him that really the only times when Yotsuba isn't herself is when she's with him.

Meanwhile, Yotsuba, who's made her great escape to the nearby Family Mart that Fuutarou recently passed before she caught up with him, catches her breath quickly behind an aisle of snacks. Groaning softly to herself, she feels the frustration and regret that bubbled up as soon as she realized that she almost caused Uesugi a ton of trouble by almost ruining the contents of the box that he was carrying, and she feels even worse about it once he mentioned that he'd been researching them at the hospital. And since Fuutarou has already told the quints that he works at the hospital with their father, no doubt that all week this week, he's been routinely visiting the hospital to study the contents of that box. And that's before getting into the whole incident from which he got that very lockbox to begin with...

But Yotsuba quickly recovers, clapping her cheeks four times to purge the negative thoughts from her mind. Right now, even if Ichika and Miku are also willingly taking their lessons with their tutors, she still can't help but feel like she's still Uesugi's strongest supporter, and so avoiding him like this won't do him any favors, so she's got to hurry up and catch up to him. Though, the two hours of basketball practice with the school team has made her a bit hungry, so she does take a few minutes to pick out some tasty convenience store chicken to take with her and eat back home as a snack before dinner.

Stepping out of the Family Mart, Yotsuba glances down the sidewalk where she ought to still see Fuutarou walking to the high-rise, but to her shock, she doesn't see him.

"Where did he go...?" Yotsuba murmurs aloud, starting to worry again. Did Fuutarou decide to disappear using his magical powers or whatever because he didn't want to be with her? Probably because of the shove that she gave him out of the blue like she did. And if that's the case -

"Right here."

Sitting down on the ground next to the sliding doors of the Family Mart, Uesugi gets back up to his feet in Yotsuba's blind spot, picking up the box with him.

"What'd you get? Oh, the chicken from here, good choice," Fuutarou nods in approval, but then he notices Yotsuba simply staring back up at him in shock. "What, what's wrong? Something on my face?"

"Y-You seriously came back just to wait for me here?"

"Sure, why not? I'm heading over to your place anyway, so it doesn't make sense for me to just leave you here."

"Wait, you were heading over to our place?!"

Uesugi rolls his eyes for real this time. "Why the hell am I walking in this direction, then? My own place certainly isn't this way."

The two of them resume walking as their conversation starts. "But what's the occasion today? I thought we weren't going to have tutoring sessions during the weekend..."

"Yeah, today's not a lesson, your dad just wanted me to relay some plans to the five of you. But I did explicitly say that we'll have auxiliary lessons on weekends if I feel like you all need them."

"Awwwww..." Yotsuba's hair ribbon shrinks again. "But what does Dad wanna tell us? Or is it something that you can't talk about until you see all five of us?"

"It's plans for Golden Week that's coming up, but - "

"Oh yeaaaaaah, Golden Week! Omigosh I'm so excited for it, Golden Week's always so fuuuuunnn!" Yotsuba squeals in delight, having totally forgotten about the upcoming Golden Week break. "We usually travel abroad during then. Like last year, we went to Emerald Beach; the year before, we went to Paris; the year before, Siberia!"

"...why the hell did you go to Siberia for Golden Week."

"Because it seemed like fun at the time!"

"Uh, well, was it?"

_"ABSOLUTELY NOT! _Seriously, who even suggested Siberia as a vacation destination?!" Yotsuba fumes, then grows suddenly quiet again. By this reaction, Uesugi can kind of tell what's to follow. "Oh...it was me. Ehe ~ "

"Good going, Yotsuba. Reaaaaaaal smooth..."

_"Okay, I thought Siberia was a totally cool place to go visit at the time! It sounded a lot better in my head!"_

"A totally cool place...I mean, technically you're not wrong about it being cool..."

_"Oh come on, you know what I mean, Uesugi-saaaaan!"_

"Haha...my bad. I'm not very good with puns, so actually being able to make a joke about one is pretty satisfying, I won't lie."

Yotsuba gazes up at Fuutarou as they walk. "Speaking of Golden Week plans though, Uesugi-san, do you have any of your own? Or..."

As she fears, Uesugi shakes his head. "Not really. I'll just be doing the usual - we're too poor to be doing any traveling most of the time, after all."

"Ah...right. Sorry that I, uh, asked..."

"Don't be, I don't feel bothered by questions like that that might usually be a bit sensitive. I've grown some thick skin over the years, a little question like that isn't about to hurt my feelings or anything. I kinda had to, if you think about it."

What Uesugi is referring to is obvious, and the incident from the previous weekend flashes before Yotsuba's eyes.

Sensing discomfort in Yotsuba's moments of silence, which is easy to do since it's typically not a good thing of Yotsuba to be quiet like this, Fuutarou takes the initiative in starting a conversation, as inexperienced as he is in social interaction.

"How's everyone else doing? Anybody studying at all, or not really?"

"Um...well, it's...I mean, I guess Itsuki's studying? And Miku too, actually...she's been studying at the living room table after you left the past couple of days, so it's good to know that she's super motivated."

"And not really anybody else, huh."

"Y-Yeah..." Yotsuba averts her gaze again. "...I'm sorry, Uesugi-san. I'll...try my best to start studying on my own. I prom - "

Silencing herself by pursing her lips shut tightly, the fourth quintuplet cuts herself short in alarm. Fuutarou's dull black eyes glance down at Yotsuba for a moment.

"L-Like I said, I'll do my best. It's because...it's because of all the clubs that I've been looking at for the past week or two, and...and lots of people said they'd love to have me around."

"Well, if you know that that's what's preventing you from studying, you should act on that knowledge, right?"

"But I just can't help it! I love sports...it's like the only thing I know how to do well, the only thing that comes natural," Yotsuba insists defensively. "You've heard me talk about this before I think, right? That, and I just...I just really like helping people. You know how I said earlier that someone from the basketball team had a family emergency, right? Without them, the team wouldn't have been able to have a full two teams for practice, so they asked me to fill in so that they could get that practice in today. Not to mention they have big hopes for the season this year, since the captain thinks that this year's going to be their best chance at going to nationals. So I couldn't just say no to them...!"

Uesugi simply listens and nods along to Yotsuba's conversation.

"Just - just give me some time, Uesugi-san. I'll do my very best to find some sort of middle ground. I'll find the time I need to study, I just need to get situated, that's all..."

To Yotsuba's surprise, her tutor nods curtly. "Sure, whatever you feel like you need to do. Since you were the one who accepted me as your tutor first, I'll return the favor by putting my faith in you that you'll find the time to study while still going around doing your club stuff or whatever. It'll give me time to think about how I'll get Nino and Itsuki to join the tutoring sessions, too..."

After holding her peace for a few moments, Yotsuba glances back up at her tutor. "You...aren't going to scold me like you usually do for not studying?"

"What's with that all of a sudden?"

"No, well, it's just, you always go off on me at home whenever you're over to tutor us for not studying or answering an obvious question wrong."

"But this is a different situation, though. Like, some of the questions I had you answer during our lessons really were obvious because I literally gave you the answer just before asking, so it's a matter of you not paying attention. But now that you've told me that you're trying to manage your high school life and balance it with studying and doing homework, I'm not going to give you shit for that. It's tough, going into high school and trying to adjust the best you can. You have it worse too, you know? Being a transfer student and all. It's been tough for me too - it's something we're all going through."

At Fuutarou's last remark, Yotsuba drops her gaze again, the muscles in her neck weakening with guilt.

"...but I bet it's been a lot tougher for you," she mumbles sadly, gazing down at the warm black box of Famichiki that she holds in her hands.

"A lot tougher for me, huh?" Fuutarou repeats nonchalantly. "Explain."

"Huh? E-Explain? Well..." Yotsuba stammers suddenly - she wasn't expecting to have the verbal Reverse card played on her like this. "I don't...I don't get what you want me to do, Uesugi-san..."

"I asked you what's known as a rhetorical question; you weren't supposed to answer it because there's no way you can. And how could you? I don't know your life, and you don't know mine. All we have is a bit of information about each other: what I know about you and your sisters from the hours of tutoring I've done, and what you know about me from that one incident last weekend."

Fuutarou adjusts his grips on the lockbox as they continue to walk.

"My point is this, Yotsuba: don't worry about what my situation is. Even if you feel that whatever I'm going through or whatever it is that I'm doing is so much more difficult than you could ever imagine, don't feel obligated to study because of my situation, because it has nothing to do with the situation between us. Don't study or feel obligated to study because my family is poor or because of the kind of work that I do outside of school and outside of tutoring, because you're only serving to put on unnecessary weight on your own conscience. And if nothing else, I made the conscious decision to get myself involved in that kind of work, so whenever I have to put myself through the grinder because of it, I have no one to blame but myself."

"But even if you say that, that still doesn't change the fact that it's still something we - something I think about a lot...!" Yotsuba insists. "I know you told us before to disregard that side of you, but even you've gotta know that that's so much easier said than done..."

"True, I suppose it's not something most people can just forget about unless you're just truly apathetic like Nino is. But at the same time, if you let it stay on your mind for too long, it'll cause you more trouble than it's worth. And while there are certainly things in life that are worth worrying about, the question eventually becomes: for how much longer are you going to let something bother you? At some point, you have to let it go."

Yotsuba, having wanted to interrupt Fuutarou halfway, resigns herself to silence as she listens.

"As a corollary: I think that you're being unfair to yourself whenever you worry about me and the responsibilities that I have. It should be obvious that we live such different lives that it's simply not reasonable to expect yourself to understand the things that I'm going through. And even if you do try to, I'm honestly not sure how long you'd even last..."

"It's not being unfair to myself, Uesugi-san!" Yotsuba exclaims finally, unable to keep herself verbally restrained any longer now. "It's actually not even a matter of being fair or not fair, to be perfectly honest! There's no reason to make it sound more complicated than it is!"

Fuutarou opens his mouth to counter, but after processing the fourth quint's words a second time, this time, he holds his peace instead to allow Yotsuba to follow through with her thought.

"It doesn't have to be all complicated like that, Uesugi-san," Yotsuba stresses pleadingly. "You sav - you did us a big favor last weekend, a kind of favor that I'm not sure how we can repay. The least I can do is...is to at least...worry about you."

Sighing heavily, Fuutarou clicks his tongue with a little irritation.

"I'm not saying that anything you've said to me is wrong, Uesugi-san. Well, apart from the whole unfair part, but it's true - it's probably for the better that we pretend like what happened last weekend never happened so that we can just keep being tutor and student like we were supposed to be. And maybe my sisters can do a better job of getting over it - but not me. And honestly, it's not just me, either - I'm sure my sisters also have it still on their minds to some degree!"

Yotsuba then circles around in front of her tutor to get him to stop in his tracks.

"No matter what our situations might be - our lifestyles, our responsibilities, our schedules, whatever," she says, still holding her box of convenience store chicken, "isn't it only natural for me to worry about a friend of mine?"

The two of them keep their eyes locked for a few moments in the pleasant Saturday afternoon sun on the sidewalk.

Fuutarou is the first to break eye contact, which he does with another shorter sigh this time.

"Nothing you've said is wrong either. It's just...in my opinion, you have more important things to worry about."

The words reverberate in Yotsuba's ears. More important things...more important things...more important things...

"...but what could be more important than my friends...?" Yotsuba finds herself saying before her brain can register its own actions.

Fuutarou shrugs. "Your sisters?"

"But...my sisters _are _my friends."

"Oh. Makes sense, then - but then, what about all those people in all those clubs at school who want you to join them? Are _they_ all your friends too, then?"

Again, Yotsuba's lips part to speak, but no words spill out.

"You're not sure, huh. Then if they're not your friends, why should you be worrying about them when you could be worrying about how you're gonna be studying?"

"Because - because - " Desperate to defend herself, Yotsuba takes another stand. "Because I want to help people! They don't have to be my friends - if I see someone who needs help, of course I'll go help!"

"Right. And so because of that feeling you have about wanting to help people, you want to do the same for me, correct? Because you worry about me."

"Y-Yeah! That's exactly it!"

"Then you don't want to help me because I'm your friend; you want to help me because you think that's the right thing to do. You worry about me not because I'm your friend, but because it makes you feel better about yourself to do so. That's why I tell you not to worry about me, because I'm afraid that you'll worry about me for the wrong reasons."

Yotsuba freezes up.

"A friend of mine a long time ago told me that when you help someone, you can't help another person. When you save one person's life, you can't save another," Fuutarou recalls quietly. "While this might not apply that strictly, word-for-word, to you, I still think it does, at least to some extent."

"H-How...? Are you telling me that it's not worth my time to help others...?" Yotsuba almost whispers back.

"No, it's definitely worth your time to help others. But only if you truly think it is. Let me ask you, Yotsuba: is it truly worth your time and effort to help out those clubs? To worry about me and my situation?"

Since she can't clench her fists, Yotsuba steels her eyes with determination.

"Yes, absolutely!" she declares, unwilling to give up her position. Seeing the subtle force in her blue eyes, Fuutarou closes his own in acknowledgment.

"Okay. Then let me ask you this next: is it still worth your time if the one person you can't help or save is yourself?"

Once more, Yotsuba's defense is shattered with a single question.

"There's a phrase known as 'opportunity cost'. It basically describes a situation where you lose the opportunity to do something because you spent the time or effort or both to go do something else," Fuutarou explains calmly. "In this case, if you help one person, your opportunity cost is somebody else that you couldn't help. What many people who think the way you do, Yotsuba, don't realize is that that opportunity cost oftentimes isn't all the other people that they want to help. In fact, for some people, they're so good at helping other people that they could realistically help all the people that they want. But oftentimes, the opportunity cost is themselves. They prioritize other people more than themselves and end up suffering as a result, and some of the time they don't even know that they're hurting themselves in the process. And a lot of the time, for the people who do get this, they don't really give it a second thought because they justify it as a necessary sacrifice, because they think that they can handle all the shit that they put themselves through."

Faithfully gazing directly back into Yotsuba's quivering blue eyes, Uesugi takes a short breath.

"For the record, I do think that it's very admirable, all the work you've been doing for those clubs, for people you didn't even know until very recently - you're a far better person than I, that's for sure. And like I said earlier, I really do appreciate your concerns for me and the work I do, since you didn't even know me until a few weeks ago either. It...means more to me than you think. My worry, though, is that you might end up not being able to find the time or the energy to worry about yourself - about your own concerns, your own needs. Which then means that you won't be studying, which is exactly what I, as your tutor, want you to be doing."

By this point, the shock on Yotsuba's face has subsided, but only to be replaced with deep melancholy. Fuutarou beckons to her to start walking again, which they do.

"But what I said from earlier still stands," Fuutarou continues briefly. "Even if I did just give you a super long lecture on all that nonsense, I do believe that you can find that balance between helping others at school and studying."

"Y-You went off on me like that for that long, just to suddenly say it's all nonsense...?" Yotsuba gapes weakly.

"My bad. I tend to rattle off like that...don't take what I said just now that seriously. Just stuff that's been sitting around in my head for too long, I suppose..."

"You sound like our grandfather, Uesugi-san! I didn't know you were already eighty years old on the inside!"

"Haha...well, that's...not _totally _inaccurate, at times...but never mind that." Fuutarou shifts the lockbox onto his left arm so that he can point softly at his student by his side. "Even if I'm fundamentally against it, I'll allow it anyway, as a special little favor for being supportive of me this whole time."

The fourth quint exhales greatly, with something of a mix between a sigh and groan.

"...after all that just now..." Yotsuba mumbles dejectedly, "...now, I'm not so sure...that's a lot of heavy stuff you dumped on me, you know! A girl's heart is delicate, delicate!"

"Sorry. I _did _warn you all that my social interaction skills are trash."

Yotsuba pouts a little back up at Uesugi. "That, and you sure have a lot of faith in me to talk about all that stuff and still say that you think I can do it afterwards."

"Faith, huh..." Fuutarou gazes up at the peaceful afternoon sky. "...yeah, I guess you can call it that. But more importantly - "

He turns to return Yotsuba's gaze.

"All this stuff I said just now - that's not me talking to you as your tutor," he clarifies.

"Not as my tutor?" Yotsuba ponders briefly, but then her eyes suddenly light up. "Then - "

"Yeah. I said all that...as a friend." Fuutarou turns away to look dead ahead. "Because even if we haven't known each other for all that long...even if how we met wasn't exactly organic...it's only natural to worry about someone close to me. Wouldn't you say?"

Yotsuba blinks a few times up at her tutor.

"...Uesugi-san, you hypocrite," she says flatly. "How can you lecture me like that for all that time, and then tell me that stuff because you worry about me?"

Fuutarou's already turned his face away from Yotsuba.

"...Uesugi-san? Uesugi-san? Is there anything you'd like to say?"

"...no comment."

"Ah, that's in English, I know that much! Speaking in another language won't bail you out of this, Uesugi-san!"

"Then there's only one thing left to do."

"Huh?"

Without warning, Uesugi Fuutarou bolts into a run across the sidewalk while holding the lockbox high over his head. With a huge grin retaking its rightful place on Yotsuba's face, she rolls up her sleeves in anticipation.

"Ah! You can't escape me, Uesugi-san! It's _YOTSUBA TIIIIIME!"_

And just like that, Yotsuba chases her own tutor all the way back home, giggling and laughing the whole way forward.


	12. Golden Week - Coffee

_**"WHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! ! ! ! ! !"**_

Six delighted cries of girls fresh on vacation ring through the air as the five Nakano daughters, joined by a surprise guest, stand on the sidewalk of the street directly overlooking a magnificent beach on a perfect sunny day at the end of April. The telltale and welcoming strides of waves rolling up against the sand before them, the Hawaiian beach music playing from stereos in the distance, and the healthy numbers of other tourists, vacationers, and beach-goers enjoying the world-renowned charm and dreamscape of Honolulu's very own Waikiki Beach only serve to add to the excitement of the girls as they stand at the stone divider between the street and the beach sand, feasting their eyes upon this luxurious sight as their elegant private black limousine and its driver await them next to the curb.

"I've always wanted to come to Hawaii ~ ! ! !" Nino just can't contain her joy and is already giddy with overloaded excitement like a small child trying desperately to contain his or her hyperactivity during a sugar rush. "Kyaaaaaaa, this is, like, so - so _awesome!"_

"And seeing that Hawaii's a pretty easy vacation spot, I'm surprised we didn't come here sooner, huh?" Ichika remarks. Even while on vacation, the eldest quintuplet remains the ever steadfast one, though she, too, is clearly enjoying the afternoon April sun and the stunning beach sight.

"I guess it would've happened at some point..." Miku adds, pulling off her headphones to enjoy the ambience of the beach and feel the ocean winds brush against her face, pulling back her bangs to let the breeze sift through her face better.

"I do hope that we can get to our hotel soon, though...it has been while since lunch..." Itsuki sighs, giving her stomach a little rub as much as she'd like to enjoy the sight to its fullest with the rest of her sisters.

"Ah, Itsuki, here, I kept the little Hawaiian bread they were giving away from the tour," Yotsuba says as she happily produces an individually wrapped piece of Hawaiian sweet bread to give to Itsuki, who gratefully takes it and opens it immediately to begin snacking. "What about you, Raiha-chan? How're you enjoying the trip so far?"

The elementary schooler with her eccentric hair style who's been unable to do anything but stare agape into the bluest waters she's ever seen in her life, brought back down to earth by Yotsuba's voice, spins around where she stands, and with almost literal sparkles flying from her big teal eyes, she puts up both fists and hollers,

_"It's so_ _amazing!"_

The rest of the quintuplets look on with gentle smiles on their faces as Raiha practically jumps into Yotsuba's arms, causing the two of them to spin round and round in their mutual excitement of vacationing in Hawaii and giggling and making merry all the while.

"See, Nino? Raiha-chan's a good girl, she didn't cause us any trouble this whole trip," Ichika reminds Nino gently. "No need to worry about her. Besides, she's made our trip more fun too, hasn't she? Just being able to watch her reactions this whole time alone was worth it."

Pouting, Nino averts her gaze quickly, casting her eyes back out at the beach. "I-I was wrong about her at first, okay? Not to be rude to her or anything, but c'mon, you don't know how kids'll react. Kids are just kids, after all!"

"But we were her age at one point too, Nino," Miku adds onto Ichika's words. "That, and...we have more in common with her than you'd maybe like."

Nino clicks her tongue irritably. "Don't need to go any further than that, Miku."

"I know."

"Oh, and, speaking of which, I didn't get the chance yet to talk about this, but..."

Turning suddenly and jamming her finger in the direction of their private limousine, Nino irately locks her eyes onto a boy wearing the rather inappropriate clothes of a high school uniform of a clean white dress shirt and black slacks standing next to the shotgun seat of the limousine.

"What the heck are _you _doing here, exactly!?" Nino barks angrily at the quintuplets' tutor, who turns to face her once the former begins to yap at him. "Because, uh, _hello? _This's supposed to be _our _vacation?!"

"I thought I already explained this to you last week when I stopped by your place to tell you what your dad had in mind for Golden Week plans," Fuutarou answers in a straight deadpan tone. "If I recall correctly, you were just nodding your head and saying 'yeah okay whatever' the entire time that I was talking..."

"Th-That's because I didn't actually expect you to come with us! I thought it was some kind of stupid joke!"

"Nino, since when has Fuutarou said something that he wasn't serious about...?" Miku asks questioningly.

"Seriously. I know you haven't been taking Fuutarou-kun's lessons yet, but still, you've been hanging out with us a lot of the time, surprisingly enough, so you should have at least picked up on that by now, right?" Ichika giggles.

"But I didn't think Papa would actually _let _him come with us! All our vacations up 'til this point were just us five traveling around, wasn't it? Why's it gotta be any different this time...a...round..."

Yet another very awkward silence ensues following Nino's decelerated speech. Miku simply shakes her head quietly and Ichika gives a little bit of a half-amused, half-exasperated sigh.

"Safe to say that you answered your own question just now?" she gives her rowdy younger sister the kind of smile that doesn't fully portray sisterly tenderness.

"Try not to dwell on it, you girls are on vacation right now for crying out loud," Fuutarou calls over, having picked up enough of Nino's words before she eventually silenced herself to know what's going on. "If it'll make you feel any better, Nino, just pretend like I'm not here for the most part."

"I'd love to, thanks for the advice, but I kind of _can't _because of your sister over here!"

"What about Raiha-chan, Nino?" Yotsuba dashes up to her sister quickly with Fuutarou's younger sister riding on her shoulders.

"Whoa, whoa, Yotsuba, isn't - isn't Raiha-chan a bit big for that?" Ichika asks with some concern, looking up at Raiha as she towers over the rest of them.

"It's okay, I've got this! Raiha-chan trusts me, after all! Shi shi shi shi ~ " Yotsuba beams happily, and so too does Raiha act, mimicking her carrier.

"Actually, it's not that bad if Raiha-chan like holds onto your ribbon like they're a joystick or something, now that I think about it," Nino suggests nonchalantly, glad to have something distract them from their earlier awkward silence.

"Oooh, good idea, Nino-san!" Taking the second quint's suggestion, Raiha grabs careful hold of Yotsuba's hair ribbons and starts moving them around in her fists like she's operating a robot. "Yotsuba-san, let's go!"

"Understood, Captain Raiha! Let's gooooooooooooOOOOOOOOO! ! ! !"

Without hesitation, Yotsuba takes her new vehicular role with pride and starts zooming around on the sidewalk, jogging laps around her sisters on the sidewalk as Raiha giggles and laughs hysterically the entire time.

"Remember, Nino, if either Raiha-chan or Yotsuba gets hurt because of what they are doing, you will be held liable for the damages," Itsuki sighs, joining her sisters as she puts the small plastic wrapper of Yotsuba's gifted sweet Hawaiian bread into her pocket so that she can dispose of it properly later, as there are no garbage bins in sight.

"H-How is it gotta be _my _fault? I just gave them the suggestion, Yotsuba's the one who took it."

As the quintuplets enjoy the rest of their brief detour on the street to survey the beach and the view, Fuutarou, turning back to the open window of the limousine, waits on the passenger he's standing next to outside the limousine.

"Your father has deposited the amount just now, Uesugi-kun," the Nakanos' father, Maruo, informs him coolly from within the limousine's passenger seat, tapping away at his own tablet that was briefly displaying some online bank transactions.

"Good. Should I call the girls back?"

"Yes, please do. I would like to spend time with my daughters, seeing that I rarely get a chance to do so."

"Right, right. A'ight, everyone, let's get going again, we gotta make our check-in time for the hotel."

* * *

About half an hour later, after Fuutarou handles the hotel check-in for the Nakanos with his fluent English, the door to the quintuplets' hotel room at Moana Surfrider Resort and Spa clicks open, and as the girls shuffle in, followed by their special guest Uesugi Raiha, all six girls, especially Raiha, squeal in delight at the sight of their unbelievably luxurious hotel room.

It's not quite a "room" - it's more like an entire suite, not unlike their penthouse back at home, minus the separate rooms. Essentially their hotel room on the top floor of the resort is big enough to cover an entire half of the section of the floor where it resides, and all of the walls are tinted one-way glass windows instead, providing a large ninety-degree view of the entire resort complex, the streets down below, the beach, and of course, the magically blue ocean sprawling before them. Five individual queen-size beds sit neatly and majestically against the inner wall of the room, perfectly positioned so that the girls can fall asleep spectating the ocean view right before them. Paintings of iconic Hawaiian scenery and culture decorate the rest of the walls and even some of the furniture, as if it weren't already clear enough that they are in fact vacationing in Honolulu for Golden Week.

Practically beside herself with amazement and unable to contain her excitement any longer for a second time, Raiha dashes straight into the middle of the room like an elementary schooler in the middle of a candy shop with an unlimited candy pass and no idea what to start with, so she eventually belly-dives onto one of the queen-sized beds and snuggles up with the covers, physically unable to make the goofy wide smile on her face go away.

As Yotsuba too joins Raiha on the bed, giggling and laughing all the while, the four quintuplets gaze in awe of their spectacular room, walking further inside to set down their luggage.

"I'll say...this is quite the hotel room we got," Ichika is the first to speak up, as per usual. "I mean, we've been to some fancy hotels before, but..."

"...this is on another level. Even I don't know what to say," Nino scratches her forehead in an uncharacteristically stunned moment of hers. "When's the last time we had a hotel room that let us go to sleep while watching the beach?"

"Well, we _have _been to a lot of beaches before...tropical islands and whatnot, so it's not like this's the first time we've been in a setting like this..."

As Nino and Ichika discuss the merits of their new hotel room that will be their temporary home for the next five days of Golden week and try to make comparisons with all the other hotel rooms they've been in, Itsuki takes a seat down on the foot of one of the unoccupied beds, sighing rather deeply and gazing out to the wonderfully sunny afternoon beach before them.

"Don't like it, Itsuki?"

Itsuki glances up to find her sister Miku also taking a seat next to her.

"No, no...nothing of the sort. It is...this is quite the amazing experience. It is just a lot to take in, that's all..." Itsuki replies with a small smile. "Usually our hotel rooms are not quite this nice. They have been nice, but..."

"On another level, like Nino said, right?"

Itsuki nods.

"How about you, Miku? You do not really care for something like this usually."

"It's different enough that...even I can't help but notice," Miku smiles sheepishly.

"See, I told you it was a lot to take in."

"I know. We'll have to make sure to make the most of this for the next five days."

Miku glances to Itsuki now, and dropping her voice noticeably, she then asks:

"...how has your studying been going?"

Tensing up at the this sudden question out of left field, Itsuki immediately jerks her gaze back at Miku, her relaxed expression now rigidly locking up in response to Miku's inquiry.

"S-Sorry. I asked that...too suddenly," Miku immediately disengages, taking keen note of Itsuki's reaction and backing down accordingly. "Forget I ask - "

"Wait, Miku, hold on," Itsuki whispers, glancing around Miku to check on their other sisters; Ichika and Nino seem to be talking about maybe trying out the resort's beachfront spa later on that night, while Yotsuba is telling Raiha stories of their previous vacations. With everyone else sufficiently distracted, Itsuki focuses back on Miku. "Why did you ask that? I am not angry or anything, I just want to know your context for it. Is it because I have not been participating in Uesugi-kun's lessons yet?"

Miku nods slowly.

"The past couple of weeks he's been tutoring us, every day after we finish, Fuutarou asks us how you've been doing, if you've been studying on your own just fine," she explains in her naturally subdued and quiet voice.

"Ugh...is he _still _asking about me? He sure does not know when to stop," Itsuki groans lightly. "For the record, I still refuse to take his lessons, and I am studying well on my own. Please relay to him that he need not concern himself over me."

"Well, the thing is...we've told him that already, that you're probably determined not to take his lessons at all."

"And he keeps asking that anyway?"

Miku nods slowly, again.

Itsuki frowns deeply. "It must be because of his..._other _responsibilities, even if he denies it. Why else would he so persistent..."

This time, Miku shakes her head. "It's not just because of that. I talked to Papa just before we left for vacation about how he was paying Fuutarou."

"Y-You actually talked to Father about something like that...?" Itsuki stares back at Miku, visibly shocked by this rather brazen act from her normally reserved older sister.

"I just...wanted to know."

"Know what?"

"Fuutarou said a while ago that he needs to work on getting all of us together so he can tutor us all since otherwise, he wouldn't be doing his job completely. At first I didn't really think about it much since he told us not to worry about it, but the more he asked us about how you were doing, the more it dawned on me about what he might've meant, and eventually I got an idea of it, so I asked Papa to confirm."

Itsuki is able to put two and two together so she already has the answer in her head before Miku needs to even say it, but she lets Miku speak it regardless.

"Papa said that he was only paying Fuutarou for the three of us that he's actually tutoring," she reveals softly. "Fuutarou's been giving him regular reports on his progress tutoring us, so Papa uses that information to adjust his salary."

Slowly starting to bite her lower lip, the youngest quint finds herself squeezing her fists lightly on her lap.

"But...but Uesugi-kun could so easily lie about something like that to Father. We know what Father is like, and it seems like he and Father also have known each other for some time too, so he probably knows a lot about him too. It is not as though Father ever really bothers to check on us due to his work, though he is more of an armchair father with how he is around us, whenever he _is_ with us."

"But he hasn't," Miku returns simply.

"And why would he not?" Itsuki repeats herself. "I have eaten dinner with his family - Raiha-chan and Uesugi-kun's father, you all know this. They are poor, so poor that they cannot even afford a proper dinner table to eat at. And...given his _other_ line of work, would it not be entirely reasonable for him to employ more underhanded tactics...?"

"...what makes you think he works like that? With 'underhanded tactics'?" Miku repeats her sister's words calmly.

Slowly averting her gaze, Itsuki finds her eyes naturally dropping to the carpet beneath her and her sister's feet.

"...I mean...that incident...you remember it, do you not?" she croaks. "At that warehouse..."

Itsuki's hands on her lap are beginning to tremble.

"...you don't need to force yourself to remember, Itsuki. It was hard on all of us," Miku murmurs.

Clenching her fists harder to stop the trembling, Itsuki looks back up at her sister. "We all saw what he did back then. Uesugi-kun is a murderer, Miku. Knowing this - "

"He did what he had to do to keep us safe. We've talked about this before," Miku immediately responds, cutting her sister short. "The rest of us don't like how it all happened either, but...in that kind of a situation, what could we have done? We couldn't just tell Fuutarou to _not _kill anyone."

"Regardless, the fact still stands that he is a killer...! And the way he went about it - " Itsuki shudders terribly. "It's as if he - it's as if he were _used _to it, like he knew exactly what he was going to do even before he arrived. And so knowing that he's capable of doing things like that, horrible things like that...how can I trust him to have any sort of integrity with tutoring us? I refuse to believe that a c-criminal like him...a murderer like him has the gall try to treat his tutoring with any sort of integrity after what he showed us that time."

"But even if you say that, Papa already said that he paid Fuutarou for his work for this month before Golden Week vacation started, which was, in fact, only enough to cover three of us, and not you or Nino included."

"Then there must be some other reason. He has already shown us one dirty little secret of his, what is to say that he does not have a dozen more that we simply do not know about?"

Itsuki raises a hand to point up at Miku.

"Let me ask you this, Miku: what about him compels you to act like this? You would never act like this before we knew him - asking me how my studying is going, asking Father something as sensitive as someone else's salary," she points out. "Something has changed about you. What can you say that will convince me that it is not because Uesugi-kun is doing some kind of magic trick to get you on his side?"

"H-He's not doing anything of the sort...!" Miku stammers quickly, finding her cheeks flushing a little.

"Oh, is he not? Your face would suggest otherwise."

"That's just a-a reaction, it doesn't mean anything...and besides," Miku takes a deep breath to compose herself after Itsuki's accusation. "I explained this to Nino already, so I'll repeat it to you. I just want to cooperate with Fuutarou so that he can do his job. You said it yourself...his family's in a rough spot, and since he needs the money, he's taken up this tutoring job to help us go through our first year of high school without trouble. And especially now that I know for a fact that he won't take more money than what he's worked for, I'd like it if...you and Nino could join us as well at some point."

"Then what was the point of you asking me how my studying was going in the beginning?"

"W-Well, that's - I just - didn't know how to start the conversation, I guess..." Miku redoubles her efforts. "But even if you say all those things about Fuutarou, he's not like that. And I'm not saying this because he's done anything weird to me, he really is a decent guy. He's strict and harsh on us while he's tutoring us, but he's always fair. He's always patient with us too, whenever we don't get something that he's teaching us - remember that one time last week when you came down for dinner and Fuutarou was still at home with us, trying to get us to memorize a math formula? He's had to do that a couple times since we're dummies, but...every time, he's never gotten mad with us or frustrated or anything."

Miku turns away from Itsuki to face forward, though her own eyes drop down to the floor like Itsuki's did a short while ago.

"We might not like the way he acts towards us, and...certainly it doesn't exactly help that he's shown us a side of him that maybe we could've lived without knowing, but even still...he works hard, Itsuki. If nothing else, he's a hard worker. And I don't want him to feel like his efforts are going unrewarded. Because we all feel that way too, don't we?"

"...what do you mean by that?"

"We've all studied for tests before. Those final exams we took at Black Rose...that's all I need to mention, right?"

"...I wish you had not."

"Sorry. But...I felt like I had to bring it up, because...we all studied for it really hard. And yet..."

"...and yet, here we are." Itsuki lets her head roll back so that her eyes meet the ceiling for a moment before correcting her posture. "However, I cannot agree to join you and the others with Uesugi-kun. And you need not worry about my studying - I am confident that I will be able to study on my own and make sure that my grades support my ability to study alone. Perhaps you feel that getting tutored by Uesugi-kun is the right choice for you, and I shall respect that. But it is not the same with me."

"...you won't at least do it for Raiha-chan?" Miku asks, a bit desperately as she pulls out the last card in her depleted arsenal.

"Please do not play that card on me, especially when she is _here with us," _Itsuki hisses quietly, visibly disgusted with Miku's last-ditch tactic. "But for the sake of answering, clearly Uesugi-kun is a decent enough person to look after his sister and make sure that despite being poor, she is at least as happy as she can be. I suppose I can give him credit for convincing Father to let her come along with us for this vacation. But in the end, my participation in his lessons do not seem like they affect Raiha-chan's well-being - and on that topic, the money that Uesugi-kun will generate teaching me as well will simply not make a difference in her life. Do you think that just because Nino and I decide to join him if only for the sole purpose of allowing him to earn his full pay will suddenly improve his family's situation? I think not; you would need much more money than that to pull that off."

"E-Even if...even if it won't make an _immediate _difference..." Miku stays in the ring for as long as she can, "...every little bit counts, wouldn't it? Especially for someone like Fuutarou. And besides...if you're right about that...if you're right about the fact that, even if Fuutarou does manage to teach all five of us at once that he won't be able to change his situation still, then...then why does he keep insisting on getting you and Nino together with us?"

"That's...well..." Finding herself on the back foot now all of a sudden, Itsuki struggles to come up with her own counter-response.

"Why does he try so hard to teach us? Why is he putting in so much effort into something that, if you're right, clearly shouldn't change his situation very much?" Miku cashes out on her newfound advantage as much as she can.

"B-Because he is trying to put up a front! Would it not be natural for someone like him to pretend to care about this kind of job?"

"...but what kind of reason would he have to deceive us?"

"How should I know? Perhaps he wants something more from us?"

"Like...what? If there were something else he wanted, along your logic, wouldn't he have already taken whatever he wanted from us by this point?" Miku frowns indignantly, starting to become peeved by Itsuki's constantly antagonistic "he's a criminal!" attitude towards Fuutarou. "You saw what he did to those bad guys during that incident. If people like them couldn't stand a chance, what's stopping Fuutarou from taking whatever he wants from us?"

"He is merely biding his time. He probably wants to get close to us, and then strike when we least expect it."

"Itsuki, has Yotsuba been making you watch too many spy movies with her or something?"

"N-No! What gives you that idea?!" Itsuki pouts back at Miku. "The last thing we watched together was that one Korean drama that Nino is a big fan of. And besides, given that Uesugi-kun is, what did he call himself again, a mage? You do not think that mages are not also capable of deception?"

"But Fuutarou already said that his powers mainly focus on medical practices..."

"And you will trust his words and his words only? Miku, please...stop being so naive."

Having had enough of this fruitless conversation, Itsuki gets up to her feet.

"You may feel comfortable having Uesugi-kun teach you, so if that is what you feel is best for your studies, then I will respect your decision. However, I do not feel the same level of comfort as you do, and so I wish to conduct my studies alone. I appreciate your concern for me, I really do - but when it comes to Uesugi-kun, I do not think we can see eye to eye."

Leaving Miku sitting alone at the foot of their bed, Itsuki retreats into the large and spacious bathroom to wash her hands and her face. Ichika, having noticed the two of them having what looked from afar like a rather serious conversation, steals quick but sharp glances over at her every so often while she's chatting with Nino - Miku's long hair and blue headphones do much to cover her face from the side, so Ichika can't get a good read on her face.

* * *

"Yo, what's up. Not missing us much, I hope?"

_"You fucking nuts, kid? I already miss you two! The office feels so goddamn empty without either of you runnin' around!"_

"Neither of us do much running around the place, though. And stop being so lonely, what're you gonna do once Raiha moves out."

_"That won't happen, I swear to God! I'll keep her here with me until the end of time!"_

"I'll have to file a police report out for you if you're actually serious about that."

_"Ah c'mon, kiddo..."_

"What? I never know if you're actually being serious or not with the way you talk."

Overlooking the beachfront at the roof of the resort, Uesugi Fuutarou, still in his school uniform, surveys the dreamy paradise landscape with his phone up to his ear, connected via international call to his father Isanari.

_"Speaking of Raiha, actually, how's she doing? This should be her first time outside of Japan, you're making sure to keep her safe too, right?"_

"Obviously, no need to even mention it. But she's enjoying it a lot - I'm glad we were able to convince Nakano-san to take her along with us."

_"Yeah, I'll have you know that it wasn't easy convincing him to take her too. You know how he is, that stubborn son of a bitch..."_

"And I'm the guy who has to work with him."

_"Hey, I went to fuckin' school with him back in the day. We were even classmates, y'know?"_

"Yeah, you told me that one before."

_"It's true this time, I swear!"_

Fuutarou chuckles a little, enjoying the hearty high-altitude ocean breeze that blankets his face. The early evening sun has painted the sky a translucent pearl blue with stripes of red, yellow, and orange near the horizon, and Fuutarou's weary eyes feel as though they're being rejuvenated just looking at this incredible view.

"So...did the guy talk yet or no?" Fuutarou asks, dropping his voice somewhat even though it won't matter where he's standing.

_"He did, finally. Managed to break him the night you all left."_

"Why, taking your anger out on him because you won't be seeing us for the next week?"

_"Of course not, whatever makes you think that?"_

"Dad, your voice just dropped by a lot when you said that."

_"Did it? I almost didn't notice. Anyways, I've got good news and bad news."_

"Bad news first, like always."

_"Bad news: apparently they're not the only drug runners in the city who've got liquid Heisei. In fact, he said there're quite a few of them out there, but he doesn't know the exact number."_

"Shit...then this's worse than I thought. Isanari, you've been keeping eyes on the news lately, right?"

_"Sure am. News stories about drugs, police raids and seizures...even the local talk shows had an episode discussing it and such. Drugs are on the rise, no doubt about that. What do you think?"_

"Some drug trafficking is normal; it's to be expected of the city with how much it's developed over the years. As the city grows, more people want to move in and live there, get good jobs and whatnot, but with more people, naturally you'll also have the vultures and the human trash who move in with them, wanting to capitalize on them and the new markets they present. If it weren't to this scale I probably wouldn't even have cared..."

_"But with drugs being so prevalent right now..."_

"...and the fact that one of my tutoring students even had a sample of Heisei on her..." Fuutarou sighs audibly, raising his chin to look up at the evening azure sky. "It's a big concern now. You didn't ask the guy if he knows why drugs are on such a big rise right now? I feel like he'd have an idea."

_"That's a negative. His crew was apparently a small-time crew, nothing like a big gang or anything."_

"Problem is, the city's so new that there hasn't been enough time to build up well-established drug gangs or drug rings even. Add in the city's own aggressive anti-drug campaigns, and it's been difficult getting any sort of organized crime up in the city."

_"Well, that and you've been intervening to make sure they don't get anywhere either."_

"That too."

_"Not Yakuza either?"_

"The Yakuza's at least got honor - that's much more than I can say about most mages. And it takes them time to move into a new territory like our city - they make sure that it's a territory that they can take over with as little hassle as possible. If there's already someone who controls the territory, then depending on who they are, they may be quicker about it, or take even more time..."

_"Or in your case, don't even bother at all."_

"I guess."

_"Hmm...it's gotta be because of some mages then?"_

"More than likely. Since organized crime doesn't really exist in any true fashion in the city, that means drugs are being trafficked on small-scale operations, small enough and numerous enough that the police can't possibly catch everything. Gangs like the one we got our man from, basically, all over the city and doing small-time jobs. Normally small-scale stuff like this doesn't turn into anything big unless there's some kind of major dynamic shift in the city of some kind, something extraneous that happens first that has a domino effect throughout the rest of the city, but nothing like that's going on. So while we have no evidence right now, one of the more likely answers right now is other mages coming into the city, trying to claim it as their own. And since it's Heisei we're talking about..."

_"They're trying to expand their hegemonies by selling drugs?"_

"It's happened before in other places, but just not on this scale to the point where even the general public has an idea of what's going on. Now that I think about it, in recent years the city downtown's been a hotspot for foreign tourists, and their demographic is usually young adults, college students or college age, but they're not enough to explain this level of growth..."

_"And you said that it's the mage creed or whatever that mages act in secret and not let themselves become known or anything?"_

"Right, so this directly violates that. But we have to prove that there are in fact other alien mages who've come into the city doing this shit. We know there's another one in the city, that's for sure, but we can't make any assumptions right now that they're directly involved in this matter. It's likely that they are, but we have no proof..."

_"And that's where I bring in the good news - our guy revealed who his crew's been working with."_

"Nice, hit me. You could've told me that a while ago, I think."

_"Hey, what's wrong with wanting to talk with my son for a little bit?"_

"This is an international call, motherfucker, I'd rather use this money to pay off our own fuckin' debt."

_"Sheesh, kids these days...but alright. H_e_ confirmed that his client, the person who ordered his crew to bring him the quintuplets, is in fact a mage by the name of Shirazumi Rio. Apparently it's some sort of nickname, our guy doesn't know his actual name. Does that ring any bells?"  
_

"Shirazumi Rio...? It doesn't sound familiar right now, did you run it through our database?"

_"I did, but nothing's coming up."_

"Then he's probably a newbie on the block. Wants to get his name out there or something, and the city's a perfect springboard for notoriety - imagine all the reputation you can earn for yourself in a new city that's practically a blank slate, for now."

_"Right...the details about him the our guy gave me matches what we know about him so far. Uses a knife, tends to stalk people and act all creepy and shit..."_

"Great, another one of _those _crazy fuckers."

_"You're goddamn right. Never liked them myself either, mainly because I live with one."  
_

"I'm gonna tell Raiha that you insulted her cooking behind her back."

_"Please don't."_

"Then is there anything else you have to share?"

_"That's it for now. I've extracted as much info as I could outta our guy, he's pretty much squeezed dry by this point."_

"Would've liked it if he gave us more intel on this Rio guy..."

_"Yeah, but I work on him any more and he'll be braindead the next time you see him, and might I remind you that_ you're _the one who doesn't want me doing that_._ What do you want me to do with him?"_

"Drop him off at the hospital like usual. How badly did you break him?"

_"Pretty bad, but he's a resilient motherfucker. He held out as long as he could, I'll give him that."_

"Then yeah, drop his ass off at the hospital and let the ICU handle him. Just make sure to give him the slip before you leave."

_"Yep, yep. Send Raiha my regards."  
_

Tapping off the call, Fuutarou pockets his phone. He would love to have a cigarette right about now, but he doesn't want to risk getting caught by Raiha, especially not around the quintuplets since that'll just cause him nothing but even more trouble. That, and the winds on the roof of the resort don't make it easy to have a nice, relaxing smoke overlooking the beach. Maybe at some point when he's got some time to himself, he'll head down to the beachfront somewhere, find a smoking section, and light up - who knows when he'll have the opportunity to smoke with the beach in plain view again.

Uesugi more or less figured that the mage who was responsible for killing the Nakanos' butler Ebata-san was the one who hired Nino's dealer and his crew to try to kidnap the quintuplets; more or less the only reason why he'd hesitated on assuming the connection was true was to account for the small chance that maybe it could be a different rogue mage who might be after the Nakano girls, but thankfully it's not that complicated of a situation. And if there really were more than a single mage targeting the Nakanos, he'd know about it with the extensive surveillance network that he's put down throughout the city, and they would have immediately alerted him to signs of magic being used throughout the city, which, ever since he's planted his security rune network, he has detected none of, meaning that this Shirazumi Rio mage is laying low for the time being.

Because of the lack of activity from Rio, Fuutarou's been able to get away with these last few weeks not having to worry about him, but now that they have confirmation of Rio's involvement in the incident from that weekend, it's about time that he give him some attention. A knife user with the ability to infiltrate a vehicle without even entering - possible displacement magic, or perhaps small-scale teleportation magic. It's difficult to diagnose his abilities properly with the lack of information outside of Ebata-san's murder case, so he needs to be on his guard - while Fuutarou himself is no fledgling mage, he still considers himself largely inexperienced, though that could be attributed simply because of the lack of modern mages in this day and age. Perhaps that's for the better, but it does mean that whenever an encounter with another possibly hostile mage is inevitable, for the most part, he must fend them off alone.

Perhaps for this one, since he's got many more clients on his hands than usual, he'll give one of his old friends a call. Who knows if he'll pick up, though.

* * *

A few hours later, once the sun has fully set, Fuutarou walks into the resort's main front lobby and directs himself over to the lounge, where he can help himself to a free cup of coffee that he'll need for the night ahead. Since this is their first day in Honolulu, the girls haven't been very active due to their minor jetlag, so they haven't gone swimming yet or done anything noteworthy other than having a luxurious dinner in the resort's in-house restaurant and enjoying a relaxing outdoor spa. On second thought, perhaps those things _are _noteworthy...

By this point, because of their jetlag, the girls should be fast asleep in their room so that their bodies can adjust to the local time here in Hawaii. Fuutarou is used to adjusting to jetlag frequently, so it doesn't affect him as much, though the cup of coffee that he pours for himself will certainly give him a little boost that he can appreciate.

As he finishes pouring the coffee and the live band playing in the lounge for the moderate number of guests that are socializing here pauses its music to begin playing their next song, Fuutarou hears what sounds like a familiar voice as he brings his cup up to his lips to drink.

"Chief, I _told_ you, I'm on vacation right now, this wasn't something I could exactly avoid...!"

That type of speech, the fact that she called someone "Chief"...it must be Ichika, regarding her part-time job that he still has no idea about, mainly because he's never asked Ichika about it. None of the other quints are likely to call anyone "Chief"...with the exception of maybe Yotsuba if she's feeling playful while addressing him, which, admittedly, happens a lot. Nevertheless, Fuutarou concentrates on eavesdropping, making sure to get closer carefully without attracting attention to himself by moving with a casual, almost lazy gait and putting up an appearance of enjoying his coffee.

Ichika sounds like she's nearby, and sure enough, Fuutarou locates her talking to someone over the phone and standing out in one of the side corridors, near a window that allows visual access to the huge swimming pool outside that is one of the prides of the resort. He leans against a nearby wall as close as he can get to Ichika without looking terribly suspicious, raising a hand to his left ear and planting a tiny rune behind it that amplifies Ichika's words specifically when his left eardrum hears her words.

"Yeah, I told you a full week ahead of time before I left, and you said okay, so even if you found another audition for me, it's not like I can just fly back right away, you know...yes, I understand, I'll come in double time to make up for this week...thank you, I'll enjoy myself while I'm here. You too, Chief, have a good night."

Fuutarou waits for Ichika to walk out of the corridor back to the lounge, and when she passes him without noticing him standing against the wall that she's just walked past, he takes a loud sip of his coffee to get her attention, which succeeds and causes her to glance briefly behind her and double-take at the sight of her tutor standing against the wall like he is, sipping coffee.

"F-Fuutarou-kun? Fancy seeing you here..." the eldest quint chuckles awkwardly, caught off-guard by his sudden appearance as Fuutarou stops leaning against the wall to greet her properly.

"Yeah, I just came down to grab some coffee."

"Coffee at this hour...? Oh, is it for a long shift tonight...? If you can even call it a shift, haha..."

"Might as well call it a shift. Though it's what I usually do anyways."

"I've never seen you drink coffee before, though."

"In part because normally I'd have to pay for it."

"Oh..." Ichika smiles awkwardly too. "So that's why, huh..."

"Naturally. I'm a mega-cheapskate, I thought you all knew this. Free stuff is the best stuff."

"Mega-cheapskate, huh? It seems like you know your way around a resort like this just fine, though. You even knew that there was complimentary coffee around here and found it."

"Well, the coffee counter's not exactly _hidden_, you can even see it from the main lobby at a certain angle."

Fuutarou drains the rest of his coffee.

"You know what I'm about to talk to you about though, don't you?" he mutters to Ichika, who immediately averts her eyes.

"...so you _were _listening in just now, right?"

"I only caught the tail end of it, but it was enough to pique my interest. You've never told me about this whole part time job thing that you've been working at."

"I mean, you never asked about it, so..."

"Because it was none of my business, and you've been attending our lessons, so I didn't feel obligated to ask you about it. At least, not until recently."

Fuutarou slowly sets his right hand into his phone pocket.

"And, probably most importantly, I didn't think you'd tell me truthfully even if I did ask you. Especially not around your sisters."

Ichika blinks back at Fuutarou.

"...how did you know...?" she asks weakly.

"A couple things, actually. For starters, every time you needed to leave for your work, you'd always do so in a hurry, like you're always late. Why would a girl like you who's normally super relaxed and chill most of the time, narcoleptic even at times, all of a sudden get all alert and hurry around the time she needs to go to work? Every time one of your sisters asks you where you're going, you always reply with 'work' and that's it, while if you're going somewhere else, you usually tell your sisters exactly where you're going, like the supermarket, the coffee shop, or the department store. And lastly, and most importantly, for the past week, you've skipped out on four out of five of the days I've been over."

Ichika can't stop herself from swallowing back a bit of her saliva in nervousness as Fuutarou lays out the facts before her.

"The first two days or so I let slide, since you'd been attending lessons diligently with Miku and Yotsuba, and you'd only go to work _after _lessons were done. Now, you've been skipping them outright. If you only skipped like one lesson last week, I probably wouldn't have given it much thought - like, you girls have your own lives and agendas, I get that, and I've been doing my best to be as accommodating as I can. But four lessons in a row...you can't blame me for getting a bit curious as to what your job is, especially not after I heard you promising whoever you were talking to just a little bit ago that you'd come in for double the work shifts or whatever you two were talking about."

"W-Well, it's - it's a pretty intense job, what can I say ~ " Ichika gestures a little.

"Pretty intense job, huh? Doesn't really sound like a 'part-time job' to me, then."

"But it is, though! Who says part-times can't be tough?"

"And what sort of part-time job could you be taking as a freshman in high school where your employer asks you to come in to work double shifts? I wasn't aware you were working one of those stereotypical office jobs at some rich company downtown or something."

"I-It's not like that! Just don't worry about it, Fuutarou-kun, I can handle it on my own. You don't need to worry about me."

"Then I won't, and instead I'll worry about what my salary's gonna look like when I have to tell your dad that all of a sudden, I'm only teaching two of his daughters instead of the three like I have been. You don't think he's gonna look at that and think I've been slacking off on my own job?"

"But like, can't you just..._not _tell him that I haven't been showing up? Is it really that big of a deal?"

Fuutarou simply raises an eyebrow down at Ichika.

"...I may not know what your relationship is exactly with your dad, but what _I _know is that he isn't someone to lie to," he responds simply but quietly. "So what makes you think I'll risk losing this tutoring gig by lying to him about your attendance?"

The two of them lock eye contact for a few moments, but Ichika can't hold out against the subtly icy glare of Fuutarou's dull, almost lifeless black eyes and is forced to disengage.

"All I'll say is...it's a job that's very important to me. It...it means a lot," she confides somewhat reservedly, which is unlike her usual big sister-like aura. "And right now, I'm almost at the point where I can take the next big step. I know I've had to sacrifice some of the lessons in order to concentrate on it, and I didn't mean to hide this from you."

"That's fine, I don't mind that part and I won't ask you about your job if you're not comfortable with sharing that with me. But I am at least obligated to ask you if this's going to keep happening, which it sounds like it will."

"Y-Yeah, probably."

"Right. And for how much longer?"

"I don't know. But I'll try to get everything sorted out as fast as I can."

Fuutarou raises an eyebrow at the eldest quint. "Can I trust you with that?"

"Yeah, you can! Just leave it to Ichika-onee-san!" she points her thumb at her bosom confidently, but Fuutarou notes the small little sweat that's popped on her scalp.

"Then I'll leave you be. But I do hope that you can sort out whatever it is that you're working on - as much as I'd love to just let you do whatever, as your tutor I _will _step in if I feel like your part-time's interfering with your grades."

"It won't get to that point, I promise."

"Alright, then..."

Shrugging with acceptance, Fuutarou heads back to the coffee table to dispose of his empty coffee cup, with Ichika in tow.

"Actually, now that you're here, there's something I'd like to talk to you about, Fuutarou-kun, if you're not too busy at the moment," she chirps up, trying to shake off the sudden shock of meeting Fuutarou here in the lounge like this so unexpectedly.

"That's rare, you having something to talk to me about," he remarks, turning to give her back his attention after he tosses away his cup. "What's up?"

"I saw Miku having a pretty serious conversation with Itsuki earlier today when we first got our hotel room. Miku doesn't usually do that; it's usually one of us who has to go over to Miku to have a serious talk, since she's pretty introverted. So I asked her what was up, and she told me that she was trying to get Itsuki to come join our lessons with you."

"Hm, yeah, that's certainly not like her, I don't think."

"Right? So I asked her why, and she said she feels like you've been putting in the work, and so she just wants to try to help you as much as she can."

"By trying to convince Itsuki to come join us, huh...I guess she might've done the same to Nino at some point, then."

"Maybe, I didn't ask her if she tried talking to Nino yet or not."

"Honestly, I don't want her doing that."

"Why not?"

"Because it'll make her seem like she's got feelings for me or whatever, trying to get those two to come over. I don't want her to get accused of that, I'm sure that's not even the case either."

"Oh ho ~ you care about Miku like _that, _huh...?" Her eyes growing leery and predatory, Ichika seizes her opportunity to pounce on Fuutarou...figuratively. "She's definitely been your best student among us three, so I guess it's only natural that you'd feel biased for her, right ~ "

"Like I said, it's not like that," Fuutarou frowns in annoyance. "I've dealt with people enough to know that that's a possibility, and it's even more applicable here since you're all sisters. The last thing I need is to tutor you girls while you're all on less than ideal terms with each other. Not to mention, getting Nino and Itsuki to take lessons with everyone is supposed to be _my _responsibility."

"Maybe so, but now that I think about it, isn't it _because _she might have feelings for you that she feels compelled to go to Itsuki asking her to join us?" Ichika suggests rather teasingly. "Because you even said it yourself right? That this doesn't feel like something she'd do normally. Not to mention, I've noticed that over the past few weeks that you've been tutoring us, she's been opening up to you little by little. She almost never does that for anyone else."

"Well, I _have _been seeing you girls basically every day for the past three weeks. I'd hope that this were the case, right? We should be at least on good terms so that I can do my job as effectively as I can."

"Aww, c'mon, just admit it if you have feelings for her too, Fuutarou-kun."

Rolling his eyes, Fuutarou groans softly. "I guess it _is _like you to fuss over something like this. I don't think that's the case, you're probably just overreacting."

"Hey, I'm her _sister_, you know. Sisters just know this type of thing!"

"Fair, but Miku was pretty neutral towards me in the beginning, wasn't she? I'm not saying she couldn't have had a change of heart since then, but she's just trying to help me, I'm sure. Not because she likes me or whatever."

"Aha, I know! It's because you're embarrassed that a girl likes you. I bet you don't normally get to hang out with cute girls like us, huh?"

"Calling yourself cute...you've got some guts, don't you."

"But am I wrong, though?" Ichika blows a small kiss at Fuutarou, who physically banks to his right as if to dodge it.

"I'm not the best person to ask that. Like you said, I don't hang out with people in general if I can help it, let alone girls like you."

"Ooohhh, so I get it, since you don't hang out with girls really whatsoever, we're cute because you don't have any other idea of what cute is. I see!"

"Wow, and here I was thinking you were a nice girl. Turns out you've got some spice to you."

"I do like spicy food every once in a while, so that makes sense." Ichika takes a step towards her tutor. "But back to being serious, I think you should talk to Miku at some point this week, just you and her. Because when I talked to her earlier today, it seemed like she was trying her best to help you out, and she wasn't having a lot of luck, it didn't seem like. The whole feeling situation aside, you should at least talk to her about it, since there was no way for you to've known about what she's been trying to do for you unless one of us told you about it, and it sure as heck isn't going to be Itsuki. And it's not like Miku's going to tell you herself either, right?"

Scratching the back of his head, Fuutarou gives back an expression of uncertainty.

"I don't get why I'd need to, but...if nothing else, I could probably tell her to stop trying to convince her sisters and just let me handle that on my own, I suppose..."

"I can hook you two up. We're going to be pretty busy for the next two days, but afterwards our schedule should be a lot lighter. I can have Miku meet you on Wednesday or Thursday."

"Today's what, Sunday? Sure, just let me know, I guess."

"I'll give you my number real quick. You should really get everyone else's numbers too."

"Nah, not now, that'd be a bit weird..."

"Then later, okay?"

"I'll think about it."


	13. Golden Week - Ginger Peach Tea

"Raiha-chan, be careful out there! Yotsuba, Itsuki, make sure you all don't go too far!"

"Okaaaay!"

The eldest three quintuplets stand on the warm beach sand of their early afternoon Tuesday, watching their two youngest siblings set off into the waves with their last-minute VIP, who's already beside herself squealing and laughing with all the joy in the world at her first sensation of playing in the ocean waves.

"I know I made those three wear sunscreen, but did you two put on yours too?" Ichika asks Nino and Miku.

"I did mine already, don't worry about me," Miku nods.

"Still have to put mine on, I was helping Yotsuba put hers on. You know how she is every time we go to the beach wherever, she _never _puts hers on fully..." Nino sighs as she takes a look around. "Not too many people, surprisingly. I thought the beach would be more packed than this..."

"It's Tuesday afternoon, after all. There aren't really a lot of events going on right now...and I think the Americans' spring break is already done for the most part," Miku reasons. She adjusts the top of her two-piece white bikini with horizontal solid blue stripes, one for each piece.

"Better for us, though, isn't it? Less people, more beach for ourselves," Ichika nods.

"Yeah...plus less people ogling at us, too," Nino frowns in annoyance, glancing down at her chest that is impossible to miss for the average heterosexual human male. Without her normal everyday clothes to help cover her up, her 88-cm bust is in painfully full view for any passerby to get an eyeful of. It's secretly the reason why Nino is specifically wearing a purple two-piece bikini with vertical black stripes with a top that covers up the entirety of her cleavage, so that it will dissuade onlookers from having their eyes automatically drawn like matching magnets directly to her chest.

"Oh come on, Nino, stop being so shy about your figure. Look, none of the rest of us have ever had any problems, have we? Just embrace it, embrace it!" Ichika laughs, reaching over and pinching the side of Nino's top to tug a little on it.

"S-Stop, geez. And aren't _you _being too careless? Ever since we all started growing up, every beach vacation we've ever taken, we always had guys stare at us constantly! Some of them even thought we were legal, remember that?"

"But that was a long time ago...can't you just take it easy for today? Like you said, there aren't even that many people around. You can afford to take it easy this time, can't you?"

"Tell Papa to reserve the entire beach for a day, and _then _we'll talk!"

"Sure, okay. You think Dad won't?" Ichika turns to stoop down to their beach mat on which the quintuplets' bags, extra clothes, towels, and beach supplies and accessories sit to fetch her phone.

"W-Wait, wait, you don't need to, you don't need to!" Panicking at her older sister's seriousness, Nino grabs Ichika's arm to stop her.

"Haha, I wasn't actually going to. Dad did say he needed to make some some work-related calls today, so I don't want to get him mad."

"By the way, Nino, the age of consent is 13," Miku informs her sister, holding up her phone to show Nino the evidence. "So _technically_..."

"Th-Th-They're all still creepers! And besides, I bet you anything that's _Japan's _age of consent, not for other countries! We're in Hawaii, so we're on American soil, right? What's America's age to consent?"

"Let's see..." Miku taps in her phone quickly. "It's...16."

"There you go! We're only 15, so if I see any guy coming over to try to hit on us, I'm kicking his ass!"

"Hey, hey, relax, Nino, no need to make a scene about it. Besides, you're the one who always go on about hot guys back home, right? You love watching those talk shows of yours with those super duper hot actors or whoever."

"That's another matter!" Nino retorts, unable to stop her cheeks from heating up. "That's harmless, okay? But nothing good's gonna come out of some random dude trying to hit on any one of us. I refuse to believe it!"

Miku notes that while Nino has always been very protective of her sisters like this in the past, she's being more aggressive about it than before. She wonders whether or not the incident at the warehouse is to blame for this...but obviously that isn't something she can just ask aloud, so she keeps it to herself.

"Well, again, there aren't that many people around, so I really do think you don't have to worry as much today," Ichika insists, taking another look around the beach, and sure enough, the beach, including the large resort patio nearby overlooking the ocean, is only moderately occupied to the point where the quintuplets have their little section of the beach all to themselves. "Alright, Nino, let's get that sunscreen on ya. Miku, you wanna help out?"

Miku shakes her head. "Nino's gonna complain about how I'm doing it wrong..." she mutters.

"You _do, _though! You don't spread out the sunscreen well enough."

Simply pouting back, Miku takes a seat down next to Nino anyway on the mat underneath their large beach umbrella that gives them ample shade from the bright Hawaiian sun, browsing the net on her phone over international data while Ichika applies sunscreen diligently, making sure to cover her sister's skin fully to prevent any suntans.

"Time sure flies, huh? It seems like it's only been a few hours since we first landed here in Honolulu," Ichika remarks with a somewhat bittersweet sigh. "Getting beachside manicures, spas, and massages, all while drinking strawberry limeades and mermaid lemonades, going hiking in the trails nearby, playing mini-golf..."

"Eh...it's all stuff we could've done back at home, if you put it that way," Nino replies lazily, enjoying the relaxing sensation of her older sister's hands working diligently. "Not like we had to come down here to Hawaii to do any of that."

"Aw c'mon, Nino, it's Hawaii! What schoolgirl our age _wouldn't _wanna go vacationing in Hawaii? Actually, now that you mention it, weren't _you _the one who was most excited about it when we landed here?"

"I-Ignore that particular detail, okay?"

"Haha, okay, sure, sure. By the way, Nino, you wanna come with me later to try the indoor rock climbing tower?"

"Rock climbing...? I'll pass...that sounds like something Yotsuba would like, why don't you try taking her?"

"Well, because I know she'll say yes. It's better if I try asking one of you girls who usually doesn't do that kind of stuff, you know?"

"Why, though? You probably already knew what I was gonna say."

"Because we're on vacation - we should step outside our comfort zones a little, shouldn't we? Let ourselves go a little. I don't know about you, but Miku, Yotsuba, and I were all studying really hard with Fuutarou-kun for the past few weeks, so I'm in the mood to make the most out of this vacation this time around."

At the mention of Fuutarou, Miku's eyes glance to the right over at Ichika, who notices the subtle movement and raises her own gaze to meet Miku's for a brief moment. Realizing that she's been spotted, Miku quickly averts her eyes back down to her phone.

"As if we don't ever do that for any others..." Nino turns her head to Ichika as the latter works on the former's legs, pouring out a fresh dab of sunscreen. "But then again, now that you've brought that up, didn't you, like, totally skip last week's lessons with Uesugi?"

"Aha, you got me there. Yeah, I only attended one of them the week before we came here," Ichika chuckles in defeat. "I ran into him the other day, and he gave me a little lecture about it."

"At least Ichika comes to his lessons..." Miku snorts a little. Nino, a bit miffed at this remark since it's quite clear to whom Miku intended that for, clicks her tongue in annoyance.

"I ain't comin' to his lessons, if _that's _what you're asking," she retorts back. "And your little goody-two-shoes act won't work on me, Miku. I know how you've been acting lately, being real nice to Uesugi and all - you think you're doing him a favor by trying to get me to come join you all?"

Miku's eyes flash very briefly with a surge of emotion vested in her blue pupils, but Ichika, having kept a good eye on her as soon as Nino started talking, raises her hand at her to stop her from doing anything.

"Now, now, you two, play nice," she says calmly and soothingly, effectively diffusing the situation before it can even begin. "You can worry about that _after _we come back home from vacation - we didn't come here to start arguing now, did we?"

"Speaking of Fuutarou, now that you two mentioned him, where has he been for the past two days...?" Miku wonders aloud, lowering her phone in the process.

"Huh..." Ichika pauses her sunscreen application to think briefly. "That's...that's a good question...I don't know either. Last time I saw him was two days ago, I'm pretty sure..." She looks over at Miku. "Miku, have you seen him at all lately?"

Miku shakes her head in response.

"It's better off that way, isn't it? He even told us that he'd stay out of our way so that we can feel like this vacation's just between us and his sister," Nino shrugs, having laid her head back down against her arms on their beach mat. "So who cares what he's doing...probably doing more top-secret stuff like he always seems like he's doing. Don't bother worrying about him..."

Gripping her phone a bit more tightly, Miku lightly squeezes a bit of flesh inside her lower lip with her teeth before speaking out, "Even if - even if that's the case, it's still...it's still going to be a waste for him to come with us all this way and...and just spend all week...you know, um..._not _having fun. We might not know what he's doing, but what're the chances that he's off vacationing on his own?"

"Right...given what little we do know about him, he's not here to party like we are," Ichika agrees rather somberly. "I just hope he takes things a bit more easily than he usually does, I guess."

"Like, we even asked him if he brought a swimsuit or anything for the trip, since he showed up at our place literally in his school uniform..." Miku murmurs, pulling her knees up against her chest and resting her lower face against her knees. "...and he said no."

"He didn't even bring a suitcase..." Ichika sighs, shaking her head. "Just a backpack with some spare old clothes in it, apparently. How do you even travel abroad without a suitcase...?"

"Oh what's the big deal...clearly he knows what he was getting himself into. You're wasting your time worrying about him, both of you," Nino drawls. "And besides, he was probably more concerned with what Raiha-chan would pack. You've seen how he acts around his sister, right?"

"Yeah, he seems a lot like Itsuki in that sense, honestly," Ichika giggles. "Always making sure that Raiha-chan has everything ready, that she isn't forgetting anything, that she's eaten breakfast and brushed her teeth and all..."

"Even if he doesn't say anything about it, I really do feel like it's a waste for him to not come and have fun with us..." Miku repeats herself, and her sad tone permeates her voice more deeply.

"Oh, that's rich, coming from the one who does the _least _amount of stuff whenever we're on vacation because she'd prefer to be on her phone or have her headphones on all day," Nino snickers.

"Says the one who spends most of _her _vacation time looking for the nearest hair salon and beauty shop whenever we go anywhere," Miku fires right back. "And weren't you just talking about how you don't want guys to hit on us? How's getting beauty treatments working out for you then?"

"Excuse me, I only do that once we've done all the other important stuff. On top of which, after what _almost _happened that weekend, can you blame me for trying to keep an eye out for everyone?"

"Oh dear, we're getting a little heated up now, aren't we? We should go join the others in the water, c'mon, let's g - " As soon as that sensitive topic gets brought up, Ichika attempts to divert her sisters' attention, raising her own voice to accomplish this, but Nino is having none of it.

"Actually, here's a better question: how the hell did we end up talking about Uesugi? Did he not specifically tell us that we should just act like he isn't here when we arrived here on the first day? We were doing perfect for the last two days, so why's there a need to bring him up _now?"_

Nino now sits up, since Ichika's gotten most of her body down with sunscreen, to address her sisters sitting up.

"Seriously, forget about his dumb ass and pretend he doesn't even exist. I don't wanna even have to _think _about him with how often he's been over at our place for his stupid tutoring thing..."

"But it's not like _you _were one of the ones taking his lessons, so why are _you _tired of him?" Miku snaps back.

"What do you mean?! I'm not like you or Ichika or Yotsuba, I don't like him! So of course I'll be tired of him if he's at our damn house five days out of seven! And some days he even stays longer too, and on those days he's teaching while I'm cooking dinner for everyone!"

"But what reason do you have to be tired of him, exactly?" Unable to stop herself, Miku turns where she sits on the beach mat to confront Nino directly. "You don't take his lessons, you always treat him badly whenever he's over, you won't even give him dinner on the days he has to stay over late - heck, you don't even _offer _him any dinner on those days to begin with. And that's _without _taking the context of that weekend into account."

"Hey, hey, Miku, calm down, please - " Ichika tries to mediate, but again, Nino indirectly doesn't let her by jabbing back at her younger sister.

"Oh, so you don't have a problem with some random guy walking into _our _house five days out of seven just because he's our - _your _tutor? You don't have a problem with a guy who's casually acting like he's a big part of our lives all of a sudden?"

Miku simply raises her eyebrows at Nino.

"...well, seeing that he _saved our lives_ that night, I think he kind of _is _a big part of our lives now, whether we like it or not."

"Oh, so just because some guy happened to save our lives, all of a sudden, now we're obligated to just let him into our house most of the week and - and _fawn_ all over him in appreciation?" Nino growls in retaliation, gesturing widely with her arms for emphasis.

"I'm not saying that, Nino, but I think that the least we _can _do is let him tutor us like he was originally meant to. Is that so hard?"

Beginning to grind her teeth together and gnash them somewhat at Miku, Nino manages to swallow her anger towards her sister and swiftly gets up to her feet.

"Fine. If none of you think it's a problem, then I'll handle it myself!"

Ichika and Miku look on as Nino stomps off the beach mat, heading over to the large resort patio in the distance.

"Wait, Nino, where are you going?" Ichika calls after her, also having gotten up to her feet just in case.

"To get some drinks for us. I need to walk this one off..." Nino shouts back without even turning around at her sisters. Miku and Ichika continue to watch Nino shuffle bare-footed across the sand towards the patio, where there is a bar that serves free complimentary drinks to the guests of the resort.

"Ugh...there she goes again..." Giving off her biggest sigh of the day, Ichika sinks back down onto the beach mat. "You girls can be a bit of a handful sometimes..."

"...sorry. I'll admit...I went a bit overboard there...and it wasn't called for..." Miku mutters apologetically. "It's just...you know how things can be between me and Nino..."

"Yeah...I definitely do..." Ichika lies down on the beach mat where Nino was laying a few moments ago, closing her eyes and resting the back of her right hand against her face. "I guess you two would've turned out like this no matter what, since your personalities are so different, but...lately, you two've been fighting a lot more than usual, it feels like..."

Miku resumes her sitting fetal position with her legs pressed against her bikini'd chest. "...Nino _is _right, though. About Fuutarou being a big part of our lives now."

"Wait, but you were the one who pointed that out, though."

"Well, I mean, as in...it's understandable that that's how she reacts."

"I see...because of what she wants, right..."

"Yeah."

Ichika exhales deeply, shifting her hand off her face so that she can gaze up into the underside of their beach parasol.

"...I still remember that promise she made to us back then. Remember it, Miku?"

Miku nods. "It came up between me and Nino when we talked a few weeks ago, right after..._that _weekend."

"What did you two talk about then?"

"What I tried talking to Itsuki about. Just...trying to get her to join us in taking Fuutarou's lessons..."

"Oh, so you _did _talk to her about that. Figured you'd've done that, after I saw you talking to Itsuki earlier..."

"All I really want is for everyone to let Fuutarou tutor them..." Miku mumbles, still holding her phone. "...that's all."

Pausing for a few moments, Ichika then slowly sits back up.

"Hey, Miku, mind if I ask you something?"

"Hm?"

"Why do you go out of your way like this, trying to convince Nino and Itsuki to join us in the tutoring? It's not normally like you to do that."

"...I just said it, didn't I? I just want Fuutarou to be able to do his job properly."

"No, I get that, but...are you sure it's not for another reason? Like..." Ichika leans in a little towards Miku. "...like, maybe, you have...feelings for him?"

Miku's cheeks flush immediately.

"F-Feelings - " she stammers quickly, her eyes dashing elsewhere away from Ichika, whose eyes flash at this clear piece of evidence.

"Oh ho ho ~ things are getting nice 'n juicy now, aren't they ~ " she chuckles deviously, leering a little at Miku.

"Hey, what do you mean by that..."

"Nothing, nothing ~ "

"No, I'm serious, it's not...it's not because of anything like that..."

"Uh huh, it's not? Then what else could possibly make our shy and reserved Miku step out of her comfort zone on her own and try convincing her rowdy sisters to come study with us and Fuutarou-kun?" Ichika coos teasingly, reaching over a little and lightly booping Miku square on the nose. "And you look like you have so much _fuuuun _whenever Fuutarou-kun's over at our house to teach us ~ "

"Th-Th-That's only b-because - because it's better to get involved, right? And - and - and I don't want his teaching to go to waste - " Miku keeps stammering, her brain working overtime to come up with excuses, but when she realizes that Ichika still has on her devious look, Miku starts pouting. "Geeeeeez, Ichika, you're teasing me right now, aren't you? Aren't you!"

"Hahaha, yes, yes I am, I admit it," Ichika gives off a much appreciated laugh to break down the icy atmosphere that Nino has left in her wake. "But really, Miku, be honest with me. Ever since Fuutarou-kun started tutoring us, and especially after _that _weekend, as much as I would rather not bring it up, you've been opening up a lot more. You've been cooperating with him more, you're talking with him more - heck, even when he's _not _with us, you've been more lively in general than you were before."

"R-Really...? I don't...think I've changed _that _much..."

"Believe me, you have. It's almost like there's a different Miku living with us now," Ichika testifies. "I don't need to prove it to you, you already know it yourself. All I want to know is your reason, and given the changes in your behavior over the past couple of weeks, you're acting just like a girl who's in love, or at the bare minimum, you're behaving like a girl who's just gotten herself a really good boyfriend. And might I remind you that the last few times I was there for his lessons, _you _were the one who's been greeting him at the door to let him in, and not Yotsuba?"

By this point, Miku cannot guard against the torrent of facts rushing at her from Ichika and presses her entire face against her knees in an effort to hide her embarrassment.

"...I don't know what's going on, Ichika," she finally relents, pulling her face a tiny bit out of her knees but still unable to return Ichika's gaze. "Ever since that weekend...it's like...it's like I'm feeling more comfortable whenever Fuutarou's around...and I don't really know why. Is it because I really do like him? Or is it only because he saved our lives that night? You're right just now, I know...I know that I've been changing the past few weeks. I've been trying to hide it, but it makes sense that you're the one who isn't fooled..."

"Call it an older sister instinct," Ichika beams. "Anyway, go on?"

"All I know is that now that we know more about him, I want to help Fuutarou out wherever I can. Like...like maybe I feel like it's the least we can do for what he's done for us so far," Miku continues. "But I don't know if I feel that way just out of pity, or just out of obligation...or because it's...something more than that..."

Ichika then scoots a little closer to her pensive sister.

"I think you really might have a thing for him, Miku," she whispers with a coy smile, causing Miku to shake her head quickly in denial. "I'm serious, you know. All these changes in your behavior, from your attempts to convince Nino and Itsuki to study with us to you just looking happier and having more of a confident air about you instead of walking around feeling like a wallflower all day - and now that we're talking about this, you're easily getting all bothered about the topic...I mean, since you don't really talk about this kind of stuff, I don't really know what your type is, but Fuutarou-kun's got that serious and mysterious air about him, right? You might be into that, maybe."

Miku doesn't say anything at first - her silence indicates to Ichika that she may be considering this possibility, or perhaps putting more thought into this possibility.

"E-Even still, I don't...I don't know for sure. It's not like I get embarrassed just from being around him or anything...I know it's not to that level; just comfortable, like I said," she responds, trying to hold her ground. "For now, I just want to help him, just like how he's helped us. I haven't even talked to him much so far either..."

Hearing this, Ichika feels a light bulb go off in her head - she hasn't yet had the chance to make good on her promise to Fuutarou that she'd set up some sort of meeting between them. Now that Miku's unwittingly given her this chance, she springs into action.

"Then why not spend some time alone with him, hmm...?" Ichika continues whispering to Miku. "How about it? I got Fuutarou-kun's number the other day when we ran into each other; I figured it'd be handy to have in case of any emergencies while we're here. You said earlier that you want him to have fun while he's here too, right? You can help him out with that."

"But why does it have to be me...?"

"Oh c'mon, don't give me that right after you sat here talking about how you don't know what you feel towards him. That's the whole point, isn't it? To find out what you really feel towards him. You never know ~ "

"But he's...he's probably busy right now..."

"So you don't want him to hang out and have fun, then?"

Miku pouts again at Ichika, who turns to grab her own phone. "Geez, you're being mean, Ichika..."

Sliding her finger down her phone screen, the eldest quint tugs a little on her own black bikini top as she pulls up a new text to send to their tutor.

"Besides...what're the others going to think? Even if I sit here and talk about how I want Fuutarou to come join us or whatever, I haven't considered what Yotsuba and Itsuki think...not that it'd be difficult at all to know what they'd say about it..."

"Now now, you can't go and start second-guessing yourself like that. That's a bad habit to have, you know? Gotta be decisive about these things. If you want something, you gotta reach out and take it yourself. Like this - _shark bite!" _Ichika suddenly grabs Miku's right wrist tightly. "Gotcha ~ "

"That's not exactly the best joke you could make while we're at the beach..." Miku grimaces a little, apparently unfazed.

"Shucks, that trick works on Itsuki better..."

"Well yeah...it's Itsuki we're talking about. She'll run away from watching a movie the moment you say it's got a zombie in it." Miku notices Ichika punching in a text on her phone with her right hand, and it's only then that she notices to whom she intends to send this text to, and what her text is saying. "I-I-Ichika - ?! Wait, wait, wait, what are you - !"

"What, I told you what I was doing, didn't I? I'm gonna text him and tell him to meet up with you at the patio over there," Ichika points over to the same outdoor patio area where Nino has headed for drinks.

"But - But - !"

Sighing once more, Ichika lowers her phone mid-text and loosens her grip on Miku's right wrist for a more tender and sisterly hold.

"I know it's a bit sudden, Miku, especially for someone like you who normally isn't into dating and stuff like that. But we're in high school now - we're already at that age where time feels like it's flying by. You've only got three years of high school in your life, and that's it. That's why you should at least try to see if Fuutarou-kun really is the boy for you. And even if it doesn't work out, at least you'll know what to look for in a guy going forward."

"...I'd really rather just...take things like that at my own pace..." Miku lowers her gaze back down at their beach mat.

"But you don't know what your own pace is for things like this. And how could you? This is the first time I've ever seen you acting this way around a boy. If I don't give you a little push like this, how long will it be before you finally make the first step on your own? What if another girl comes along and takes him away, you know? Do you want that, then?"

Once more, Miku relapses into silence, and Ichika takes this opportunity to finish her text.

"It doesn't have to be anything big, Miku. Since I suggested this to him already, he won't be taken by surprise or anything - "

"Wait, _you already told him that you'd be doing this...?!" _Miku whips around with a kind of quickness the likes of which Ichika has never seen come from the third quintuplet who's more infamously known for being the least athletic among the five of them.

"Er - uh, oops..." Ichika can do nothing but stick out her tongue a little at her own little slip-up. "Yeah, I...I told him about how you'd been behaving lately with Nino and Itsuki when I ran into him the other day at the start of vacation in the resort, and that was when I suggested to him that I'd maybe set him up to come hang out with you, hence why he shouldn't be surprised or anything when I text him about it now."

As Ichika is revealing her actions from two days ago, Miku buries her face into her hands, groaning faintly.

"...I didn't...want him to know about that..." she confesses weakly, causing Ichika to chuckle a little with sympathy. "...that I was...trying to get Nino and Itsuki to come study with us..."

"Sorry about that. If you'd told me that you didn't want Fuutarou-kun to know about it, I would've kept it a secret. My bad, Miku."

But Miku shakes her head, lowering her hands as well once this wave of embarrassment manages to subside.

"I suppose Fuutarou would have found out about what I was doing at some point or another," she reasons to herself. "If I did manage to convince Nino and Itsuki to study with us, then Fuutarou would've been suspicious about their behavior and start asking them about what got them to join us..."

"That's a good point...Fuutarou-kun's smart enough to figure that one out too...and send." Ichika shows Miku her phone that displays the text she's sent to their tutor. "And there you go, Miku. I've got him to meet you at that patio over there at exactly six-thirty tomorrow evening, right after we're done with dinner."

Her lips twisting slightly with nervous uncertainty, Miku once again lets her eyes drop to the beach mat on which the two sisters sit once they've scanned Ichika's text to Fuutarou.

"Just relax, Miku. It's just Fuutarou-kun - we've known him for three weeks now, so it's not like he's some sort of stranger to us still, right?"

"But there's still so much about him that we don't know...just because we've known him for three weeks and we have him tutor us almost every weekday, doesn't mean we know each other enough to call each other 'friends' yet, do we...?"

"Well, that's why opportunities like this exist, so that we _can _get to know each other better. That way, you can become comfortable with calling each other friends, and then, and then ~ " Ichika clasps her hands together with the potentially romantic notion. "And then, maybe, just maybe, something beautiful can blossom from it ~ !"

Miku narrows her eyes suspiciously at Ichika. "You're sure getting pretty into this, Ichika. You sure you're not just doing this because it's amusing to you?"

"Aha, you got me there ~ "

"You should really stop watching all those dramas with Nino and Yotsuba..."

"No way, those are great. Tell you what, if you're feeling really nervous about it still, I'll come with you, but I'll just watch from a distance so that it's still just you and Fuutarou-kun. How's that?"

"I-I'll be fine on my own. I think..."

* * *

Having reached the outdoor patio, Nino waits in line with a disgruntled face and her arms crossed. While her English is still very weak, it's the best out of her sisters', and she knows enough to at least be able to read basic English words that commonly show up in stores and restaurants and correspondingly order them or buy them. As it's a relatively empty Tuesday afternoon, the patio itself is not very occupied either, save for the bartenders who also manage the drink counter and a few small groups of men and women either sitting at the bar counter watching some sports on large flatscreen televisions hanging off the ceiling of the patio roof or standing around enjoying the ocean and beach view. The line itself to the drink counter isn't long - as a matter of fact, Nino's the only one technically _in _line; there is a young woman also in swimsuit chatting casually with the clerk in English who clearly either doesn't know that Nino is behind her waiting for her to finish or doesn't care. Either way, this gives Nino some time to reflect.

Thinking back, Nino realizes quietly that she's actually been technically present at a rather alarming number of Fuutarou's lessons. While not actively studying with them at the glass table in the living room, she's either frequently sitting at the dinner table on her phone or in the kitchen cooking dinner or baking cookies and other such snacks for her sisters, while also begrudgingly letting the tutor have some of them too. Naturally, all the while, she's been listening to them study, listening to Fuutarou teach her sisters as a sort of pseudo-audience. It's almost as if she's studying with her sisters by proxy...but of course it's not quite the same as actually getting involved.

Nino is well aware of what her behavior's been like over the past few weeks in relation to Fuutarou's tutoring for her sisters. She didn't expect herself to end up spectating their lessons like she has been - for example, during Fuutarou's first week of lessons, she'd been absent from home to hang out with her friends in the city. However, such outings with friends could only last so long because of her recent arrival at their new high school, and there are only so many new friends she could make - and she didn't exactly like the crowd back at their old academy, so she has no real desire to go meet up with people from there. So once the new friends she did make at their new school had been exhausted of their social gatherings and returned to commandeer their own lives, Nino was left with no real excuse to leave the house during the times that Fuutarou would come over to tutor.

This was especially true following the wake of the incident at the warehouse - once promises to go hang out with friends dried up going into Fuutarou's second week of tutoring, Nino didn't want to head out of the house alone. Getting kidnapped, getting rough-handled, getting restrained, bound, and taken to a place where there would be a very real possibility that she could simply disappear, just like the stories of kidnapping victims that she's heard about growing up and on the news...not to mention how one of those thugs even tore her clothes open -

Nino quickly presses her teeth together behind pursed lips to banish the memory.

But try as she might, Nino cannot deny the fact that the incident has rattled her more than she cares to admit, but what she's frustrated about is how, because she doesn't know _how _exactly she's disturbed by that incident, only that she _is. _It's not as if she has nightmares about what happened that weekend, and it's not like she's been stricken with some sort of trauma because of it, like she's going to turn into a blubbering mess if the topic happens to be brought up. But lately, even the mere thought of heading out alone at night has been daunting in a way that it hasn't been before the incident. Say all you want about how she brought this whole incident upon herself, but Nino feels more annoyed at herself more than anything that she's letting something like this bother her to this extent.

Perhaps the worst thing about it all is that she obviously cannot talk about this with her sisters. Somebody like Ichika or Itsuki - hell, even Miku would be willing to listen to her, despite the fact that she's fresh off another argument with her. Yotsuba's a bit of a hit or miss, though...

But for a social butterfly like Nino, she can't stand not being able to talk about something that bothers her. She'd always done so whenever a problem arose, like gossip at school or annoying guys trying to hit on them in the city. Now all of a sudden, when faced with an issue whose audience cannot possibly be her own sisters, Nino finds herself unplugged, with no outlet for venting. And as stated prior, she can't turn to the people she once called "friends" back at her old school, and neither can she rely on her new "friends" whom she barely knows all that well even at her new school.

And then there's the issue of Fuutarou himself. Nino has made sure to keep her thoughts about him on that night a secret from her sisters, so no need to worry about that dirty little secret emerging without her knowing. But thinking back again, her own internal sentiments towards Fuutarou have been slowly changing as well. She's not talking about him from her previous ideally romantic perspective, but from a simple everyday point of view: slowly but surely she's found his constant, almost daily tutoring sessions to be less and less intrusive. Rather, it's like they're slowly incorporating themselves into a daily part of her and her sisters' lives, which is exactly what she _doesn't _want. And the worst part about that is that Nino hasn't done anything to oppose it as of late, as if she's ultimately okay with Fuutarou coming over to their house every day because him being there provides a certain intangible level of security that will prevent anything like that one incident from happening while he's around.

Such is the paradox and the dilemma she finds herself in, then. For now, Nino is firmly rooted against Fuutarou's tutoring still - she knows that she is confident in declaring this, because at the end of the day, obviously, her sisters mean more to her than Fuutarou does, as they should. But to aggravate her sense of isolation from before even more, clearly her sisters don't mind Fuutarou becoming a big part of their lives, like Miku herself said just earlier. And knowing Itsuki, Nino suspects that Itsuki won't be able to hold out against him for much longer. Like, how could she? Itsuki, being the one who's usually known among the quints as the most studious one, even if Miku is actually the one who produces the best test results, will probably eventually succumb to the pressure and accept Fuutarou's tutoring. All the testimonies about how supposedly effective Fuutarou's lessons have been from Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba alike have already been taking their toll on Itsuki at the dinner table; at first, Itsuki was like Nino in that she was staunchly opposed, but as the days turned into weeks, Itsuki's defense has been crumbling, staying quiet and listening to Yotsuba go on about all the stuff Fuutarou's taught them that day.

Itsuki is a reasonable person. Even if she is academically challenged like the rest of her sisters are, even if she is the biggest crybaby among them, even if she's always got to have something to eat every other hour and have her various quirks that Nino herself and the others will always give her shit for, the one thing that Itsuki is that Nino is not is that. If Fuutarou is the excellent tutor that the others claim him to be, then Itsuki will have no choice but to eventually join their ranks as another one of Fuutarou's students. And as much as she gets into hot water with Miku, Nino reluctantly knows that Miku is perhaps right about their studying, that if Miku cannot study and get passing marks among them, then none of her sisters can hope for a better fate. So perhaps for now, Itsuki is a comrade in arms in their movement against having Fuutarou tutor them - but Nino is sure that such an alliance cannot last forever.

And when that happens...then, Nino will truly become alone.

Unplugged, disconnected, removed. Just like that night at the warehouse.

"Alright, sorry about that, I'll take your order, miss."

Being called up, Nino uses this to purge her mind of those dark thoughts that she found herself sinking into for a moment there, focusing all of her efforts to communicating adequately with the bartender in what little English she commands grasp over. After successfully placing her order for six ginger peach sodas, Nino waits for her order by one of the tables near the short stairs that lead down to the sand, watching the waves roll up lazily against the beach.

But before she can let her thoughts be washed away by the retreating foam and wet sand, Nino hears a few pairs of dull footsteps approach her from behind. Normally she wouldn't give it a second thought, but thanks to that incident, she's been acting much more cautious around strangers, so she turns around. Four tall young men in any assortment of beach clothes like swimming trunks, Hawaiian t-shirts, and sunglasses surround her in a half-circle against the table that she's standing near, with one of the men, a shirtless guy wearing a few chains around his neck as accessories, standing at the top of the short stairs to cut off her only method of easy escape.

"Hey girl, wanna have a good time? We got a boat out back, we can take you anywhere you want on this side of the island," the tallest man among them, probably the leader, talks down to Nino in English. It's at times like these when Nino is forced to realize just how short she and her sisters are - at a mere 159 centimeters (5 feet, 3 inches), she is laughably dwarfed by these men who easily clock in at over 180 centimeters (around six feet).

"Um...s-sorry, I...don't speak English well..." Nino blurts out, struggling to scrape together the words necessary under her newfound pressure.

"Oh that's no problem, babe. What do you speak? Tell us, one of our buddies here probably speaks it." The leader gestures to his right at the man of Asian descent, wearing a bright blue Hawaiian shirt and with sunglasses on his head, and the latter offers a polite smile down at Nino that suggests anything but politeness.

"J-Japanese..."

"Oh, Japanese? That's perfect, that's my native language growing up," the Asian young adult nods with a laugh of relief. "You must be vacationing here from Japan, right? There's a lot of Japanese living here in Hawaii, so you chose a good place to stop by."

"Er, thanks, but...can you tell them that I'm not interested? I'm just trying to get some drinks and go back to my hotel room..."

"You're just here to get some drinks and go back to your room?" he repeats with another chuckle, but this time it's much more devious, and Nino doesn't need to exert herself to sense it. "But you can just do the same inside the resort, right? Since there's another indoor bar in there just like this one."

Nino opens her mouth to respond, but she can't find anything else to say. She's been caught off guard on this one, and having already put herself on the back foot because of the thoughts she's been running through her head a few moments ago, Nino is ill-equipped for excuses to ward against these men.

"C'mon, if you're that bored, we can show you around the city. Like our friend here said, we've got ourselves a speedboat and a license, so we can give you a quick little tour of the beach from the water. How about it?"

"No thank you, I'm not here to hang out with anyone in particular," Nino firmly stands her ground anyway, expecting the worst. She's left her phone with her sisters back on the beach, so she really is on her own at this moment in time.

"Ah don't worry about it, babe, we always have a good time!" the leader of the men chuckles heartily, and it's only then that Nino realizes where his eyes are pointed. "Hey, tell her that we can either do this the easy way, or the hard way, we don't have a lot of time here..."

The leader points his thumb discretely over his shoulder back at the bartenders.

"You should come with us. We'll take good care of you, we'll guarantee you that," the translator nods, still smiling politely. "But if you don't, we can't give you that same guarantee. So what do you say?"

Nion subconsciously presses herself against the edge of the table, trying to stand as far away from the men as she can. This table is the only thing in the way of her and the patio railing on the other side of the table, so she mentally prepares herself to -

"Hey, excuse me? I don't appreciate you all crowding around my girl here."

Nino blinks as soon as her ears register the familiar voice speaking a language that she's not used to hearing from it. The four men all turn around themselves to find an even younger man than they approaching them calmly, dressed in the relatively stuffy clothes of a white dress shirt and black dress pants.

The tall leader of the small gang smirks widely down at Fuutarou as the latter stops before him with a few feet spacing the two of them apart.

"Your girl? _Your _girl? Motherfucker, we got here first," he cackles slightly. "This bitch's ours, you hear? Get'cher nerdy-lookin' bitch-ass outta my sight 'fore you regret it."

But even while the Hawaiian shirted leader of the gang trying to pressure Nino into giving in to their demands is talking down to Fuutarou, the latter pulls out his phone, taps through it briefly, and looks back up at his opponent to wait until he's done talking shit.

"Mr. Alastor Scott, correct?" Fuutarou asks, causing the man in question to do a double-take.

"Whoa, what the fuck, how do you - "

"Never mind how I know your name, Mr. Scott. What I'm more concerned about is that boat you said you have - you said something about having a license? That's funny, because when I checked the state's boat license registry, I didn't find anyone by the name of 'Alastor Scott'. Care to explain that one to me? Or maybe you're implying that you're running some sort of...illegal boat operation that the city doesn't know about?"

"You fucking little - "

But the translator wisely puts his hand on his friend's shoulder, shaking his head at him. Getting the message, Alastor forces himself to keep his peace and beckons at his crew, withdrawing swiftly with his goons and removing themselves from the patio. Fuutarou eyes them the whole time that they leave with his dull, piercing gaze, ensuring that they are in fact departing the area for good.

"Um...is everything okay back there?" one of the bartenders, namely the one who served Nino when she placed her order for drinks, calls over to the two of them cautiously, having his own phone in hand to call security in case the situation started looking worse.

"Yeah, we're fine, thank you," Fuutarou waves the bartender down before turning to Nino. "How's your vacation so far? Other than that, of course."

Nino bares her clenched teeth angrily back at her would-be tutor. "How many more times are you gonna just show up like some sort of superhero like that?"

"As many times as you get yourself in trouble. If it'll make you feel any better, I'll start keeping count. But cut out the superhero part, that stuff's lame."

"That's _my _line..." Nino sighs heavily and plops down on the table seat directly behind her, though Fuutarou doesn't join her. "Why is it that we're starting to run into all sorts of trouble now that you're here? Just get fucking lost already - weren't _you _the one who said to pretend like you weren't even here with us?"

"Ideally, yeah, that's how it should be. But I think you can forgive me for stepping in on this one."

"I could've handled it myself. That's not the first time this's happened, you know."

"Oh, I can assure you, I definitely know."

"Shut the fuck up..."

Resting her head against her arms on the table, Nino falls silent, her peachy-red hair draping down on both sides of her shoulders on and off the table, with her butterfly-patterned hair ribbons deflating with her hair. Without a word of his own, Fuutarou also joins her, taking a silent seat across from her.

"You must've put in a big order if you're waiting this long for drinks, huh?" he remarks idly, giving the bar and drink counter another quick scan. The second bartender, whom Fuutarou assumes is the one who knows how to mix drinks between the two who are currently on duty, is busy serving the adults at the bar, so that's probably why Nino's order is taking so long.

"Six ginger peach sodas. I just asked for the biggest sizes they had, since I don't wanna have to walk back all the way here for another round."

"That'll explain it, then. But why not just take turns with your sisters to come here for refills or more drinks?"

"I'm not letting what happened to me happen to any of them, you dipshit."

Nino irritably raises her gaze up from the table.

"And just where the hell have _you _been the past two days?"

"Is that something you should be asking the guy you just told to get lost?"

"You're the one who's apparently supposed to be our bodyguard or whatever, so shut up and answer my fucking question, damn it."

Snorting with brief amusement of his own, Fuutarou thumbs through his phone that he's kept in his hand even after chasing away the men who were attempting to wrestle Nino away.

"Entitled much, but whatever. I've been securing this city so that it'll be safe for you girls and your dad no matter where you go, as long as you stay within city boundaries."

"Safe my ass, you didn't see what was about to happen just now?"

"You won't believe me, but I did account for this patio too. Those dudes have hung out here every day ever since we arrived - they did the same shit to a few other girls yesterday. Luckily the girls were in a group, and there was a lot more foot traffic here yesterday, so they could've easily made a scene to defend themselves. Needless to say, those dudes were definitely shady as hell, so I've kept tabs on them. Seeing that the tallest guy said something about having a boat and doesn't even have a boat license as far as the state's concerned, he's someone to watch out for, for sure. Make sure your sisters know about those guys too."

Nino says nothing, so Fuutarou leaves her be, knowing that Nino is clearly in no mood for conversation. He simply sits with her at their table instead, calmly checking his email for a response from the team in London to whom he's shipped his Heisei samples.

As Fuutarou focuses on his own work, Nino, having planted her face firmly down against her arms on the table for a second time, slowly squeezes her fists, her long hair serving to hide them so that she can do so in secret. She keeps them this way until the bartender calls out Nino's name to give her the order of ginger peach teas.

When Nino begins to head for the short stairs to return to her sisters playing on the beach, Fuutarou, who's stood up after her once her order was called, rendezvouses with her at the top of the stairs. Nino merely gives him a single scathing glance, not even bothering to slow down to bid him farewell, and quickly stomps away back to her sisters, carrying her case of freshly crafted sodas.

Fuutarou silently looks on, watching her walk off across the beach. Raising his phone one last time, he glances down at it quickly, rereading the text he's received from Ichika about fifteen minutes ago.


	14. Golden Week - Pork Katsu Bowl

Several hours later, on the same beach, Yotsuba finally returns with Raiha for the last time to their sisters at their solitary beach mat, plopping down amidst the others in two heaps from satisfied exhaustion. The cheery Hawaiian blue sky has since turned to its charming, quaint autumnal colors of red, orange, and yellow as the sun once more begins its downwards sojourn below the horizon.

"Waaaaahhhahahaa...we played so much today, didn't we, Raiha-chan?" Yotsuba heaves on the mat, catching her breath.

"Uh huh, today was super fun!"

"So that's better than fun, right?"

"Yeah."

"Was it super _duper _fun?"

"Yeah!"

"Was it...super _duper AMAZING _fun?"

"Yeah!"

"Was it - "

"Okay, Yotsuba, we get the point, and Raiha-chan's tired too," Miku interrupts her younger sister by lightly tapping the side of her hand against her forehead in a karate-chop motion.

Nakano Miku pulls off her characteristic blue headphones with which she's been listening to music, relaxing on their beach mat next to Ichika, who's taken quite the beauty nap with a straw beach hat that she's brought along covering her face as she sleeps, though she begins to stir and wakes from all the noise that Yotsuba and Raiha have brought with them upon their return. Itsuki, perhaps to no one's surprise, is munching on one of the granola bars that the quintuplets have packed in their beach bags as snacks, sitting beside Miku on the mat.

"Whoa...look at the time..." Ichika remarks groggily, checking the time on her phone after removing the hat from her face. "Did you all have fun out there?"

"Yeaaaaaah!" both Yotsuba and Raiha chant.

"Were you sleeping this whole time, Ichika?" Itsuki asks, somewhat in disdain. "You ought to have joined us out there, we had quite a bit of fun today."

"Don't worry about it - you know me, I love my beauty sleep, haha."

"But you _always _get your beauty sleep every day in the afternoon, do you not?"

"Well..." Sitting up slowly and rubbing her eyes, Ichika smiles weakly. "Not...not these days, no. Fuutarou-kun comes to tutor us during the time that I'd usually be napping, so..."

Itsuki tenses up slightly at the mention of Fuutarou's name.

"But you're almost always nodding off to sleep in the middle of his lessons anyway," Miku points out while Yotsuba starts to tell Raiha another one of their previous vacation stories, this time about their vacation to Okinawa's Emerald Beach.

"I know, I know. But still, do you expect me _not _to nap on such a fabulous beach like this? Especially when there's almost no one around today for whatever reason."

Itsuki lowers her half-eaten granola bar to wipe the rest of her navel with her beach towel to dry off the ocean water.

"By the way, where is Nino?" she asks, looking up at Miku and down at Ichika. "I saw her briefly after she went to buy us drinks, but I have not seen her since..." She notes the now-empty case of plastic cups that once held their ginger peach tea beverages sitting next to Ichika's beach bag on the mat.

"She left about an hour ago. Said she wanted to spend some time in our room...she said she liked the view better up there," Miku responds, since she's the only one who can, as Ichika was fast asleep at the time. Itsuki's face contorts a little with concern.

"...that certainly is not like her. Normally she would be all about a beach vacation..." she mutters quietly.

"And she was so hyped up about it this morning too..." Ichika nods sadly. "I hope she's feeling okay. I'll go talk to her later on tonight at dinner or so."

"I'll go with you, Ichika. In case she's still mad about our argument from before, I'll just apologize," Miku nods.

"She's not back at the hotel room because of you."

A voice the girls have not heard for the past two days responds to Miku's sentiment towards Nino, and in surprise, everyone on the beach mat, including Yotsuba and Raiha, immediately turn towards the voice. Uesugi Fuutarou sets down a green reusable shopping bag with a plain white recycling sign on one side on the edge of the mat and bends his knees down to begin fishing through the bag's contents.

"Onii-chan, welcome back ~ !" Raiha cries out joyfully, getting up swiftly and dashing over to her older brother to give him a welcoming hug.

"Hey, Raiha, I'm back. You having fun so far?" Fuutarou braces for the inevitable collision and tanks it, maintaining his balance haphazardly as Raiha almost knocks him over onto the sand. "You just came back from the water, huh?"

"Oh, oops, sorry - yeah, Yotsuba-san and I were playing in the ocean for the past two hours. It was a ton of fun!"

"Two hours, huh? That's a long time..."

Once Raiha's let go of her brother, he pulls out six bowls with plastic lids carrying rice, a choice of meat from barbecue chicken, barbecue beef, or pork katsu and offers them to each of the girls, letting them know their meat choices.

"Wow, Uesugi-san, did you buy all this just for us?" Yotsuba beams, opening her barbecue chicken bowl and inspecting its contents with pleasure.

"Yeah, but it wasn't my money. Your dad called me in to talk to me, and he gave me some cash to buy everyone some food."

"_Dad _gave you money to buy us some food?" Ichika glances back and forth from itsuki and Miku, both of whom are also giving her back stumped looks of their own. "That's...that's, uh, _unexpected_, to say the least..."

"I suppose it _is _just like Father to send someone _else _to deliver us some food," Itsuki remarks simply, already snapping apart her pair of disposable wooden chopsticks that Fuutarou has tossed over to her from his bag.

"Took the words right outta my mouth, to be honest," Fuutarou nods, and Miku notices him having a bit of a stink-eye as he utters this. "But I didn't meet up with your dad just for some lunch money - he told me to tell you girls that your dinner reservation with him tonight's going to be delayed by about two hours."

"Two hours? Our original reservation was...seven o'clock? Right now's about five..." Ichika checks her phone while her sisters dig into their food bowls at various speeds, as the long day of playing hard on the beach has left most of them feeling rather voracious; naturally, the ones who haven't been as active take their time with their food.

"Then we'll be having dinner at nine," Miku notes quietly, with a hint of melancholy.

"Nine o'clock...that is so late for dinnertime..." Itsuki adds as well, with a similar tone.

"You girls normally have dinner around five, right? Seven o'clock is already pushing it pretty late, I'd imagine," Fuutarou notes, and the girls nod back.

"Well, that's mainly because we have to get up early for school the next day. It's not like we haven't had dinner late before," Ichika shrugs, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of beef. "And not to mention, we're on vacation right now, so it's not like we have school to worry about tomorrow morning."

"Uesugi-kun, did Father tell you why dinner needed to be delayed today?" Itsuki asks softly. Yotsuba and Raiha are eating their food together, though they have relocated themselves closer to the others now that Fuutarou has delivered them some grub. Fuutarou also gives Itsuki a bit of that same stink-eye.

"If you're asking that because you want to eat dinner sooner rather than later..." he mutters disapprovingly, causing the other three quintuplets to burst out giggling; Yotsuba simply laughs out loud, while Ichika tries to hide her unmistakable smirk with her right hand and Miku lets her face drop downwards so that her hair obscures her face instead.

_"It's not because of the food this time, I swear!" _Itsuki shrieks, her cheeks turning the same color of red as her hair the fastest that Fuutarou has ever seen. "Give me a break already, all of you! Especially _you_, Uesugi-kun!"

"I mean, if you want, I can tell everyone the story of how I met you in the school cafeteria," Fuutarou flatly replies, and this refreshes and escalates the laughter from the other quintuplets as the small smirks and muffled giggling gets ramped up to hearty laughs, hysterical ones from Yotsuba. Even Raiha is smiling with amusement, as Itsuki has eaten curry with the Uesugi family before.

"W-Wait, what's - what's so funny about that!? I just - I just met him at the cafeteria during our first day at school! What's so funny?! Hey, you three! Girls, girls!"

Try as she might, the youngest and most embarrassed quint is unable to quell the laughter from her sisters and begins pouting again, as if it's a self-defense mechanism that she defaults to in situations like this.

"Well, Itsuki, it's - it's just - " Finally managing to catch her breath at least for a moment, Yotsuba can't seem to wipe her silly grin off her face so that she can talk properly. "Just - with how much you like eating, it's - it's just - it's just - you _would _meet Uesugi-san for the first time in - in the cafeteria - " But that's all she can manage before Yotsuba doubles over in laughter again, clutching her stomach because now she's getting cramps.

"I didn't even get to the best part yet and you all are laughing this much?" Fuutarou raises an eyebrow at the quintuplets except for Itsuki. "I guess I shouldn't tell you the next part then, just out of concern for the food you're eating right now."

_"Not because you want to save me the embarrassment?!" _Itsuki hollers angrily, shaking her fists up and down.

"If you'd've attended my lessons, maybe I'd reconsider." Fuutarou deliberately looks away from Itsuki and starts to whistle nonchalantly.

_"Over my dead body!"_

"Then maybe I _should _give your sisters the extra details about our first meeting in the cafeteria?"

**_"Please don't!"_**

It takes the quintuplets a good few minutes to finally calm down from their laughter that ensues from the banter between the girls' tutor and Itsuki, the latter of whom has threatened to vacate the premises to join Nino back in their hotel room until Fuutarou reminded her that he'd rather her leave the trash with him so that he can dispose of the girls' trash altogether for them. So reluctantly, along with a quick apology from Uesugi, Itsuki has stayed, silently but indignantly munching on her food with her back turned to the lone boy among them.

"So what was the deal with Dad, Fuutarou-kun?" Ichika repeats for Itsuki, since it's not likely Itsuki will want to speak to their tutor for the rest of the day today. "Why _did _he end up delaying dinner for tonight?"

"You should already have a solid idea of that yourself, no?" Fuutarou scowls a little.

"I mean, yeah, we do, but...this _is _you we're talking about here. While we know pretty well what Dad does, we don't really know a whole lot about you, and I guess in this case more specifically, your relationship with him. So for all we know, it could be something that isn't exactly related to his work."

Fuutarou shakes his head. "If you're talking about if I'm potentially getting him involved in my side of work, then you don't need to worry about that since I do my best to keep people out of my own business for their own sakes. No, it's the usual - work's been tailing him again. You wonder why he's spent the last two days holed up in his room?"

Now that their father is the topic at hand, the quintuplets phase out their laughter and merrymaking, or in Itsuki's case embarrassed anger, to let an uneasy silence replace them.

"H-He _did _come with us for some stuff yesterday on Monday during the afternoon," Yotsuba reminds them, trying to keep the mood at least somewhat upbeat. "He came with us for the trail hiking and watched us go rock climbing, remember?"

But none of the quintuplets are in much of a mood to respond to this, and their silence pressures Yotsuba back into silence of her own. Fuutarou surveys the quintuplets' quiet, soft brooding as they slowly go through the food that he's brought them.

"...maybe this isn't my place to ask, but..." Fuutarou speaks up slowly, "...since I've been over at your place quite a few times now, I've noticed that your dad almost never comes home. I figured it's mainly because of his work, and I certainly hope that's the case, but..."

"If you're trying to ask if there's anything bad between us, no, that's not it. He's always taken good care of us...especially after Mom died," Ichika murmurs somberly, gazing down at the steaming warm rice in her bowl.

"I-Ichika...!" Miku whispers quickly to her older sister, with Itsuki and Yotsuba also sporting similarly alarmed looks.

"Oh c'mon, I'm just saying it how it is. Besides, Fuutarou-kun's not an idiot; if he's noticed something like Dad almost never coming back home, he should've definitely noticed that no one who looks like our Mom's been around the house either any time he's over at our place," Ichika explains herself before glancing over at Fuutarou. "That, and you work with Dad too, right? Then there's always the chance that he might've told you about our Mom already too."

"He's only mentioned her a few times in all the time that I've known him; she doesn't really get brought up that often, and he's certainly never told me that she died, either," Fuutarou shakes his head before glancing over at Raiha, who nods calmly back. "But yeah, I could kind of guess as to what maybe happened to your mom. I just never bothered asking about her since...I didn't want to step on that landmine."

"W-What about Raiha-chan, too? Should we really be talking about something like this in front of her?" Yotsuba asks worriedly, having put an arm around Raiha's shoulders comfortingly.

"It's okay, Yotsuba-san. I can handle it," Raiha smiles widely up at her friend, so Fuutarou nods back at Ichika to let her continue.

So she sets down her bowl beside her so that she can concentrate on talking. "So yeah...Dad's always looked after us after Mom went. He's provided for us everything we could ever want...he's the one who's letting us live like rich spoiled girls like we are now. It's just..."

The eldest quint leans back a little with her arms against the mat behind her slightly, gazing up at the edge of their large beach parasol.

"...I wish he were a bit more..._interactive_...with us...if that's the right word..." she mutters,

Fuutarou raises a hand up to his bowed face to rub his temples tiredly. "It's a whole lot worse than I thought, huh..."

"I've always kind of wondered, but...now that we know you work with him, sort of..." Miku glances up at her tutor. "Is Papa really as busy as he says? He's not...doing other stuff, is he?"

"No, he's not fooling around or anything while he's gone, I can assure you of that. He takes his work seriously," Fuutarou testifies swiftly. "When he tells you he's at work, or if he tells you that work's come up, that means he's got to be there. Given that he's the head physician at the hospital, it shouldn't come as any surprise."

Miku also gives off a weak smile of her own, her gaze also falling slowly down to the mat on which she sits. "...so there wasn't really any helping that, then."

"Maybe not, but..."

A breeze-filled silence passes among them in the late afternoon beach, with the waves rolling up lazily as they have been all day long. The natural ambience of Waikiki Beach is very therapeutic, serving to break up the awkward silence among the quintuplets and their guests effectively despite the sensitive topics that have been brought up.

"Uesugi-san, I've just been wondering, but...aren't you, like, really hot in those clothes?" Yotsuba wonders aloud to her tutor, pointing at his black dress pants to give them special notice. "Like, gosh, it was really hot earlier today. Don't tell me you were running around the city in those clothes still?"

"I'm fine, don't worry about me. I've been avoiding the sun as much as I could and keeping myself hydrated."

"Hmm...Fuutarou-kun avoids the sun, dresses neatly almost all the time, and is most active during nighttime?" Ichika emits a quick glint from her eyes as she quickly sets her hand on her chin like a detective. "Perhaps...perhaps our tutor is..._a vampire?"_

"I can assure you, I am no vampire," Fuutarou says flatly again, raising out his arm to his left to expose it in broad sunlight to prove his identity to the quintuplets.

"Whoaaaaa! Then if that's true, Uesugi-san, does that mean - does that mean that you're tutoring us so that you can come suck our blood?!" Yotsuba cries in sudden self-inspired epiphany.

Itsuki twitches a little at the mention of the word "blood" while Fuutarou sticks his tongue out a little in disgust.

"I hate the taste of blood, so no thanks," he shakes his head.

"Wait, how do you even know what blood tastes like to the point where you know you don't like it...?" Miku asks in suspicion.

"Well, when you get into a fight and happen to get punched in the face or the mouth, you don't really have a choice in the matter..."

"You are not making fun of me _again_, are you?" Itsuki growls dangerously, though her sudden shift in tone is at least understandable here.

"No, I'm not, calm down please," Fuutarou returns sternly. "If it'll make you feel any better, I've had my fair share of getting punched in the face."

"Thank you, yes it does."

"Itsuki..." Miku hisses quietly over at her youngest sister.

"In any case, what _have _you been doing the past two days? Though I bet it's like classified stuff, right?" Ichika gestures back at Fuutarou.

"Basically going around town and making sure there's nothing here that'll disrupt your vacation, that's all. As per Nino's request, I've also been doing my best to stay out of sight in general, but today's an exception since my employer told me to come here and get you girls some food before dinner later."

"Y-You took Nino seriously about that...?" Miku blinks back at Fuutarou, feeling a familiar anger swell up in her chest again.

"It's fine, I was going to do that for the most part. This is _your _vacation, after all."

"Oh, don't say that, Fuutarou-kun. Even if it's 'our' vacation, you're still in Hawaii with us - at least give yourself some time to relax and enjoy this place a little?" Ichika suggests, going back to eating her barbecue beef bowl.

"But what would I even do here..."

"Tons of stuff! We went hiking and rock climbing yesterday, today we're at the beach, and there's still tons of stuff like boating, going shopping in the city, and patio karaoke!" Yotsuba exclaims, always one to enjoy a good time. "We don't mind if you come join us too, Uesugi-san!"

"Yeah, but two of you will," Fuutarou points over at Itsuki, and if Nino were also present, he'd point at her, too. "Not to mention what your dad would think about your tutor joining you in these kinds of things."

"W-Well...Itsuki and Nino we can convince...but..." Yotsuba's hair ribbon deflates yet again as she realizes that she probably can't sway her father's opinion.

"Yeah...that is a good point you bring up...if Dad says no, then that's the end of that..." Ichika somberly sighs as she finishes the rest of her bowl and hands it empty along with her used wooden chopsticks back to Fuutarou, who carefully places them back into his reusable bag.

"Again, I'll be fine, no point in worrying about me," Fuutarou repeats. "All I really care for is for you all to make sure Raiha has as much fun as you can give her."

"Already on it! Right, Raiha-chan?" Yotsuba clasps Raiha's hands once the latter hands her brother her trash, too, and the younger Uesugi sibling nods back fervently with the biggest smile Yotsuba's ever seen on somebody other than herself.

Uesugi collects everyone's trash once all the girls are done eating, and as he gets up from the mat to take the trash away, Miku spots a bit of weight on one side of the reusable bag and then suddenly realizes that the sixth food bowl that was likely intended for Nino has not been eaten yet.

"Fuutarou, is that - is that bowl for Nino?" she asks to confirm.

"Yeah, it was," he nods back, glancing down inside the bag. "I'll just hand it to her on the way back or something. I don't think she's eaten yet..."

"Honestly, she's probably not in any mood to eat right now. You might as well eat it yourself, Fuutarou-kun. Have you eaten yet at all today?" Ichika also asks.

"Yes, I have. Why are you talking like I at least don't take care of myself?"

"I mean, it's hard to believe that when you always decline having dinner with us on the days you tutor us later into the evening..."

"In part because I can't imagine Nino wanting me there. She's already putting up with me having some snacks here and there, which, honestly, is more than enough."

"You make it sound as if _you're _the one at fault for why Nino hates you."

"Well, at the end of the day, it's _your _house I'm walking into every day, so..."

"But you're _tutoring_ us, though!" Miku exclaims.

"Explain that one to Nino, then." Fuutarou pauses briefly, having turned to walk towards the street. "...but I guess you already have, huh?"

Also picking up the empty case of ginger peach sodas that Nino brought them earlier in the day, Fuutarou carries the trash away, heading up to street level to make his exit. Miku watches him leave silently.

"...maybe you shouldn't have sent him that text," she mumbles, finally glancing down at Ichika.

"It'll be fine. He didn't say no, at least - " she reminds her, but Yotsuba's naturally loud voice is starting to grab their attention in the background.

"Hey, Raiha-chan, are you okay with your brother always just, uh, working like that, I guess?" Yotsuba hesitantly describes, unsure of how to word her question. "Don't you want him to come have fun with us too? I know he's only our tutor and all, but I think we've known him and been around him for long enough that being at the beach together won't be _too _weird, right? What do you think?"

But to Yotsuba's surprise, Raiha simply smiles and shakes her head.

"I do want him to come play with us. But...he's a very busy person most of the time. He always does his best to spend time with me and Dad though whenever he can get his chances, but I don't want to be in the way of his work," she answers simply.

Recognizing the eerie similarity at hand, Itsuki crawls forward and re-seats herself near Yotsuba and Raiha.

"Raiha-chan, is your brother like our father?" she asks quietly, with the sound of waves rolling up against the beach scraping against the air behind them. "You heard what Ichika was saying just earlier, right? Is your situation pretty similar to ours, or not really?"

Raiha nods a little this time. "Dad usually works from home, so I'm with him a lot of the time outside of school. But Onii-chan...his schedule is, um, it's a little weird sometimes. Lately he's been at home, so that's good, but he's been gone from home for days, weeks, even months at a time. In fact, just before the school year started, he came back from a six month trip overseas to somewhere. And for what it's worth, I don't think I've ever woken up at home with Onii-chan still around..."

Yotsuba listens to Raiha with uncharacteristic silence while Itsuki then asks, "You don't ask him what he does at all? What keeps him so busy all the time?"

"It's stuff that I don't think I should be asking about," Raiha shakes her head a second time. "Our Dad told me once that I could ask him what he does if I really wanted to, and Onii-chan would answer me honestly, but he said that it's better off if I don't."

Whatever's left of her small smile from before is gone now.

"And...I've seen him come back home after being gone for a while. He usually isn't really in much of a mood to talk, so I never really bothered to think about asking him too much about what he does."

"Hmph...so a lot like our Dad, huh..." Ichika sighs lightly, gazing off into the rolling ocean waves.

"B-But like I said, he does his best to hang out with me and Dad!" Raiha blurts out quickly upon hearing Ichika's comment. "Um, I don't...I don't know how things are exactly between you and your Dad, I'm sure he's a very nice person - after all, he paid for my plane ticket and all the hotel stuff and everything else. But I don't mind the way things are now since I know he and Dad are working very hard to support us all. So please don't worry about him - it might seem strange for me to say this, but...but the best thing you can do for him is to have fun in this vacation. He wants us all to have fun, not just me."

The four quintuplets are all silent, lulled by these surprisingly firm words of faith coming from the younger sister.

"That's no good, Raiha-chan."

Shaking her head slowly down at her, Itsuki brushes aside her peachy-red hair. "Even if you say that, at the end of the day, he's your precious older brother, right? As diligently as he works, and for as hardworking as he is, on an occasion like this where we're all on vacation, especially for you since this is your first vacation ever outside of Japan, there is no reason for him not to spend time with his little sister. You have every right to ask him to join you."

"That's right, that's right! How's Uesugi-san gonna let poor Raiha-chan have fun all by her lonesome with us?" Yotsuba clasps Raiha's right hand again. "The next time we run into him, let's tell him to come along with us, okay? We'll make sure the two of you can make at least a few good memories here in Hawaii before we go back!"

Raiha just smiles back at Yotsuba.

As Itsuki and Yotsuba take turns trying to convince their tutor's younger sister, Miku glances back at her oldest sister, who's got her own pensive, thoughtful look on her face.

"You alright, Ichika? You don't normally have that kind of a face on," Miku tells her.

"Yeah, no, I'm fine, I was just...thinking about some things." Ichika checks the time on her phone, which now reads half-past five. "Didn't expect to get vibe-checked like this in the middle of our vacation, if nothing else..."

"Even still, I'm glad Raiha-chan came along with us. She's such a sweet girl."

"Yeah, no kidding. Fuutarou-kun should be thankful that he's got such a wonderful and understanding sister like her. Now imagine if you or Nino was his younger sister instead."

"Y-Younger sister..." Miku momentarily loses her breath as the thought crosses her mind, and she clasps both of her cheeks to hide the heat gathering in them again.

"Aha, that one got you excited, huh?"

"No no no, no it didn't...!"

Ichika feels tempted to continue teasing Miku more, but all this talk that's got her vibe-checked has put her out of the mood to do so, so she gives the ocean waves one last good look before they begin to pack their belongings up for the day.

"We sure got ourselves one handful of a guy as our tutor," she remarks quietly. "I thought he'd just be some kind of Spartan tutor who did nothing but yell at us for being dumb and giving us tons of homework to do every day. Not only is he _not _that, but there's a _lot _more to him than we know..."

Miku nods in agreement, and the two of them watch Yotsuba make a pinky promise with Raiha and tugging on Itsuki's hand to get her to pinky promise too against the latter's will. Then, Miku remembers something.

"Ichika, do you remember what Fuutarou said earlier when he first gave us our food?" she inquires with her older sister.

"Hm? Which part?"

"When he told me, 'she's not back at the hotel room because of you' or something."

Ichika stares back at Miku, who gives her the exact same look back.

"...did something happen between them?" Ichika slowly thinks aloud.

* * *

Nino is staring glumly straight up at the face of Uesugi Fuutarou, whose right hand holds the same reusable bag from before. He's since properly disposed of the trash, and now the bag is empty, save for one bowl of pork katsu rice that's left over and has chilled significantly on account of being neglected for the past hour.

"And what the hell do _you _want?" she demands in a low voice that couldn't be more saturated with animosity if she tried. Nino herself has since changed out of her purple bikini and has opened her hotel room door to Fuutarou in a white blouse, purple cardigan, and clean Levi's.

"Your dad told me to get you and your sisters some food, so I stopped by your room here to give you yours," Fuutarou explains simply and concisely. "You got my text like fifteen minutes ago, I assume?"

"Yeah, about our dinner reservation with Papa being delayed. Actually, how the crap did you know my number?"

"Ichika gave me her number earlier this week, so I asked her for yours because you were the only one who wasn't down at the beach when I got there with the food."

Digging through the bag and pulling out the katsu bowl, the young tutor offers it to Nino.

"You're gonna be pretty hungry waiting for dinner later tonight, given that you usually already have dinner by this point," he advises her.

"I'm not h - "

As if asking for a situation like this to happen, Nino's stomach growls immediately on cue, silencing the mouth above. Fuutarou narrows his eyes incredulously down at Nino, who's already bowed her head so that he can't see what her face must look like right now.

"I didn't think a situation like this actually happened outside of like manga and anime," Fuutarou remarks bluntly, "but I guess I'm forced to believe it now. Have some food, Nino."

Snatching the pork katsu bowl from his hands, Nino swiftly slams the room door shut right in Fuutarou's face. Uesugi continues to stand at the door of the Nakanos' hotel room, not because he's in shock or anything, but because Nino may have taken the katsu bowl but has neglected to let him give her the chopsticks as well. And sure enough, he hears the angry footsteps that were stomping away return to him, much more meekly this time, and the door opens swiftly to reveal a Nino whose cheeks are almost as red as Itsuki's from earlier.

"...chopsticks," she grumbles unwillingly, unable to look Fuutarou back in the eye straight. Already armed with the chopsticks she'll need to eat the katsu bowl, Fuutarou hands them to her, and she turns around, prompting Uesugi to expect a second door slam...that does not come. Instead, Nino is already halfway into the room, and when she realizes that Fuutarou hasn't taken her cue, she stops and calls over her shoulder, "You can come in, you know."

Rolling his eyes somewhat, Fuutarou gives off a quick sigh before entering the Nakano girls' hotel room, closing the door behind him and walking to stop next to the closest bed in the room to find Nino sitting at one of the tables, already digging into her katsu bowl.

"If you need water, here's some..." the Nakanos' tutor adds, taking a complimentary bottle of water he asked from the main lobby receptionist from the bag and setting it down next to Nino on the table before taking a good look at the amazing beachfront view spread before him. "One hell of a hotel room, huh. But I guess you're used to this by now..."

"Hmph. Someone like you probably wouldn't imagine how hard it must be to get a room like this," Nino scoffs in between bites. "I don't care if you're a mage or whatever, even people like you have things you can't do, especially if it's someone like you we're talking about who's dirt poor."

"Mm, you're not wrong. Given that all the other hotel rooms I've seen here look nothing quite like this, what chance does a mere plebeian like myself have of dreaming of getting a hotel room like this." Fuutarou slowly walks about the one-way window walls to survey the view in its entirety. "Still a great view, though. You even get to go to sleep with it right in front of you."

"We've had to close the blinds every night though."

"Really? Why - oh, because of the lights from the rest of the resort, probably..."

Nino nods. "They didn't think about that when they designed this room."

"I'll be sure to file a complaint to management, then."

"Who the hell are you, our damn travel agent?"

"Something like that? I mean, I'm already a delivery boy, what's a travel agent by this point..."

"I think you're missing a few steps there!"

Choosing to ignore Nino's retort in favor of moving on from that pointless conversation, Fuutarou keeps his eyes facing out the glass wall as he speaks up again soon after.

"How's your vacation so far? Other than today, of course."

"Oh, thanks for asking." It's Nino's turn to roll her eyes. "It was great, emphasis on _was."_

"Let me guess: it _was_, all the way up until I showed up."

"So you _aren't _as socially inept like you come off as."

"Sorry, I'm still having trouble figuring out this whole talking to girls thing."

"I can fucking tell."

Fuutarou snorts softly so that Nino can't clearly hear his reaction over her own chewing.

"Again, if this'll make you feel any better, I was close to not even coming along with you and your sisters here to Hawaii," he confides to the second quintuplet, his voice being slightly amplified to Nino's ears because his voice is rebounding off the wall before him.

"If only you actually didn't come."

"Reality is oftentimes disappointing, isn't it."

"And _you're _the one telling me that?!"

A natural break in their volatile conversation settles in as Nino works on her food and Fuutarou enjoys the view from the girls' hotel room with what precious few minutes he has here. Soon, Nino, being one of the faster eaters among her sisters, second only behind Miku, closes her empty bowl with its plastic lid and sets her used wooden chopsticks on top. She begins to put her hands together to utter the usual _"Gouchisousama!" _but then stops herself, realizing who she'd be saying that to this time.

"...so? What made you almost miss the trip?" Nino grumbles, staring out the one-way glass wall to the beachfront with Fuutarou as she rests her chin grumpily against her hand whose elbow is propped down against the table.

"Work, as usual. Nothing much else to say than that."

Nino's eyes flash to their side, glaring at Fuutarou.

"Why's it always work with you?" Nino snaps at him softly. "Work, work, work...that's all you fucking do. I can see why you work with Papa, for real."

The young tutor chuckles dryly. "Your dad...is another story. But yes, I'm a bit of a workaholic, what can I say."

"Is there ever a time you _don't _have work on your mind? Sheesh."

"Admittedly, not really. But when you have debts to pay, live in an office suite for a house, and eat curry udon as your most expensive dinner once every two months, I think it's a bit tough being anything but a workaholic, mainly because you don't really have a choice in the matter. I thought you kind of already got an idea of that, Nino, when you bought Raiha her crepe that time."

Nino's mind automatically recalls that day at the Tsutaya bookstore...and naturally, the incident the following day. She bites the inside of her lower lip to contain the surge of anger that she feels pouring into her veins.

"Or maybe not. After all, what can a one-percenter like you understand about the bottom 95? You said it yourself just now too, right? That there are things even mages like me can't do simply because we don't have the money. That, and you don't even come to my lessons like your dad wants you to, you don't study on your own like at least Itsuki does, and you just sit at the table back at your place texting on your phone all day. And you wonder why you don't understand why work's always on my mind, huh? Must be nice...must be _real _nice."

A sudden and loud crash of a chair being pushed back so quickly it tilts over and crashes against the carpet almost cuts Fuutarou off, who glances carefully to his right, seeing Nino up on her feet, both fists clenched, and giving him the the most furious look he's seen from her yet. It's almost as if her burning blue eyes are glowing from how much anger is visibly stockpiled behind those incensed blue sapphires.

She opens her mouth to speak - but then hesitates, and then closes her lips. Nino was going to unleash a certain tirade upon him, but on second thought, it's perhaps for the better if she didn't go down that path for the conversation, as much as she'd like to. So switching gears and reassessing her thoughts, Nino again glares back at Fuutarou with all her might so that the next time she opens her mouth, she won't hesitate.

"Maybe to _you _I might look like a worthless dumb bitch, but I'll have you know that _I'm _the first one to get up every morning out of all my sisters, _I'm _the one who cooks for everyone because nobody in my damn house knows how to fucking cook, _I'm _the one who has to clean up after my sisters for the most part, _I'm _the one who does most of the chores around the house because nobody else knows how to fucking do them, and _I'm _the one who takes care of my sisters whenever one of them gets sick!"

As Nino is ranting at him, Fuutarou turns away from the see-through wall to face Nino instead to give her his undivided attention.

"So maybe to you, since all you see is me cook and sit at the table on my phone, I look like I'm not really doing much. But I fucking dare you to try taking care of four other sisters all at once! Or maybe you don't understand that housework is also work because you're probably never at home most of the time yourself?! Is _your _work the only work you find acceptable? That or studying? Is that it?!"

For a few very long and tense moments, the two of them gaze into each other's eyes, one with icy, stoic carelessness, and the other with incendiary and deep-rooted resentment.

To Nino's secret surprise, however, Fuutarou is the first to drop his gaze and lose their unspoken staring contest.

"So that's why, huh? I was wondering why only you were ever the one doing any cooking at all whenever I was over," the tutor reflects calmly. "I apologize; I wasn't aware that that's how your situation is with your sisters. Seeing that I only need to take care of one on my end, it seems like I've still got a ways to go in understanding you all. I'd like to rescind what I said about you earlier, that was uncalled for - I let my frustrations with you not cooperating with me with the whole tutoring thing get the better of me there."

Blinking, still taken off-guard by Fuutarou's suddenly apologetic behavior, Nino simply stands there watching her would-be tutor take her trash and put it into the reusable bag that he's brought with him, but she regains her senses quickly and folds her arms, turning away from him.

"I-I don't need your pity. I've been taking care of everyone for the past six years on my own, largely in part because Papa never really comes home," she blurts out, wanting to have at least something to say back. "But I won't tolerate you treating me as if I'm a complete good-for-nothing. You can roast me all you want about my grades and my studying, but if I catch you talking shit about my cooking or whatever else I'm actually good at like you did just now, I won't let you hear the end of it!"

"Right, right, point taken." Fuutarou scratches the side of his head momentarily. "I guess while we're sort of on the topic, I'd like to ask you how it is that you go about taking care of all four of your sisters. I know this might be coming out of nowhere, but since none of the others are around right now, I figured now would be the best time to ask."

"Yeah, no kidding, what let this on all of a sudden?"

"I met up with the others down at the beach and hung out with them for a bit before coming here to give you your food. I've told you that this's Raiha's first vacation, right? So obviously it means a lot to her." Fuutarou sighs heavily, more heavily than Nino expects. "There've been times where, just like your dad, I'm not able to be at home for long periods of time because of the kind of work I do and get myself into. Obviously my own dad can handle that, but I don't know about Raiha. She seems to understand the situation, but I can't help but feel that I'm not doing enough for her, that part of the reason why she has to live in such a shitty house and why she can't go on fun vacations like this all the time is because my dad and I aren't working hard enough. While our situations are obviously much different, I still wanna know how it is you go about taking good care of your own sisters, because at the end of the day, like I said, I only have one, while you have four times that."

Faced with a situation that is wholly unfamiliar to her when it comes to dealing with Uesugi in which he's asking for advice of all things, Nino has to take her time with her answer.

"Well...I never really, uh, consciously thought about something like that...you know? I guess if I had to say, I think at one point I got all my sisters together to try to evenly divide chores amongst ourselves, but that ended up in total failure 'cause nobody except myself knew how to do anything. Like, when we tried splitting up cooking duty so that we'd be on a five-day rotation, everyone failed out, can you believe that? Like, Ichika freaking _overslept_ so she just called take-out for us; Miku cooked, uh, _something_...God, I don't even wanna try to remember just what the hell she cooked; Yotsuba almost blew up our rice cooker somehow just trying to make rice; and Itsuki thought that a normal person eats five bowls of rice in one sitting!"

Fuutarou listens patiently to Nino's raging over how incompetent her sisters are at cooking.

"But anyways," Nino clears her throat, realizing herself that she's sidetracking herself. "I don't do anything special. They're my sisters; they're my family. Even if it all falls to me to take care of them with cooking and stuff like that, I'll do it. That's what Mama did for us, back when she was still with us. She took care of all five of us, all by herself. I guess now I have an idea of what she must've gone through...so what right do I have to complain about taking care of my sisters?"

Nodding in response, Uesugi folds his own arms while still holding the reusable bag containing Nino's trash.

"Touching story, I'm sure, but that didn't tell me anything about _how _I should go about taking care of my own little sister," he points out.

"F-Fucking figure that out yourself, you idiot!" Nino shouts out in embarrassment in a terribly knee-jerk reaction. "Aren't you supposed to be like, super smart or some shit? Figure that out yourself, damn it! Why're you asking _me?"_

"Well, because, like I said, you have four sisters to take care of while I only have one. So in this case, objectively speaking, you simply have more experience in taking good care of - "

"But it's like you said, our situations are way too different compare! Yeah, sure, I might have four other sisters to look after, but I have a Papa who gives us more money than we know what to do with, while you only have one but you clearly don't have anywhere near as much money. Even if you ask me for something like that, what I say to you might not necessarily apply. Not to mention, Raiha-chan's not like any of my sisters either."

Nino sighs and puts her hands on her hips.

"Not everything can be cookie-cutter perfect and dictated by formulas and whatever else nonsense is out there, Uesugi," she says. "If there's anything I _can _teach you, it's that. Finding out how to take good care of your sister - that's for _you _to find out, and you alone."

Hanging his head slightly in disappointment, Fuutarou nods in thanks anyway for Nino's time.

"Figured that'd be the case. Also, now that you've taught me something, let me teach _you_, so come to our lessons starting next week after we co - "

"HELL NO! This was all just a trap, wasn't it? Just designed to get me to study with you? Fuck off!" Nino yelps back at her would-be tutor angrily.

"Damn. It was worth a shot, though."

"You _planned _this?! You're such a scumbag!"

"A scumbag for trying to do my job? Well, telemarketers do exist, so..."

"You're _worse _than that! You hear me? _WORSE!"_

"Thanks, I guess, the pleasure's all mine."

"Just get out if you've got nothing more to say! Get out, get out!"

Obliging the yelling quint, Fuutarou grins lightly as he turns and walks to the front door, with Nino nipping at his heels. As she pushes him out the door, Nino growls one last thing at him before she slams the door again in his face, but she does so under her breath:

"...and thanks for earlier."


	15. Golden Week - Short Rib

The soft clinks of silverware fill the air alone of the Moana Beachhouse Restaurant, the in-resort luxury restaurant with Victorian architecture that is only open for four hours a day, every day from 5:30 to 9:30PM. Naturally, the Nakano family who is currently dining there are the only ones sitting at the restaurant's outdoor patio. As the patio overlooks a good portion of the beach, including the other patio with the drink bar from which Nino brought her sisters their ginger peach sodas earlier in the day, the Nakano family can enjoy the sight of the nighttime beach along with their dinners, which consists of one of each of the Beachhouse's signature entrees: Hoisin Braised Short Rib, Truffle Roasted Jidori Chicken, Adobo Glazed Duroc Pork Chop, Seafood Paella, Keahole Lobster Pasta.

Maruo Nakano, sitting solemnly as ever at his end of the circular table that restaurant management has specifically brought out for the large six-member family, takes a slow sip of his glass of Mountain Zinfandel red wine as his five daughters chew their food in otherwise total silence. As this is meant to be a family dinner, Raiha is not present, so Fuutarou is looking after her for tonight while the Nakano quintuplets attend this dinner with their father.

Silence has been the dominating factor of the dinner so far, along with stiffness. Even though the dress code for the restaurant is smart casual, the stiffness of the air among the Nakanos would perhaps fool passersby into believing that it should be business formal instead. Because for all the complaints that the quintuplets had earlier that day regarding their father not coming home often enough or otherwise spending time with them enough, now that he is doing just that, the quintuplets, ill-equipped and too inexperienced in actually knowing how to handle this kind of once-in-a-blue-moon situation, can simply do nothing but eat their late dinners without words beyond the usual that must be spoken for the sake of table manners, such as asking for the seasoning bottle or the breadbasket filled with sweet breadsticks.

Gazing down at her half-eaten short rib entree, Itsuki grips her utensils a bit more tightly than she would otherwise. She's been eating more slowly than usual - but it's not because she'd already eaten the food brought to them by their tutor five hours earlier, but because she is intentionally eating more slowly so that she can drag out the time. Indeed, it's not just her doing this; all of the quintuplets are playing the dinnertable meta-game of keeping an eye on each other's progress, especially their father's, and matching their progress with everyone else's, all while doing so covertly, with no verbal communication, and outside of detection by their father, who, perhaps luckily for them or not, mostly pays attention to his own dinner before him anyway. This is to avoid having any one of them finish earlier than the rest of the family and then suffer the awkward fate of sitting at the dinner table being able to do absolutely nothing while waiting for everyone else to finish their own food.

The conversation Itsuki had with Raiha earlier that day on the beach before they had to leave is still quite fresh on her mind as she guides a neatly cut piece of steak up to her lips. How Raiha should ask for her brother to join her in this vacation...that going on vacation like this is the first of its kind...how, despite how busy her brother is all the time, that it is not unreasonable for to want her brother to spend time with her during a time like this. She had a feeling this would come back to haunt her, but now that she and her sisters are at the dinner table, spending premium time with their father whose number of dinners he's eaten with his family could probably be counted with just two hands, the pressure is daunting and enormous, suffocating any will of hers that she once had going into this dinner of perhaps asking the same of her own father.

She steals another round of glances over at her sisters discretely, to see if she can detect any sign of a similar sentiment from them, but to her silent dismay, none of them appear willing to speak up. It's not as if the quints collaborated to bring the point up to their father or anything like that, but even just the knowledge that another one of her sisters would back her up in case she did manage to build up the nerve to ask her father about the issue at this dinner table would be a massive relief. But as stated, unfortunately she can find no such support readily available - even the most likely of her sisters to give her such support, or hell, simply act first on her own volition, Nino, looks to be in no mood to try such a thing; though of course, if prompted, she still has a chance of coming to Itsuki's support.

Chewing slowly on her rib, Itsuki lets go of a big sigh through her nose. Saying all those things to Raiha about how she ought to want her brother to join her on vacation...and then being unable to replicate the same for herself and her sisters weighs heavily on her mind, making her question her decision to lecture Raiha in the way that she did earlier that day. Perhaps she could give herself the excuse that talking to an older brother is much different than talking to a father, and that because of this Raiha naturally has a much easier time talking to her own brother about it, while approaching a father like their own is another ballpark entirely, but even if she did use such an excuse, it wouldn't necessarily make Itsuki feel better about it, because at the end of the day, Raiha will at least be able to tell her brother what she wants while she and her sisters will not, at the rate things are going now.

"Is something the matter, Itsuki?"

Jolting up in her seat like an electric current's just coursed up her spine, Itsuki and her ahoge bolt upright, blinking in surprise at her father, who politely wipes his mouth with the thick restaurant handkerchiefs that are supposed to be spread across the lap as per formal table manners.

"N-No, nothing, nothing at all, I'm just, uh, I am just a bit tired from everything we did today..." Itsuki quickly tosses out the first excuse that comes to mind, quickly burying her eyes back down into her own food while her cheeks bloom again. She can already feel the piercing gazes of the rest of her sisters, as though they're glaring at her for ruining it for the rest of them, though exactly what she's ruining, Itsuki herself can't say.

"Then make sure to get plenty of sleep tonight. I have adjusted your schedules tomorrow to start later into the day so compensate for our delayed dinner tonight," Maruo informs his daughters at large.

"Yes, Papa/Father/Dad," the quintuplets reply in unison with their choice of pronoun.

Maruo clears his throat shortly before cutting through his own Jidori chicken. "Tell me about your experience with Uesugi-kun so far. I'm aware that it is too early in the school year for any major tests so far, but I would like to inquire about his tutoring ability."

The quintuplets all exchange blank glances with each other, as if daring each other to talk first. Naturally, Nino and Itsuki, the two who cannot speak on the matter, or at least not as much, drop their gazes so that they won't have to be the ones doing the talking.

"It's going well, Dad," Yotsuba bravely offers first. "He's...his lessons are really good, and even I'm able to understand them. I'm glad you took the time to get him as our tutor."

"Is that so." There is no change in Maruo's facial expression whose default is draconically stoic.

"Yeah. We won't need worry about not graduating as long as he's with us."

"Hm, if Yotsuba is the one saying this..." Maruo takes another sip of his red wine. "...then perhaps. What say the rest of you? How has his tutoring been going?"

"Yotsuba's right, Papa. After the first week, he's been coming in every weekday and tutoring us for at least two hours. There've been times when he's stayed later to make sure we understood the material," Miku also vouches positively for Uesugi. "He's taken the time to draft out lessons covering each subject we have at school and planning for our midterms and finals so that we know what our progress should look like at key points throughout the year."

At this, Maruo's eyes widen slightly, the biggest reaction the girls have seen him give in a long while, followed by a short, curt nod of cold understanding.

"And what about you three? How goes the tutoring for the rest of you?" Maruo puts the spotlight on the three quints who haven't spoken up yet, and Ichika rises to the occasion, knowing full well that Nino and Itsuki are in no position to answer their father adequately.

"Basically the same that the other two said. He's an excellent tutor; he really knows his stuff and he makes sure that even dummies like us can get it," she answers. "And, um.."

Hesitating on whether or not she ought to tell her father about her absences during the last week of lessons, Ichika falls silent, her gaze falling down to her half-eaten Seafood Paella dish.

"Is there something you'd like to tell me, Ichika-kun?"

Maruo's chilling words almost freeze the eldest quint's eardrums, so cold are they to hear, because Ichika is able to immediately sense that her father may already know about these absences of hers, probably because Uesugi himself has already informed him of them. Although she feels a bit of anger accumulating at the bottom of her stomach upon this realization, she quickly relinquishes it - what tutor wouldn't report something like a student not coming to a lesson? Especially one as diligent as Fuutarou.

"I was absent for four days last week due to my part-time job," Ichika admits, deciding to come clean as she does not want to risk hiding something like this from her father when he's probably already in the know by this point. "I talked to him earlier this week about it, and I told him that I'll do my best to make sure I don't miss so many days like that again."

"I see. And yes, for your own sake, please try not to miss lessons," Maruo replies dryly before eyeing his last two daughters, who are sweating bullets and dreading their turns to speak. "Nino-kun, Itsuki-kun? Is there anything else you would like to add?"

"I haven't been attending his lessons."

The instant response from Nino makes Itsuki forget how to breathe for a split second. All of the quintuplets stare at Nino in horror, but Nino herself, having wiped the sweat off her brow after muscling up her courage, returns Maruo's icy gaze with a burning defiance of her own.

"And why not?" he asks simply. "Is there something you disagree with your sisters about in regards to his tutoring ability?"

"I haven't taken a single lesson from him, other than the first evaluation test he gave us back during his first week," Nino shakes her head. "So it's not about his tutoring ability since I can't speak on that."

"Then what is it?"

Nino clenches her fists lightly.

"I don't like the fact that someone like Uesugi can just walk into our house and stay for as long as he likes and leave whenever he wants. Even if he is a tutor, even if he is doing a good job, we went from having a house for just the five of us to letting a complete stranger like him have full access to our house in like a blink of an eye."

Yotsuba winces a little at this statement.

"It's at the point now where he's coming in acting like he owns the place, too," Nino continues. "And that's not even mentioning the fact that he got a keycard to our house from the very first week...!"

"So you have a problem with me giving him that keycard, I presume?" Maruo asks before taking another sip of his red wine.

"Obviously! What made you think that was a good idea, Papa?"

"Uesugi-kun and I have worked together at the hospital for some time. One may say that we are perhaps coworkers, even, but I doubt he would go so far," Maruo replies. "Given his line of work, his intelligence, and his work ethic, I concluded that he would be able to adequately fill the position of your tutor. I pitched the possibility to him before the school year started, and he accepted."

"For Dad to call him a coworker...Uesugi-san really must be a child genius, huh?" Yotsuba remarks awkwardly, doing what she can to try to lighten the mood.

"Indeed. I made the mistake of calling him that once, as well."

The weight of their father's comment on their tutor hits the quints harder than they thought it would.

"...mistake?" Itsuki can't stop herself from asking.

"He is not a natural-born genius. I have seen him make many mistakes, and I continue to see him doing so - his most recent mistake being unable to get two of my daughters to properly attend his lessons on his own."

And Itsuki promptly feels her heart plummet. Her gaze drops with it too, to the point where her peachy-red hair hides her eyes from view in shame. But Nino has the opposite reaction:

"That's not his fault, Papa! How can you say that that's _his _mistake?" she snaps back at her father.

"What's this? You were complaining about his tutoring just a moment ago," Maruo tilts his head slightly, focusing back onto Nino.

"I was, I know, but - even I don't think that's fair. He hasn't been tutoring us not because he doesn't want to, but because Itsuki and I have been giving him a hard time and simply refusing to show up!" Nino argues. "I don't know so much about Itsuki, but I know for a fact that he's been always asking me to come to his lessons every chance he can get. In fact, earlier today, he asked that too while I was in our room. I just have a big problem with him tutoring us and so that's why I don't let him tutor me, but that's not the same as him making a mistake about it, I don't think!"

"I see, then at least his intentions are in the right place," Maruo remarks, almost snidely. "But at the end of the day, whether or not it's because of his actions or yours, what I see is a tutor I hired to make sure that my daughters will study well enough so that graduation will not be in jeopardy for them not doing what I am paying him to do."

"Papa!"

"Because let us face it, girls."

Maruo raising his voice like this is all it takes to silence Nino instantly and demand the attention of the rest.

"There is a reason why I had you five transfer out of your old school into this new one and went through the trouble of hiring a tutor for you, and that reason is because your test records show that if I did not do this, graduation is a mere pipe dream for all of you. And if such is the case, why have I bothered to let you girls live the lives you've been able to pursue on your own? These vacations are not cheap, I do hope you know this."

Now that the subject of money is laid on the table, the quintuplets are robbed of any argument that they can make to respond to their father. All five of them have ceased eating, as their father's words hold precedent at the dinner table. But Maruo does not follow up on this, and instead he finishes the rest of his own chicken dinner in his own silence, which he was close to finishing anyway before their brief conversation, and sets down his utensils.

"Unfortunately, this is the last night I will be sharing with you girls here," he announces calmly. "The reason why I delayed tonight's dinner was because of a particularly urgent patient, but it seems there is only so much I can do over long-distance video calls, so I must fly in myself to treat him. Enjoy the rest of your vacation, girls; I will leave matters in Uesugi-kun's hands for the rest of the week."

It's almost as if this announcement of sudden departure comes as no real shock to the girls. Ichika merely responds with a question of, "When do you need to leave, Dad?"

"Right away. My flight is in two hours sharp, so I cannot delay any longer."

Putting his business jacket back on, Dr. Nakano politely pushes his chair in after himself and turns to depart.

And there stands Uesugi Fuutarou. Blocking the way to the door leading back into the restaurant, he narrows his eyes directly back at the quintuplets' father with his hands in his pockets.

"You sure you don't want to at least finish your wine, Nakano-san?" he asks.

Maruo glances over his shoulder casually at his glass containing the red wine, which is still half-full.

"I have had my fill, thank you for your concern," he returns, even more dryly than before somehow. "It would be a questionable decision of me to make to indulge in alcohol to such a degree just before a flight, no?"

"It would be, yes..." As if it's some sort of habit of his, Fuutarou promptly withdraws his phone from his right pocket where it usually sits when not in use, unlocks the screen, and holds it up to the doctor in one fluid motion, showing him an airplane itinerary. "...if your flight didn't get delayed by an hour."

The doctor raises a single eyebrow. "...I wasn't aware you were my travel agent, Uesugi-kun."

"I believe one of your daughters made that joke to me earlier. Like father, like daughter, as people say?" Fuutarou snorts under his breath. Back at the dinner table, Nino pouts irritably. "Do travel agents even give you live updates on your flights like this, I wonder..."

"What business do you have with me? If you wished to speak with me, you should have done so before, and not in front of my daughters." Maruo's cold, oppressive tone is back in full force, dictating no room for jokes and chilling the spines of his daughters even if they're not the ones to whom Maruo is projecting, but Fuutarou weathers it perfectly as usual.

"Why not take this night off, Nakano-san? Spend some time with your daughters," the young tutor suggests, returning fire with his own icy demeanor. "You've sent these girls out all this way for a Golden Week vacation, and you've even come with them, to boot, and tonight's been the only time you've been with them for longer than five minutes."

"Are you suggesting that you know how I ought to conduct my family matters better than I do, Uesugi-kun?"

With only this short discourse, the tension between the two men is immediately palpable, like Itsuki can use her knife to reach out and cut it physically.

"Not at all, I'm only suggesting you to let me go in your place. Or are you suggesting you don't have confidence in my treatment procedures?"

"This patient does not warrant your treatment, and thus I see no reason in having you replace me. Not to mention, as this patient has been requiring me to make quite a few video calls, it would be inappropriate for me to send in a replacement, and there are no other available doctors on call this week. I could ask of you, Uesugi-kun, should you not stay here with my daughters in case of any emergencies?"

"I have contacts on standby to intervene in those cases; you'll excuse me for using third parties as part of my responsibilities, but I daresay you'll do that, given the terms of our contract. To boot, for the most part, I've confirmed this city as safe; so long as the girls don't do anything explicitly out of the ordinary, nothing should happen to them."

"And should something happen to them?"

"Then it will be dealt with accordingly. It's not as if it hasn't happened before."

"And that is a risk you are willing to take? Even in the light of the first?"

"If it means you can spend more time with them, yes. I know I've risked more for less myself. Wouldn't you?"

"Your own experiences hold no weight here in a family that is not yours. And I will kindly remind you that that is a kind of decision for me to make," Maruo speaks coldly still. "And what of your own stay here? You paid me for covering your own expenses for this vacation, and you are telling me that you are perfectly willing to let it go to waste?"

"It's not ideal, no," Fuutarou admits, "but when I see a father letting time that he could've spent with his family go to waste, suddenly I don't feel so bad about the money I'm wasting."

Maruo smiles wryly.

"I was not aware that I was paying you not only to tutor my daughters, but also to advise me on how to raise them, too," he chuckles in a low voice, beginning to walk around Fuutarou, who does not move to impede him any further.

Because Maruo was blocking Fuutarou from most of the quintuplets' view, this is the first instance for tonight that they've been able to get a good look at him, and he is still dressed in the usual plain white dress shirt and black dress pants, his gaze locked past the girls and out to the sea behind them. In the same fashion that he had done to the doctor, Mr. Nakano stops next to the young tutor as he passes him.

"You will do well to remember what you owe me, beyond this tutoring responsibility. I need not remind you of this again, Uesugi-kun."

Fuutarou shows no reaction, his cold expression remaining frozen even as Dr. Nakano walks out of sight, disappearing into the restaurant, out of view.

The quintuplets are like their tutor's facial expression, frozen where they sit. For a few long moments after their father departs, they gaze uncertainly back at him as he continues to gaze over them into the night waves rolling up against the beach - but perhaps much like their father, after these few moments, Fuutarou, too, promptly turns heel and begins to walk out, taking the same direction as Dr. Nakano did.

"Hey, wait!"

Fuutarou hears a sudden rattling of chair legs against tile behind him, so he stops and turns around to find Nino, once again, standing up at the table after having pushed her chair back forcefully to do so.

"You're just gonna leave like that without at least explaining to us what the hell just happened?" the second quintuplet demands angrily, returning to glaring daggers back at Uesugi. "What was _that_ all about?"

For the first time that the quintuplets have seen, Fuutarou does not respond immediately, instead averting his gaze from the girls as though he doesn't have something prepared in response like he normally does.

"Nothing that should be a big deal," he finally answers, keeping his gaze averted still. "Against his better judgment, an outsider decided to get involved in the affairs of a family that isn't even his, and so he ended up embarrassing himself in front of that family. That's all you saw."

Once more, Fuutarou begins to exit stage right, but once more, he's stopped by another quintuplet.

"Uesugi-san, Uesugi-san!"

This time, Fuutarou doesn't even bother turning around to look at who's called his name twice, but given the honorific, he knows who it is anyway. Yotsuba, having blurted out his name expecting him to ignore her, tenses up when she realizes that he's giving her an opportunity to talk, so she mentally scrambles to find something to ask him something and goes with the first thing that comes to mind, as per the conversation between him and their father that the quintuplets have all eavesdropped on in plain sight.

"A-About that, uh, that thing you were talking to Dad about," she stammers quickly.

"Which one?"

Even with his back to her and her sisters, Yotsuba can easily tell that he is not willing to suffer their attention for the rest of the night.

"...was Dad telling the truth? About how you paid him for being here?" the fourth quintuplet asks meekly. "I thought...we thought you told us before we left home that Dad would be covering for all of us, since, y'know, money's...money's kind of tight for you."

"That would've been the case, yes," Fuutarou confirms, "if Raiha didn't come with us."

Stunned, Yotsuba, who stood up to address her tutor, sinks back down into her chair. Her sisters also have varying degrees of shock written on their own faces, exchanging their looks with each other uncertainly.

"Wait, so...basically, you paid for Raiha-chan to come with us?" Ichika speaks up this time.

"Technically, I gave Raiha the reservation that your dad initially gave me for this trip. Airplane ticket, hotel room," he replies simply. "Did it not occur to you girls why Raiha was the one sitting next to you up in first-class? Why Raiha's the one who's currently sharing a room with you all?"

Having never considered Raiha's role so far, the five girls have nothing to say to this.

"Well, maybe it worked out in that sense. Who knows how some of you would've reacted knowing I'd be sitting in the same first-class compartment and sharing a damn hotel room with you...but since I did that, your dad was kind enough to pay for a last-minute airfare for me, which I compensated him for."

"But why would he make you pay for your own ticket when he was going to do that already? Just because you brought your sister along?" Ichika presses on.

"Our dad suggested I take Raiha along after I told him where I'd be going for Golden Week. Like I said before, given that this's Raiha's first overseas vacation, I decided it was a good idea and gave her my spot. As for why _your _dad didn't also pay for Raiha, again, it was a last-minute request of mine, so naturally it wasn't exactly easy making these arrangements. I'm thankful he even went through the trouble of getting me my own airplane ticket instead of simply rejecting my request to bring Raiha along like I expected him to."

Uesugi then gives the quintuplets a look from over his shoulder.

"That, and you all saw what it's like between me and your dad. Needless to say, we're not exactly on...cordial terms. Again, Raiha shouldn't even be here, but he was generous enough to let her. And I should be happy with that..."

Fuutarou's visible eye breaks focus on the quintuplets as his thought trails off. For the third time, he starts for the door, and finally this time, no voice from the quints is there to block his own path. Soon, before the reality of it is able to settle in, the quintuplets find themselves alone at the restaurant patio, with nothing but the stereo of the washing waves behind them keeping them company.

As Nino also slowly sinks back down into her chair, unable to make heads or tails of this horribly weird situation that they've been left to wallow in, Miku sets down her utensils, no longer in any mood to eat, let alone finish the rest of her glazed pork chop.

"...now that he mentioned that," she wonders aloud softly, "if Fuutarou gave his hotel room spot to Raiha-chan, then...where is he even staying? Does he even..._have_ a hotel room at all?"

Only the waves surge up the sand at the beach to answer her.

* * *

The hotel digital alarm clock reads 12:49 AM on the table to Itsuki's blue eyes that gaze at them from where she sits upright in bed.

Exhausted from a full day's play and the complicated events of the night, the quintuplets have gone directly to sleep and remain fast asleep. Raiha, as usual, is sharing beds with Yotsuba to Itsuki's left, as the quintuplets are arranged in numerical order going from right to left in their beds. But only Itsuki remains the lone exception.

Well, that's not entirely true - Itsuki did manage to fall asleep with the rest of her sisters, but she did so uneasily - and this uneasy sleep has forced her awake again a mere two hours later. She's spent the past half an hour trying in vain to go back to sleep, but the thoughts running through her mind torture it, preventing her from returning to her slumber.

She glances to her left in the dark, where Raiha ought to be lying with Yotsuba. Having been awake for the last half an hour, Itsuki's eyes have adjusted successfully to the dark, so she's at least able to perceive shapes and objects. She uses this nighttime perception to slowly get out of bed, change out of her pajamas and into some modest casual clothes, the first ones that she can find in her suitcase, and slowly tiptoe past the rest of her soundly sleeping sisters to the door.

Ichika listens to the door close quietly after Itsuki.

Out in the hotel corridor, Itsuki takes a better look at herself, squinting in the sudden light that breaks down her night vision and forces her blue eyes to adjust again to the light. She's pulled on a gray sweater with some sort of black check mark logo in front, a sweater she normally does not wear but decided to bring anyway in case of chilly nights, and a green knee-length pleated skirt.

Tussling her hair to straighten her locks out, Itsuki checks her pockets for her key - and then realizes that she's accidentally left it inside the room, effectively locking herself out. Her cheeks reddening at her carelessness, Itsuki quietly contemplates what to do in this kind of event - she doesn't want to knock on the door to wake her sisters up, and she doesn't want to go to the front desk to ask for another key because her English is almost nonexistent. Before Fuutarou, Nino was usually the one who handled anything that needed English, since she was by default the best at it, and Itsuki doesn't feel keen on embarrassing herself trying to ask for another keycard.

Deciding to think about this later, the youngest quintuplet takes a deep breath and sets off, taking the elevator down to the lobby and walking out of the resort to the street. The night crowds have come out, for it is only still one in the morning, but Itsuki ignores them and safely reaches the street that runs parallel to the beach.

Now that she is alone, standing on the sidewalk that overlooks the dark Waikiki Beach, Itsuki is finally able to enjoy the cool night air and the pleasant chorus of gentle waves against the sand. She would have loved to enjoy this during dinner, but...at least she has the chance to do so now.

Looking up, Itsuki scans the night sky, but there is nothing to be seen - only the usual stars closest to Earth and some moving blinking lights, indicating a plane or two flying to and from the Hawaiian Islands. Perhaps her father may be one of those planes.

Letting her head droop back down, the youngest quint turns to begin her lonely late-night sojourn along the beach on the sidewalk.

"Couldn't sleep?"

Glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the voice, Itsuki finds Uesugi Fuutarou sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, his legs dangling off the side down the jagged slope that leads to the sand a few feet below. He, too, has been viewing the nighttime waves of the beach, though Itsuki was sure nothing was there just a moment ago.

"...is that one of your tricks, Uesugi-kun?" Itsuki grumbles, pouting a little at his sudden and unannounced entrance. "You did the same thing to Father earlier tonight at dinner."

"Hm, so you're catching on. I can stop doing that if you'd like."

"Yes, please stop. It is bad enough knowing that you are probably watching us at all times."

Fuutarou gets back up to his feet, swinging his legs around so that he can do so on the sidewalk.

"If there were a way to do my job without having to keep tabs on everyone around the clock, you'd think I would've already found it by now," he remarks to Itsuki, beckoning down the sidewalk. "Am I right in guessing that you have something to talk to me about? If so, we can take a walk while we're at it."

Itsuki simply looks straight ahead and takes his offer wordlessly, and the two of them begin their night journey.

"Let me start with the obvious question that I would like to ask," Itsuki finally speaks up after a few minutes of silence between them, which have been spent breathing in the cool sea breeze. Itsuki is quite grateful that she happened to pull on a sweater back in her hotel room. "Why did you try to stop Father?"

"You weren't listening when I was talking to him? To get him to spend this vacation with you," Fuutarou answers simply.

"That is what I am trying to ask about: why do you wish for him to spend time with us?"

"...it's complicated."

"Complicated, you say? Well, we have plenty of time, so I would like to hear it."

Once more, Fuutarou offers no response at first, so Itsuki eggs him on about it.

"You told Nino earlier that you were an outsider who made the mistake of trying to get involved in another family's matters and suffered the consequences for it, did you not? Surely there must have been a reason for your involvement."

"I don't necessarily feel obligated to answer that to someone who refuses to show up to my tutoring lessons," Fuutarou says suddenly, catching Itsuki off guard with the sudden topic change.

"I-If that is how you like it, then I would appreciate it if you did not make food jokes about me anymore!" Itsuki pouts, whipping her face to the side and crossing her arms in indignation.

"Then we're at an impasse."

"Yes, so it seems!"

The two of them continue to walk like this, refusing to speak to each other for about ten minutes. But the ten minutes in the relaxing sea breeze, with the ambient waves to their left, slowly but surely erodes the wall of sudden hostility that has flared up between them.

"Perhaps you may be one to not concern yourself with something like this, but is it alright if I gave you a piece of my mind?" the youngest quintuplet asks softly, looking down at the sidewalk.

"If you think I won't care for what you say, why bother asking it?" he returns.

"Because - " Itsuki purses her lips, but she's not trying to pout. " - I feel the need to get this off my chest. Especially after seeing you confront Father like you did earlier tonight."

Fuutarou remains silent, which Itsuki takes as her cue to continue.

"I do not know if you will believe me when I say this, but...I would have joined your lessons at some point out of my own volition," Itsuki reveals. "I am fully aware of my own inability to get adequate enough marks on my tests, but...a combination of my pride and your antics that first week barred me from accepting your tutelage, but eventually...probably after our first round of tests at school, which I would most likely fail because that is how my tests have always gone despite all my studying, I would have been convinced to bite the bullet and begin letting you tutor me."

Itsuki raises her blue eyes.

"But that incident...what happened at the warehouse...naturally, it came as a huge shock," she continues to explain quietly. "Never mind what happened to me...when I saw you fight off those bad guys, I was horrified when I realized that you did not hesitate to...kill them."

"You should've realized that instantly. Didn't you see what happened to the first guy who was on top of Nino, what I did to him?" Fuutarou asks.

"I-It did not register in my head yet. It was...there was a lot going on..."

"Understandable, though. That's the unfortunate nature of my side of work sometimes...there'll be times and situations when death is involved, and that incident was one of them. If what I made you see that night made you lose a couple nights' sleep afterwards, I'm sorry about that."

"Well, thankfully I did not lose _too _much sleep, but...there were a few nights when I could not...get it out of my thoughts..."

Itsuki squeezes her eyes shut for a moment and rubs her face to get rid of the memories starting to creep back into her mind.

"So like I was saying, because of that incident...I believed you to be a cold-blooded killer, a murderer to whom death was merely a tool to use at his disposal. Because of that perception I had of you, I was scared of you, Uesugi-kun. I could not bring myself to believe that you could be at all trustworthy, but I also could not explain myself to my sisters about what I felt about you because I would come off as unreasonable or delirious, so I could not stop my sisters from letting you begin to tutor them. Now that the shock of that incident to me has slowly subsided over the past few weeks, I slowly become more comfortable with you visiting every weekday, but...I could not shake off my perception of you as a cold-blooded murderer."

"And so you still see me as such, then?"

Itsuki opens her mouth to speak, but is forced to close her lips as she finds that she does not know how to answer.

"Because you wouldn't be wrong. You were never wrong."

Stealing a glance at him, Itsuki looks down at her feet again as they walk.

"So...you don't deny it, then?"

"How could I, after having shown you what I'm capable of. Normal human beings should not be capable of ending another human being's life like it's mundane, as though it's the same as taking out the trash or washing the dishes."

"...so you yourself are aware of that too, then."

"I am at least self-cognizant of what I do, yes. It's one step removed from full-blown psychopathic." It's Uesugi's turn to glance down at his fellow first-year walking beside him. "So where are you trying to go with this?"

After quickly swallowing back the saliva in her mouth, Itsuki carefully arranges her thoughts. "When you confronted Father earlier tonight...it had me thinking for a few hours afterwards. Because...I should tell you this first...earlier today on the beach, after you left, I asked Raiha-chan about you, about how she feels about you not joining her in this vacation. She said that she didn't want to get in your way, that she knows that you must have a difficult job that requires you to be working at almost all times. So at first, I believed you to be the same as our father - a family member who works so hard for the sake of his family that he ends up neglecting his family in the process - that, on top of what I thought of you before. So I told Raiha-chan that she ought to tell you to join her, that she should ask you to at least spend some time with her during her first vacation overseas like this."

"So that's why Raiha asked me that earlier tonight, huh."

The quintuplet nods as her eyes wander slowly up to the dark, mostly empty sky above.

"I didn't want her to end up having the same fate as us, Uesugi-kun. I didn't want to see another girl like me grow up not knowing what it's like to have a family member they love not spend time with them as they grow up. That's why I, and Yotsuba too, talked to her about this. I hope she didn't inconvenience you in any way because of what we told her."

"Not at all. I was going to have to spend time with her tonight anyway while you five were having dinner with your dad," Fuutarou shakes his head quickly. "Thanks for telling her that, actually. Because of our family's situation, she's had to grow up in obviously less than ideal conditions; it weighs on me and my dad more than you think. She's had to put up with me being gone a lot of the time, our dad always working too, while being dirt poor and in debt. There are a ton of things that I know she'd love to do, things that I'm sure she hears about from friends at school or sees in her daily life that she'd love to try, but she's never once asked for them in case it's something she can't get or do on her own because she's always known that we're busy people, and she doesn't want to bother us because she knows we're doing our best in what we can to support the family, including her."

Uesugi joins Itsuki in gazing up at the mostly starless night sky.

"And...that's why you were willing to essentially pay for Raiha-chan's airfare and hotel?" Itsuki asks, and while she gets no response from her would-be tutor, she doesn't need one. "...just out of curiosity, how much did this trip end up costing you?"

Once the topic of money comes up like this, a dark shadow is cast over Uesugi's face as he lowers his gaze broodingly. Itsuki is rather taken back by this gloomy expression that she's yet to see him make.

"I-It's alright, you don't need to tell me if...if it's that uncomfortable to talk about..." Itsuki hurriedly says.

"...let's just say that it cost me roughly a month's income on a bad month," Uesugi groans slightly. "And even if it _is _a bad month, money is money..."

"I'm...I'm sorry."

"Don't be, you have nothing to apologize for." The shadow is banished as Fuutarou's expression clears up to return to its default iciness. "At the end of the day, it was money worth spending, so long as it doesn't cut too deep. I can always make back that money - but I can't do the same for time."

The two of them spend another five or so minutes walking without a word down the sidewalk parallel to the dark early morning beach.

"When we were eating dinner with our father earlier tonight, what I said to Raiha-chan was on my mind almost the whole time. I wanted to ask Father to consider spending more time with us...that as much as we understand that his line of work is one that demands much of his attention, he should at least strive to find time to spend with his family," Itsuki continues without warning. "But...I was not able to. I didn't have the courage to confront him like that...and when he began talking to us about your tutoring, I...I felt that I couldn't say anything, because whatever I could say would be invalidated by the fact that I haven't been attending your lessons..."

Again, Itsuki takes Fuutarou's silence as her cue to go on, but she decides to take a conversational detour.

"You usually work during the night, right? Is it just because it's easier for you to work during the nighttime, or because you like it better than daytime?" she asks him.

"Most people are usually asleep at night, so less foot traffic and less people to deal with in case of a potential situation," Fuutarou replies crisply. "I got more used to working overnight over time, and it's to the point where I sort of do prefer nighttime over daytime. If there's one thing that Yotsuba's comparison to me with a vampire is right about, it's that."

Itsuki chuckles awkwardly, remembering Yotsuba's comment earlier yesterday.

"I...also enjoy nighttime. It's something I don't think my sisters know about because I'm usually the one who goes to sleep first, at least after Ichika..."

"Yeah, I'd imagine it's a bit hard to out-sleep Ichika."

"Indeed. But...yeah, I love going out on walks like this in the middle of the night. It helps me clear my head in case anything is bothering me, and it helps me focus in case I want to study hard the next day."

"Even though you said it doesn't really help?"

"Th-The spirit is there, I can assure you!"

"You're gonna need a bit more than spirit..."

"I'm well aware, thank you very much!" Itsuki sighs heavily. "But...it's not just that. I love going stargazing - seeing a night sky filled with stars is...one of the best feelings I can think of."

Uesugi glances again down at Itsuki next to him at her peachy red sidelocks - but it seems tonight, the star-shaped hairpins that usually straddle those sidelocks are missing.

"Mother first instilled it in me, when she used to take me and my sisters stargazing at night years ago, back when you could still do that...before the city started expanding," she murmurs, her speech becoming filled with bittersweet words. "But...now, you can only really see a few of the closer ones...and oftentimes, it's hard to find any stars at all...and not to mention, none of my sisters seem to be interested in stargazing in the first place..."

"You can always just buy one of those amateur telescopes and look at planets and such; I've heard of people doing that even in the city, since light pollution doesn't really get in the way of that," Fuutarou suggests, but Itsuki shakes her head.

"I have used telescopes before. They are fun to use, to be fair, but...I much prefer the experience of simply being able to look up in the sky and seeing a sky filled with stars. There is something...magical about it, something about it that you cannot find in anything else."

Itsuki gazes up at the empty night sky yearningly and nostalgically, slowing to a stop on the sidewalk, and Fuutarou, matching her gait, slows with her and stops too.

"Seeing you confront Father for our sake changed my opinion of you, Uesugi-kun, along with everything else that has happened thus far. As such...I would like to join the study group with the others once Golden Week is concluded," Itsuki announces with a small smile.

"No."

Itsuki's small smile remains where it is as her eyes blink in stunned confusion.

"...excuse me?"

Turning to face Itsuki completely, Uesugi gazes down at her with his signature icy demeanor.

"I appreciate the fact that you now see me in a better light than before. However, what I don't appreciate is the fact that you're using my confrontation with your dad as the basis for why you want to finally accept me as your tutor, because my run-in with your dad is an entirely different matter to the discrepancy between us leading up to this point regarding the tutoring."

"Wh-What do you mean by that? I don't understand..."

"Basically, I want you to accept my tutoring because you recognize that you need help in raising your grades and you see value in the tutoring I can offer, since that's why I got hired as your and your sisters' tutor in the first place. You deciding to take tutoring from me because of an extraneous incident that has nothing to do with my tutoring contract renders that contract irrelevant because it derives its merit not off my ability to teach or your recognition that you need assistance, but from something else entirely, and so it feels like a cheap cop-out to me."

"But - but I told you just now that I _do _recognize that I need help!" Itsuki protests, her thoughts getting jammed and jumbled by this unexpected rejection from her would-be tutor.

"Even still, that doesn't account for the other half of my argument, that it feels cheap to use my argument with your dad as an excuse to rein you in; that's not how I want to end up tutoring you," Fuutarou insists. "Like I said at the end after your dad left, that was a mistake that I made and ended up embarrassing myself over. You wanting to join us now because of that makes me feel like I'm being rewarded for a mistake I made. That should not happen."

"...so...so you're saying that...confronting Father was a mistake...?" Itsuki's fists begin to tighten again.

"On my part, yes. I should have known better than to get involved in what should be a private matter between you quints and your dad, but I did anyway thinking I could be a hero and try to change things, but it ended up doing nothing."

"Perhaps - perhaps that is certainly the case, that it should have been a matter that should have stayed in our family alone, but - but you don't seem to understand that - that you were able to confront Father in a way that I wanted to but couldn't! And - and now you're calling that a _mistake?" _Itsuki feels her words being fueled by anger and confusion. "Then, are you saying that what Yotsuba and I told Raiha-chan earlier today was a mistake too? That we shouldn't have told her that she ought to ask you to spend time with her? What we did was the same thing as what you did, Uesugi-kun! Yotsuba and I, outsiders to _your _family, meddled in an affair that should have stayed between the two of _you, _yet we went ahead and did what we thought was right, as did you for us to our father! And while I tried showing you appreciation for your efforts, you stand here and reject _mine?_ Reject the efforts that Yotsuba and I made for your sister's sake, and perhaps your own as well, by calling it a mere 'cop-out'?"

The ambience of the waves and the cool ocean breeze are still present, but no longer do they paint a relaxing backdrop between the girl and the boy on the Honolulu sidewalk.

"If...if that is what you truly believe, Uesugi-kun, then...all these things that you've said, the things you're saying that devalue your own actions, you haven't been saying them to act humble or modest or anything; you're saying them because you're stubborn. You want to do things _your _way, and you can't accept any alternative. I was the same way as well, you know! I was stubborn and did not want you to be our tutor, but eventually I was able to put aside my stubbornness and muster up the conviction tonight to tell you that I would like you to tutor me, alongside Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba...only to realize now that you, too, are being driven by your own stubbornness. So for all the things you said to our father, it would appear that you yourself are not much different!"

"Takes one to know one, as they say," Fuutarou shrugs simply as the final nail in the coffin.

"As it would appear, yes. But because of this, I rescind my offer to you to become your student. If you are right about one thing, it is that I should refuse your tutoring. You are still being paid per student, correct? Does the absence of me and Nino not bother you at all, whatsoever? Not even in the sense of being able to take care of Raiha-chan better?"

"From a monetary perspective, no. I told you already, right? I can always make more money elsewhere to make up for the loss that you and Nino are causing me; it's other things that worry me more."

"Then let it remain so. You certainly don't need pity from me for that," Itsuki scoffs, pivoting swiftly on her foot to face the direction from whence the two have come. "I truly hope, if only for Raiha's sake, that those 'other things' you worry about include your stubbornness and your own inability to accept the graces that others show you whenever they do. I empathized with you and your situation, and such was part of my consideration going into this conversation with you and finally accepting your tutelage...but no longer."

Fuutarou watches Itsuki trudge away, backtracking her way to the resort alone. Taking one more glance up at the night sky, he finds nary a star in the dark heavens peeking back at him.


	16. Golden Week - Brown Sugar Milk Tea

"Hnnnnggghh...!"

Grunting a little while stretching her arms out, Itsuki sits up slowly in her bed in her hotel room, rubbing her eyes sleepily. The morning light is already pouring into the room, forcing her eyes to adjust to the new light levels, as the curtains around their room have been pulled back to reveal once more the charming and calming grandeur of their beachfront spectacle.

"Good morning, Itsuki."

Hearing her name called, Itsuki squints over to the table to find Ichika sitting there dressed in a bathrobe with a fashion magazine in hand and a cup of warm black tea prepared for her by Nino. Ichika's own short peachy-red hair is slick and somewhat moist, a clear indicator of a shower recently taken.

"...good morning," the youngest quintuplet replies slowly, taken back by the fact that Ichika, who's usually the heaviest sleeper of the sisters, has woken up and already been about before herself. Then again, after what she did in the middle of the night...

Now that her senses are slowly returning to her, Itsuki takes a better look around their hotel room. Yotsuba and Raiha are still snoozing peacefully next to her, while Miku is sitting up against the bedframe still with her legs underneath the covers, listening to music and looking down at her phone with her blue headphones on. Nino is nowhere to be found.

"Where is Nino...?" Itsuki murmurs, her voice still laden with grogginess as she begins to slip her legs out from underneath her own covers.

"She said she wanted to check out the department stores in the city and got a head start. We're going to meet up with her later at around noon," Ichika calls after Itsuki as the latter drags her feet into the large bathroom to wash her face and use the toilet. Once her usual morning bathroom routine is complete, Itsuki walks out of the bathroom much more alert, though her bed hair still needs some work.

"Want me to do your hair today?" Ichika asks gently, holding up a comb at Itsuki, who silently accepts her eldest sister's offer and takes a seat at the chair next to her so that Ichika can get to work after setting down her black tea and magazine. "How are you feeling now?"

"Feeling...? Well..." Itsuki hesitates. "...it...it was certainly a surprise...that Uesugi-kun appeared like he did last night before us and...Father..."

"Yeah, that was pretty surprising, wasn't it. It's like we have our own personal ninja, doesn't it?"

"I-I don't know if I feel so comfortable with that."

Ichika takes the time to focus on combing out some more difficult locks of unruly hair while dodging Itsuki's ahoge that bounces slowly from left to right with the shaking of the rest of Itsuki's hair.

"I am just glad that we were able to have dinner with Father before he left yesterday," Itsuki gives a small smile. "He simply could have cancelled our dinner plans entirely, but he made sure to make the time to fulfill his promise."

Ichika also gives a small smile of her own. "I guess so, if you put it that way."

"Do you disagree, Ichika?"

"Not exactly, since you're not wrong. Dad in the past would've just cancelled everything if something work-related came up and leave us under Ebata-san's care or someone else...but this time he made sure to at least spend some time with us before he left. So definitely an improvement there on his part."

Ichika gets up from her chair so that she can comb the harder to reach parts of Itsuki's hair.

"But after hearing you and Yotsuba talk to Raiha-chan about how she ought to ask her big brother to spend more time with her, I bet you wanted to do the same for Dad, right?" she inquires in a low voice, making Itsuki tense up.

"...I must be extraordinarily easy to read, I suppose..." Itsuki laments, both her posture and her ahoge slumping somewhat.

"Eh, it's not so much me reading you, it's just something that I feel you'd be inclined to do. Yotsuba also probably wanted to bring it up to Dad, but she's pretty timid when it comes to serious topics like that, and you didn't want to say anything because you were probably afraid that Dad wouldn't listen to you since you weren't attending Fuutarou-kun's lessons."

The mention of their tutor pulls up memories earlier that morning to Itsuki's eyes.

"...yes, that is...correct," Itsuki murmurs, still with her posture slouched. "As much as I object to Uesugi-kun's tutoring, the fact of the matter is that...I am not attending them as I should be, so...Father has no reason to listen to what I have to say."

"Maybe not, but...at least putting your thoughts out there for him to consider should be worth the effort, even if he ultimately doesn't do anything about it."

"Then...if he will never act on my words or anyone else's words, what would be the point of mentioning such things? If all he will do is take them into consideration and that is the end of story, why should we even bother...?"

"Hmmm, that's the difficult part, isn't it. But I think both of us can agree that making sure we say the things that we think are important has merit all on its own. That's why you talked to Raiha-chan yesterday, right?"

Itsuki corrects her posture as Ichika pulls up a handful of her long hair to make it easier for the latter to comb.

"Because the truth of the matter is that someone like Uesugi-kun...has both the ability and the willingness to spend time with his younger sister, which would make her happy. Our father has the ability...but perhaps not the willingness. To add, Uesugi-kun is our age, and hence our peer...we do not have the same barriers of communication with him that we do with someone like our own father, and...not to mention, the degree of separation between Uesugi-kun and his sister is much smaller than that between us and our father."

"That's a good point. But still..." Ichika gently runs the comb down the locks of hair that she's holding. "...seeing you with that face at dinner last night...as your big sister, it wasn't pleasant to look at, you know? My cute little sisters shouldn't have to look that way."

Itsuki pouts a little as her older sister wraps her arms slowly around her thorax. "But we're quintuplets..."

"I'm still the oldest, though."

"Perhaps, but only by seconds!"

"You don't wanna let Ichika-onee-chan look after you, Itsuki? That hurts your onee-chan's feelings, you know ~ "

"You say that, but is it not in fact the rest of us who look after you?"

"Haha, you got me there..."

Pulling up another chair, Ichika reseats herself to comb the last of Itsuki's hair.

"Speaking of feelings, actually...since I probably won't have another opportunity to ask this later," Ichika murmurs, and Itsuki hears her oldest sister's voice drop a few decibels. "Where did you go earlier this morning?"

Itsuki's breath stops for a moment before resuming normally.

"...so it was you who left the door open for me when I returned," she concludes softly, lowering her gaze down to her lap, and Ichika nods, remembering the text that Fuutarou sent her in the middle of the night letting her know that Itsuki was on her way back to the hotel.

"You moving around in the room in the middle of the night woke me up, and when I realized that someone was going through one of the suitcases for clothes, I figured it was one of you girls, and once you'd left the room, I checked to see who it was," she answers.

"You woke up from me putting on clothes...? It is...tough to imagine that. Not to mention we were all quite exhausted from the rest of the day yesterday..."

"W-Well, you know, seeing Fuutarou-kun confront Dad like that was pretty surprising, right? And I could say the same about you, getting up in the middle of the night to go off somewhere." Having successfully deflected that line, Ichika sighs quickly to finish up the rest of Itsuki's hair. "So where _did _you go...? And why?"

Itsuki purses her lips, reluctantly but slowly recalling the events of the morning to herself.

"...I went for a walk on the street outside to talk to Uesugi-kun," she says, putting forward the truth.

"Fuutarou-kun, huh...I figured as much. Did you meet with him?"

Itsuki nods.

"That's Fuutarou-kun for you. But how did you know he'd meet you out there? You don't have his number, and it's not like any of us talked to him for the rest of the night last night..."

"Uesugi-kun himself said that he gave his reservation to Raiha-chan, so if she did not come with us for this vacation, we would have been spending the last few nights with him in the same room instead," Itsuki points out, shivering a little as she speaks. "But because she is here and not him, we can only assume that he must be doing his..._other _line of work during the night. I got the feeling that he is keeping eyes on our hotel room...so if I were to leave all of a sudden in the middle of the night, he would follow me to make sure that nothing happened to me."

"Wow ~ so all that studying you do really is paying off," Ichika giggles.

"P-Please do not make fun of me, figuring something like that out has nothing to do with studying." Itsuki pouts a little back at her sister.

"Anyways, go on? Why did you meet him, then? Given how you usually are towards him, I'm surprised you wanted to talk to him about something like that."

"I am aware that my actions this morning are not indicative of my usual sentiment towards him. But...to tell a long story short, last night at dinner...when we saw Uesugi-kun try to convince Father to stay with us a little bit longer - seeing that changed my opinion about him."

"Mhm. I'm assuming the stuff you talked to Raiha-chan with Yotsuba kinda contributed to that?"

"Yes, of course. Because of that, I saw Uesugi-kun doing what I wanted to do, what I should have done. Perhaps due to his...other work he has no problem doing something like confronting Father about something that bothered him, but even still, Uesugi-kun had the courage to point out a problem that he saw in a family that was not even his because he felt it was the right thing to do."

Itsuki lets the back of her head rest against the back of her chair.

"At least...that is what I believed."

Having become quite emotionally invested into this story, Ichika sets down the comb on the table so that she can give her youngest sister her full attention.

"What did he say?" she asks, subtly urging Itsuki on.

"Well...I must say this first," Itsuki clears her throat hesitantly. "The main reason why I wanted to talk to Uesugi-kun was to tell him that I would like to join his lessons starting next week, once our Golden Week vacation is over."

"Oooh, so Fuutarou-kun's managed to catch another quintuplet ~ "

"Please do not make us sound like we are all fish in a koi pond."

"Sorry, keep going?"

Itsuki's fingers curl as she prepares herself for what she must say next.

"He rejected me," she finally says.

Ichika blinks a few times at her sister, having an uncannily similar reaction. "He...he rejected you? Even though that's what he'd want? But why then?"

"He said he did not want me to accept his tutoring because of something...that was not related to his actual tutoring ability. He said that he wanted me to accept him as my tutor not because of what he did last night, but because I recognized that I needed his help...to get better grades."

Hearing Uesugi-kun's explanation through Itsuki, Ichika nods slowly.

"So that's why...yeah, that sounds like Fuutarou-kun, alright."

"You do not object to it, Ichika?"

"Not really, no. That's just how he is..." Ichika gestures calmly. "It's because you haven't spent as much time as me, Yotsuba, and Miku have, Itsuki, since we've been taking his lessons and you haven't. I'm not trying to knock on you for not coming to his lessons, it's just how it is. We've spent more time with him, so naturally we know more about him than you do, and likewise, he knows more about us than you or Nino."

Having put on a difficult look listening to her sister's counsel, Itsuki keeps her peace for now.

"That's just the kind of person that he is." Doing what she can to explain Uesugi's behavior for her sister, Ichika pulls her chair closer to Itsuki's. "When he tutors us, he's a very by-the-books kind of person. I know that sounds like he just teaches like any other teacher we've had in school, but the difference between him and all the others is that since he's working with just us three, he's able to make sure that we understand everything he's going over. That's why he's stayed late at our place so often, because he doesn't leave until we get what he's teaching us."

"You do not get annoyed or tired whenever that happens, though?"

"Mmmm, surprisingly, not really, no. Honestly, his lessons always feel like they go by pretty quickly; they never seem draining or anything. Maybe it's because he's got a lot of energy to him, surprisingly enough, when he starts teaching us, maybe it's because we actually enjoy his lessons..."

"I do not know...what if he is casting some sort of...magic over you guys?"

"Oh c'mon, that's just weird. He told us that he wants to keep his whole magic stuff separate from us, didn't he?"

"You never know...you ought to be careful around him, Ichika. Same with Miku and Yotsuba."

Ichika simply shrugs, knowing that she probably won't be able to convince Itsuki otherwise on that particular subject.

"Either way, I'm not surprised he said that stuff to you," the eldest quint nods. "He's the type of guy who wants to do things his way, after all. He just comes off like that."

"Then that makes him no different from our own father!" Itsuki asserts. "I even made it a point to make sure he understood that! And he even admitted it himself - what did he say, something along the lines of 'it takes one to know one' or something like that?"

"But surely you've gotta know that there is still a key difference between him and Dad, right?"

"There is not, Ichika. There cannot be - they both want to do things their way; they both want things to go in accordance with _their _wills, _their _plans, _their _intentions. That is why Uesugi-kun refused me as a student when I was trying to be considerate towards him, and why Father only has dinner with us once a year."

But Ichika defends her ground, digging in to weather Itsuki's critique.

"You're only thinking about his words at face value, Itsuki. You have to think about what else he could mean."

"But...what else _could_ he mean by this...?"

Turning to gaze out the window at the warm morning beachfront, Ichika smiles a little.

"Fuutarou-kun wants you to come study with us with the mindset of wanting to study. While obviously you'll do that either way, he wants to eliminate the possibility of you being distracted by anything else," she explains thoroughly. "If he had accepted you as a student tonight when you used last night's confrontation with Dad as the main basis for why you wanted to start studying with us, then to him, you're not coming to his lessons thinking 'I want to study', but rather, 'I'm here because I think Uesugi-kun is a better person than I thought he was'."

Itsuki's eyes widen as she listens to Ichika's explanation, but they tighten up again in defiance.

"Even if that is the case, I cannot understand why someone like Uesugi-kun would even dare to turn me down. Not because of my own self-importance, but...he has it tough at home...! Ichika, you know that I have been to his house once, we have heard that story enough times, have we not? He has never kept it a secret that Father pays him per number of students he has at the moment. So what does he seek to gain by rejecting me? I just cannot fathom it...!"

"I mean, like I said, he's always come off as sort of like a person who sticks to doing what they know. Especially for someone like him, you know? And besides..." the eldest quint gazes directly back into Itsuki's own blue eyes. "The key difference between him and Dad is that the focus of Fuutarou-kun's work right now revolves around us. The same can't be said of Dad - so naturally, who do you think has a more immediate investment in us?"

Recoiling slightly from Ichika's words, Itsuki shakes her head again. "That is meaningless. If that is the argument you are trying to make, I can just as easily say that Father cares for us more because he is the one who allows us to live a life like this - Uesugi-kun cannot do that."

"You're right. But then in that case, why do you feel so strongly about Dad never spending time with us?"

Those words echo through Itsuki's ears as her body is left frozen as they pass, but she also quickly recovers from this.

"That may be one thing, but trying to imply that Uesugi-kun is more responsible for us somehow than our own father is a bit much, Ichika. And...I suppose I would be taking after Uesugi-kun a little bit here myself, but...he would not want you to make that kind of comparison either."

"Yeah, that's true..." Ichika heaves out another moderate sigh. "For such a simple-minded guy like him, dealing with him is...complicated, huh?"

"Indeed. May I have a bit of your tea?"

"Sure, go ahead. Nino made us plenty before she left..."

So Itsuki helps herself to Ichika's cup of black tea. "Also, you sound as if you know what it is like dealing with Uesugi-kun."

The run-in the eldest quint had with their tutor earlier in the week comes to mind, and Ichika quickly suppresses that memory.

"W-Well, you know, I've been to enough of his lessons to know what he's like. I think I mentioned that before, right?"

"Mmm...I suppose also that since you are like Nino in that both of you are quite socially talented, you would figure out someone like Uesugi-kun faster than I."

"Yeah, that too. But just know that Uesugi-kun isn't a bad guy, Itsuki. He's just, like you said, stubborn at times, but we already know what it feels like dealing with someone stubborn, right? It's nothing new."

"I was hoping we would not need to deal with _more _stubborn people in our lives, but I guess that is a far-fetched dream by now." Itsuki savors the malty flavor of the black tea.

"Then...if your talk with Fuutarou-kun turned out like that, then what's the plan going forward? Fuutarou-kun wants to teach you on his terms, but because of that, you aren't willing to let him either even though you would've before. I don't think it's reasonable to think that you'll change your mind anytime soon..."

Itsuki lowers her sister's cup of black tea. "I...do not know. I do...feel bad for rejecting him like I did on my part; upon reflecting on my actions this morning, I do feel that...I should have at least tried to ask him to not be so rigid in his own terms, and without having to resort to using his sister as a means of argument. But I think he would not have budged..."

"And either way, we'd still end up in this position."

"Yes. And so because of that, I ultimately do not feel obligated to change my sentiment towards him now. Which means for the foreseeable future, I will continue studying on my own."

Ichika says nothing to this, but merely nods her head understandingly.

"You've got it tough, don't you, Fuutarou-kun?" she murmurs aloud, gazing up at their hotel room's ceiling. "Getting us together, teaching airheads like us - "

"Who are you calling an airhead?" Itsuki scowls over at Ichika.

"Am I wrong, though?"

"U-Uuuu..."

* * *

"...Nino, I've gotta ask, but...I don't think my job resume includes carrying bags for my own students."

"Shut up and just be a good lackey."

"Sure, but you'll at least let me ask you why I should do this."

"Because a _certain someone _crashed the dinner we were having with our Papa last night."

"And I'm to blame for that?"

"Yes."

"Tsk. Yeah, okay then..."

Uesugi Fuutarou is following Nakano Nino around the various department stores in the Ala Moana Shopping Center, carrying in total six bags filled with nothing but clothes that Nino has picked out in no less than eight different clothing stores. While the bags themselves are not bulging or in physical danger of bursting open due to their high volume of contents, they are quite hefty, and Fuutarou is starting to consider going to a nearby store to buy a cheap pair of gloves to spare his fingers at least a little bit of wear from holding onto so many layers of bag straps at once that are by now beginning to cut into his skin.

"You sure can hold out holding all those bags, huh?" Nino remarks, glancing over her shoulder as she struts in front of Fuutarou, leading the way to their next destination.

"I've done physical labor before, so carrying bags isn't exactly difficult, but we've been walking around for a while, so my hands are starting to feel it..."

"Physical labor?" Nino turns around and briefly walks backwards so that she can eye Fuutarou's frame. "You don't look like you do much, though. Well, I take it back, maybe your arms are pretty big..."

"I don't really work out, and obviously it's not like I can eat well all the time either. So my body doesn't have the opportunities to build muscle like other people can, I suppose, if that's how it works."

Fuutarou narrows his eyes back at Nino's blue ones.

"So are you gonna explain to me at some point why I'm with you right now? I don't mind the bag carrying part, why did you want me to come with you?"

At first, Nino does not answer him, just like how she's avoided all the previous times so far this morning that he's tried getting an answer out of her in regards to this, so once more, Fuutarou rolls his eyes and follows Nino silently, though this time he's contemplating not even bothering asking her again since clearly she doesn't want to for whatever reason.

Of course, as soon as he thinks this to himself, Nino turns to him again and points up at the sign of their next store: Uniqlo.

"We're getting you some clothes now," Nino says flatly, with what Fuutarou swears is the world's tiniest pout etched on her lips, but he doesn't have the time to confirm this as she swings around and walks inside, holding the door open for her shopping partner as he comes in after her. "Let me guess, you don't really have much experience picking out clothes for yourself, do you?"

"No ma'am, not at all. I'll leave that responsibility to you."

"As I figured..."

So the two of them head to the men's clothing section of the Japanese clothing chain, where Nino gets to work carefully picking out some new clothes that she feels will be appropriate for Fuutarou.

"You don't need to spend so much time thinking about what'll look good on me," Fuutarou advises the second quintuplet, scowling in confusion at why Nino is spending so much time going through all this effort of buying clothes for him. "I don't really care what you pick so long as they don't look downright ridiculous."

"Shut up...geez, you always talk so damn much," Nino gripes, tossing him a Hawaiian shirt to start things off. "Here, you wanted something simple, right? Go try that, see if it's your size."

"Make sure to look after the bags."

"Yeah, yeah, just go."

Fuutarou and Nino spend about half an hour getting the former to try various clothes that Nino likes on him, and after that half hour, Fuutarou neatly stacks the clothes that she's picked out for him on an empty chair under which all their other shopping bags take shelter.

"Clothing stores are expensive as hell..." Fuutarou cringes just looking at the price tags on all the clothes. "And here I was only hoping to grab a pair of gloves somewhere..."

"Why do you need gloves...?" Nino asks incredulously, but her scowl drops immediately when she sees Fuutarou showing her his calloused hands. "Er...I can...I think there's a shop somewhere that sells - "

"I don't think I can pay for all this myself. If you're okay with it, I can pay you back once we get home," the young tutor informs Nino, totally talking over her consideration for his need for gloves, which irritates Nino, but she swallows her annoyance for now.

"Are you nuts? You can't pay for this, just let me cover it."

Fuutarou slowly straightens up and raises a hand to scratch the side of his head.

"I can't keep asking you to pay for stuff, though," he mumbles with a quick sigh.

"And just what exactly makes you think you're in any position to ask that?" Nino interrogates him with folded arms. "Or do you still remember that day when I bought that crepe for you that you were trying to get for Raiha-chan?"

"Obviously I do. I don't forget when people do me favors like that easily, given that they don't happen very often, and not to people like me and my family."

Nino opens her mouth to talk over Fuutarou and cut him off, but listening to the second half of his words forces her to have second thoughts, so she listens instead.

"Well...it's...it's not that big of a deal, you know..." Nino mutters softly, having already averted her eyes ahead of time, before pointing down at all the shopping bags that she's been making Fuutarou carry for her. "See, look, I've bought so much stuff that buying some clothes for you isn't really much in comparison. And it's not like you're freaking out over how much I'm buying either. I'm sure all this must make you think I'm just making it rain or something."

But to her surprise, Fuutarou just shrugs.

"It's your money, though. I don't really care what you do with your money," he says simply, tugging lightly at the collar of his new short-sleeve Riviera Hawaiian shirt to make it feel a bit less stiff. "If buying all these clothes is what makes you happy for today, then I don't have a problem with it. Even if I don't personally agree with it - but when it starts to involve me, that's when I start caring, which is why I don't easily forget when people buy stuff for me or my family. Even if it's coming from you."

"Hey, hey, what's _that _supposed to mean," Nino grumpily pouts back up at Fuutarou. "You do realize you're talking to the girl who's gonna be buying these clothes for you, right?"

"I know, but even with your generosity in consideration, I still feel the need to point out the fact that you're buying clothes for someone you clearly don't want in your house tutoring your sisters."

"Y-You don't have to point that out to me!"

"And you don't need to be defensive about that, that's just the truth."

"It's not about that!" Nino says quickly, pointing at the neat stack of clothes that Fuutarou has put on the chair seat before him, and he hands the clothes over to her so that she can take them up to the front register.

"Then what _is _it about? I was asking you this for the past hour now, once for every department store we've been to."

Clicking her tongue in annoyance, Nino gives Fuutarou another stink-eye look. "You really don't know when to give up sometimes, do you?"

"Neither do you when it comes to tutoring."

"Oh, shut up..." Nino turns around to head to the front register, but she stays where she turns with her back facing Uesugi instead. "I'm only doing this because Miku was talking yesterday about how she wanted you to at least have some fun of your own while you were here. That, and Raiha-chan was talking last night about how you're going to spend some time with her tomorrow. You're gonna look pitiful in clothes like that, so at least look the part when you go have fun."

"So you _do _care about Miku, huh?"

This prompts Nino to twirl around and glare daggers back at him again, which she does at some point almost every time they meet.

"And why _wouldn't _I care about her?" she demands, keeping her voice low.

"Because I've been in your house long enough to know that you two don't get along all the time. That's not exactly a secret either."

"Hmph..." Nino turns away again. "That's none of your business. You even said it yourself last night, didn't you? To stay out of stuff in _our _family."

"Fair enough, I got nothing to say to that..."

So Fuutarou gathers up the spare clothes that Nino has picked out for him that they will not be buying to put their hangers back on and return the clothes back to where Nino first took them, while the Nakano quint herself goes to the register to pay. Unfortunately, Nino has pulled out so many clothes for Fuutarou to try that in combination with the fact that the line at the registers is quite short, Nino ends up having to return to Fuutarou because she's realized that he hasn't met her at the exit like he was supposed to.

"You know you can just...leave that for the employees here to handle, right?" Nino sighs exasperatedly, watching her would-be tutor arrange the last of the clothes to return to their respective racks.

"I'm aware. It's a habit, though."

"Habit? Habit of what?"

"Cleaning up after myself. It's important in my, uh..._other _line of business, let's say."

Frowning deeply, Nino sets the new bag of Uniqlo clothes down next to all the other bags that Fuutarou will have to carry back.

"Really now. You didn't do much, uh, 'cleaning up' when we were involved, though."

"I hope you realize just how bad that sounds."

"Bad? What do you - geh!"

It then hits her, and Nino slaps Fuutarou on the arm quickly in embarrassment.

"What the hell, you sick pervert! I wasn't even trying to - !"

"Sorry, it's just that if people overhear you saying that, they might get the wrong idea."

"Even still - !"

With a permanent scowl on her face because of that last exchange, Nino grumpily watches her courier finish returning all the extra clothes and pick up their bags, waiting for her lead, which she employs and walks out of the clothing store with him in tow as usual.

"There anywhere else we need to go?" Fuutarou asks after her.

"No, that's it. We're gonna head back now, I don't feel like shopping anymore." Pausing for a moment, Nino then begins to look around the shopping mall. "Actually, I know we passed by a bubble tea shop somewhere..."

"There was a shop called Twinkle Brown Sugar, I think it was," Fuutarou mentions, digging through his memories of the past few hours of their routes through the shopping mall.

"Yeah, I think that was it. Do you remember where it was?"

"I think so, it was...near where we first entered the mall."

So their roles reverse, with Fuutarou taking the lead and Nino in tow as the two of them cruise down the central lane of the Ala Moana Shopping Mall.

"So, about before, before you made that dirty joke..." Nino pouts irritably, "...why _did _you go through all that hassle putting back all those clothes? Don't tell me you did it because of me or something lame like that..."

"I didn't, you wouldn't care even if I did say that was the reason."

Even though Fuutarou takes the words right out of her mouth, Nino still feels irked by that comment nonetheless.

"Like I said, it's because I have to clean up the mess I make in my other work," he continues. "Well, I had to a lot in the past. I don't have to do it as much these days since I have dedicated clean-up crews like the one I called in for that night, since that was a situation where getting you and your sisters to safety was the top priority, so I couldn't just stay behind and clean everything up myself. But in other situations where I don't have an immediate priority of some kind, I do stick around to clean up whatever situations I get involved in."

"But even if you say that, that doesn't explain why you'd do something like that back at Uniqlo. That wasn't a mess _you _made, those were clothes that _I _pulled out for you, but you still put them back anyway like you were the one who took them out."

Fuutarou simply shrugs at this. "Force of habit, I guess? I mean, I didn't bother doing that for the other stores that we were in. I put those clothes back at Uniqlo since you were picking out clothes for me."

"So you _do _still feel some sort of obligation since I'm buying you some clothes."

"But you were the one who told me not to worry about it."

"I don't think you're being very truthful with me."

"I've got no reason to lie to you."

"So you _would _lie if you did?"

"Yes, but there's nothing worth lying to you about."

Yet another comment that irks Nino a bit more.

"You're really annoying to talk with, you know?" the second quintuplet gripes harshly, not bothering to filter her tone. "I get that you don't really interact with people a lot, but seriously, do you _always _have to sound like a smartass every time I talk to you?"

"Such is the life of a poor contractor; you're not gonna get any flowery language out of this karoshi warrior. Not to mention, weren't _you _the one who called me out here to come along with you so that you wouldn't have to carry all these bags yourself? I'd feel bad for your sisters if you put them through this; you don't make them do this either, do you?"

"No I don't! We all carry bags equally, okay? It's just a pain in the ass!"

"Oh, so you _do _know what this feels like." Fuutarou lifts up his handfuls of shopping bags. "Why not just pay for someone to carry all this shit around with you? You're rich enough for that, I'd imagine?"

"Don't need to, now that we have you."

"True, but this isn't what I'm being paid for."

Once more, the discourse between the quintuplets and Doctor Nakano surfaces to Nino's attention.

"But I bet you're being paid either way, which means it's just as good as if _we're _the ones paying for you."

"That's the most rich spoiled girl logic I've ever heard in my life, and I hope to God I don't ever have to hear that again."

"Just shut up and take me to that bubble tea place already, then!"

"What do you think we're doing right now..." Uesugi gives an exasperated sigh of his own. "Besides, if you hate having me around so much, other than using me to carry bags for you, why not just bring your sisters along next time? This is your vacation, after all, you should be spending time with them."

"Says the guy who hasn't spent any time at all with his own!"

"What do you mean, I did yesterday evening while you were all at dinner with your dad, and I'll be hanging out with her later tomorrow."

"And my sisters said they'd meet up with me here at noon, so I was gonna hang out with them here anyway."

"Oh, I didn't know that. So what's the plan after you get tea, just have me truck back to the hotel?"

"Yeah, just drop off the stuff in our room."

"Why didn't you just do all your shopping with your sisters? I'd imagine it's more fun going shopping with them than me."

"Didn't I already mention it? I don't wanna make my sisters carry all these bags. Might as well have _you _carry them since we know you're hanging around."

"So you won't have me as your tutor, but you're okay with me being your bellboy."

"I see nothing wrong with that."

"I do."

"Deal with it, Uesugi."

"Dealing with it harder than I've ever dealt with before, ma'am. There's the shop."

Locating the shop, Fuutarou opens the door even with his hands fully occupied with bags for Nino, who holds the door open in turn for him so that the two of them can enter and stand in line.

"Is there anything you want? Have you even ever had tea like this before?" Nino asks her courier.

"Nope, I have no idea about any of this, though I've seen lots of young people like us stand around drinking stuff like this back home. Must be some sort of trendy drink, I guess?"

"It's not just trendy, it's good, too, I think even someone like you'll like it. I'll just pick whatever for you."

"Just to make sure, I don't need to pay for this either, do I?"

"Do you _want _me to make you pay for it, then? If that's all you ever concern yourself with."

"If that's the case, don't even bother offering me anything."

"God, you're fucking annoying, shut up and let me buy you something."

"Hello, welcome to Twinkle, are you two together?" the young clerk asks Nino, briefly pointing at both her and Fuutarou.

"No, he's not my boyfriend!" she snaps at him, causing him to apologize quickly and Fuutarou to roll his eyes and wait on her to order for them a pair of drinks. The heavy but pleasant scent of bubble and sugar tea hangs in the shop, alleviated by the air conditioning blowing through the shop to ensure that there is at least some air flow.

After placing their orders, Nino and Fuutarou sit down at one of the corner two-seater tables to wait for their drinks.

"I can't imagine you carrying your drink back with you to the hotel with all these bags," Nino points out to her would-be tutor. "What're you gonna do? Stay a bit to finish your drink and then leave?"

"Nah, I can keep it in my other storage."

"Other storage?"

Fuutarou puts out his palm facing up before Nino, who looks down and spies a glint of faint blue light etching a small handheld rune directly above his palm.

"Must be nice having stuff like that, huh?" she remarks dryly, not looking very impressed.

"Now you know what I feel whenever I look at you and your sisters."

"Wait, if you have that, then why not just keep all the bags in there too?"

"Too much volume; this isn't meant to hold all this crap," Fuutarou gestures down at the bags surrounding his chair. "It's only really meant to hold individual items and such. So a drink is fine."

"Hmph. Magic isn't as convenient as it seems, huh."

Fuutarou shakes his head, a wry grin appearing on his lips. "It's really not. And I try to keep my own magical usage down to a minimum. The more you use it, the more at risk you'll be of being detected by other mages, and the more likely normal people will notice it. It's a lot more inconvenient to use than people realize, honestly."

He pulls out his phone to check the time.

"It's about half an hour to noon; just curious, where are you meeting up with everyone else?" he inquires within.

"Where..." Nino thinks to herself, but Fuutarou sees her facial expression change from calm to silently panicked as she slowly realizes that she's made the mistake of not telling her sisters exactly where they ought to meet up, so she whips out her own phone too. "Oh crap, I didn't tell them! I gotta text them real qu - oh, what the hell!"

"What's wrong?"

"Battery..." Nino shows Fuutarou her phone, which she's trying to turn on but the phone is refusing to comply, staying dead with a black screen. "I forgot to charge it before going to sleep yesterday..."

So Fuutarou pulls out his own phone, unlocks the screen, and pulls up a new text to send to Ichika.

"Where you do want them to meet? I'd suggest the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, that way the taxi they take here can pull up easily and drop them off. Unless you have somewhere else in mind."

"Coffee Bean? Is that some sort of coffee shop?"

"Yeah, down south from here. It's one of the first buildings near the parking lots."

"Uh...sure, tell them to meet us there, then."

"Alright, but we'll probably have to head down there ourselves so that you can meet up with them too."

Nino pouts again. "What's with you all of a sudden, acting like our travel agent or something."

"And that wouldn't be the first time you're making that joke."

"I know it was a joke before, but now it doesn't really seem like a joke. Have you actually been a travel agent before or something?"

"No, but I do know how to coordinate properly. Events, people...it's a good skill to have."

"Doesn't sound like a skill someone like you would have."

"Just because I don't deal with people on a regular basis or I don't know how to socialize properly with people doesn't mean I don't know or shouldn't know how to manage them if that's what I have to do."

"That's like the most anti-social thing I've heard all day. I should've gotten you one of those shirts that say 'Anti-Social Social Club' or whatever."

"Funnily enough, I think I do have a shirt like that back at home...I think my dad picked it up somewhere saying that it sounded cool and he wanted me to wear it."

"Your dad has quite the sense of humor."

"...yeah, let's just leave it at that."

Nino hears her name called by one of the staffers who's come out with their drinks, which she fetches for them as Fuutarou picks up his usual wares and waits for her at the door, holding it open with his back against it for Nino, and once they're outside the shop, he sets down one handful of bags to take his sugar tea, slips it discreetly into his magic rune, and picks back up his bags to guide Nino over to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf shop.

"How'd you even get Ichika's number, anyway?" Nino asks after a long sip of her delicious brown sugar milk tea.

"I ran into her on the first night or so this week, and while we were talking, she decided to give me her number."

"Tch, why would she do something like that...?"

"Beats me, ask her. Though, I'm pretty glad she did because it's already come in handy a few times so far, like now."

"Hmph. What did you talk to her about?"

"Well, mainly about that part-time that she's got. Remember last week, how she was absent for like four days straight?"

"Oh yeah...I guess you'd care about something like that."

"Naturally, I'm losing out on four days' worth of pay for one of my students; you don't think I'd go talk to her about something like that?"

"Speaking of pay, now that I think about it, don't you technically have _two _contracts? One for tutoring us, and one for, uh...making sure nothing happens to us, I guess?"

"It's actually just one contract; the tutoring I'm doing, or in your case, the tutoring that I'm _supposed _to be doing, is just an extra clause that got added. That's all I can really say, though."

"I'm still not letting you tutor me, though."

"I'm well aware. Your dad's gonna make me extra aware of that whenever he gives me my first paycheck for the tutoring."

Nino pensively takes another sip from her milk tea.

"...what's even the relationship between you two? I didn't quite catch what he told you towards the end right before he left, but...it sounds like the two of you have some sort of beef going on."

"We don't like each other, that's all. Clash of personalities, I guess."

"Clash of personalities? But you two seem like you act the damn same, if not pretty similar."

"Alright, then maybe not clash of personalities. But we don't really get along, that's for sure."

"Yet you two work together at the hospital or something? That's what Papa told us at dinner, I don't know if you overheard that part."

"We work together since each of us have something we can benefit from one another. I mentioned it briefly back when I first told you and your sisters that I was a mage - his hospital has high-end medical equipment that I want access to, and your dad needs my medical expertise at times."

"So that's why you were able to offer Papa to go in his place to the hospital back home?"

"Right, but I guess he felt he didn't need me to go back."

Snorting under her breath, Nino nibbles a little on her straw, a bit of a habit she's had ever since she was young. "Sounds like a recipe for disaster."

"Too real. You saw a bit of it at dinner last night."

The two of them now arrive outside the rear of the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf shop at the southern end of the Ala Moana Shopping Mall with about ten minutes to spare.

"Do you want me to stay with you until everyone gets here, or should I just get going?" Uesugi asks Nino, who's about halfway through her milk tea.

"Just get going, I don't want my sisters to realize I'd been out shopping with you," Nino scowls back at him.

"Won't your sisters ask you just what exactly you were doing for the past couple of hours, then?"

"That's for _me _to handle, buddy, now shoo, shoo!" Nino flicks her wrist at her courier, who chuckles a bit as he nods in confirmation and begins his pedestrian trek back to the hotel.

Nino quietly watches her lackey trudge across the parking lot and out onto the sidewalk of the streets. Only when he is out of sight does she think to herself aloud,

"...how far away is the resort again?"


	17. Golden Week - Brown Sugar Milk Tea 2

The sun is once again setting over the famous Honolulu beachside. Behind the beachfront patio, Nakano Ichika reviews Nakano Miku's appearance for her meeting with her tutor in about thirty minutes' time, as she has handpicked the outfit that Miku is wearing for tonight: light beige waistcoat, navy blue camisole with a bow tie that exposes the very top of her cleavage, and grayish-green and white checkered skirt.

"Are you sure this hat is really that necessary? I swear it's like one of those golfer hats, it's gonna make you look like an old lady, Miku," Ichika advises her, patting the flat gray beret on her head that has replaced the blue headphones for tonight as her choice of headwear.

"Y-You told me not to bring my headphones to this, so...so I borrowed this from Itsuki," Miku pouts back at her older sister.

"I mean, you don't _need _to feel compelled to wear something around your neck or on your head..."

"I feel more comfortable if I wear something on my head...or at least around my neck..."

"Then in that case, maybe a shawl would've been better? We saw a couple in a store earlier this afternoon when we were out shopping, right?"

"It's a bit too late for that now."

"I know, but just as an idea for next time..."

Ichika checks the time on her phone to make sure they've still got some time left, time that she can use to prep Miku for this upcoming outing with Uesugi.

"So...how do I look?" Miku asks timidly, fidgeting in front of her sister.

"It's great; it makes you look grown-up and mature while also drawing out your inner beauty. Fuutarou-kun's sure to notice you like this!" Ichika nods to herself self-convincingly.

"R-Really...?"

"Honestly, I don't think so."

"Aw..." Miku slumps a little at Ichika's whiplash reaction.

"Like, let's face it, Fuutarou-kun isn't the sort of person to care for clothes or appearances or anything, so I highly doubt he'll care what you look like going in."

"Then what was the point of dressing me up like this?"

"Um...for me to have some fun going out shopping with my little sisters ~ !"

"Ichika..."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I kid. But...I mean, _maybe_ there's a chance?"

"Chance of what?"

"That he'll like what you're wearing? You do look a lot different than your usual self, so he'll probably notice that at least."

"Fuutarou's seen us in swimsuits and he didn't really have much of a reaction even then, so I doubt it."

"Er, yeah...good point, I forgot about that."

Miku sighs heavily and pulls up the shoulders of her beige jacket, her nerves beginning to kick in as the minutes pass and bring her closer to her meeting with Fuutarou. Upon seeing her do this, Ichika gets a naughty little idea.

"Oh, oh, I know, Miku - I know how you can get his attention for sure," she murmurs deviously, creeping up to her sister and slowly putting her hands on her little sister's shoulders.

"Whenever you sound like that, that always means you've got a bad idea in mind..." Miku says cautiously, trying to back away, but Ichika locks her down in place.

"It'll be fine, it'll be fine. All you need to do...is...show ~ a little ~ bit of ~ skiiiiiiin ~ "

As Ichika coos to her sister, she slowly peels the shoulders of the beige jacket off, once again exposing Miku's bare shoulders.

"I-Ichika...!"

"Haha, just kidding, just kidding," Ichika apologizes quickly with a few chuckles of amusement as Miku pouts back at her for her antics. "But no seriously, it could work, I'm just saying. Fuutarou-kun's a boy too, you know, how can't he notice this sexy figure that you've got going on? Especially when you've got the hot camisole action going on, too, with, of course, _the assets ~ "  
_

"I-I'm not gonna try to _seduce _him, what the heck...!" Miku hisses back in growing embarrassment, with her cheeks blooming to match it while she quickly pulls her jacket back on properly a second time and turns her body away slightly from Ichika in an effort to hide her breasts. "We haven't even known him for a full month and - and you're telling me to do that...?"

"Hey, what can I say, there are _always _fast tracks to success. And you've definitely got _tracts _for that."

"You _would _know, huh?"

"We're all quintuplets here, we all basically have the same body."

But Miku shakes her head. "That is...that would be unfair. I don't like doing something like that...just to get Fuutarou to notice me."

"Right, right. But I'm just saying, it's an option in case you're ever interested ~ "

Ichika once again steps up to Miku to straighten up her posture for her and uses the tips of her fingers to turn Miku's pout upside down.

"Let's review, Miku," the eldest quintuplet nods strongly at the third. "You walk up to Fuutarou-kun, tell him 'good evening, Fuutarou', and ask him how his day went. You have to be confident in yourself, Miku - don't be shy, don't be timid like you usually are, just think of this - treat this as like another lesson that he's giving us as our tutor. Just act like you've been lately around him during those, but add a bit more assertiveness to what you're saying."

Having heard this routine a few times before already, Miku nods, but her worried blue eyes eventually must fall to make her gaze down at the ground.

"I know it's easier said than done, Miku. But every girl's gotta go through something like this eventually, you're never gonna grow out of your shell if you don't at least go through this or something like this. It doesn't have to be in high school or whatever, but the earlier the better. I'm pushing you the most like this because you're the shyest of us; you're the one who needs this kind of a push the most."

"I never...wanted it, though..."

"Then what? If you don't go out and do this, or if I or another one of our sisters doesn't give you a push from behind like this, what are you going to do? Just sit back and let your relationship with Fuutarou stay the way it is now?"

Miku's soft blue eyes quickly steel themselves in the face of Ichika's pressure.

"For now, yes, because I want to take this at my own pace, Ichika. While I appreciate the help that you're trying to give me, I don't want to accelerate this relationship I have with him, assuming I even can at all. While you're not wrong about how just sitting back and letting the relationship stay as it is isn't the smart thing to do, for now I want to enjoy the relationship I _do _have with him. Is there something so wrong about that?"

Backing off a little, Ichika tilts her head somewhat in response. "There isn't, but...like I said yesterday, we're at that point in our lives already where time flies fast, and things will unfold quicker than you might imagine. You can sit around and enjoy what you have now, but...if you don't get out there and make something out of what you do have now, you might forever miss your chance."

"Then that should be a burden of responsibility that I and I alone should bear. If for example nothing comes out of this relationship I have with Fuutarou, then I won't be bitter about it if I recognize that I didn't do enough on my part to make something out of it."

"Alright then, fair enough. So long as you get that."

"It kind of sounds like you're saying this kind of stuff from experience too, Ichika."

"Haha, yeah, kind of. I've seen it happen a few times here and there, so...I just don't want my own sisters to go through that sort of thing and have that on their minds for the next couple years as their big regret or something."

"That's the oldest for you, always looking after us younger ones."

Ichika giggles a little. "And Itsuki earlier this morning was telling me how I'm only older by a few seconds or something."

"Older is older."

"Try telling that to Itsuki, though."

The eldest quint glances over in the direction of the patio. Part of the reason why they have been waiting behind the patio at a safe distance is not only so that the two girls can hang out nearby while waiting but also to keep an eye on the live show that is being held at the beachfront patio, which has finished at the top of the hour but still has people lingering afterwards in and around the patio area.

"People still aren't clearing out...what's got everyone just hanging around there...?" Ichika mutters to herself in annoyance, checking the time on her phone again, which reads fifteen to the half.

"Just give them some time, there's still fifteen minutes left. If they don't clear out by then, you can just text Fuutarou to meet me somewhere else. It doesn't _have _to be that patio."

"But it's the most romantic spot we have here! Minus scaling a mountain somewhere behind us or taking a boat out to sea."

"Let's just keep waiting, it's only fifteen minutes..." Miku takes a sigh of her own and takes a seat at a nearby wooden bench. "I'm just more worried about how I'm going to have to explain myself to Fuutarou about why I've been trying to ask Nino and Itsuki to join us for studies..."

"Just be honest with your feelings, that's all you have to do. It'll be easier than it sounds, at least once you get the ball rolling."

"And like I asked before, what if I'm not sure of my feelings in the first place?"

"Then you'll find them as you go. Just do what comes natural, like they say."

"I don't know...I don't know if it's really going to be _that _easy..." Miku looks up at Ichika, who's opted to continue standing. "What if Fuutarou tells me that he doesn't want me to help him out with this? And that's the end of that? What else am I going to talk to him about?"

"Wait, you didn't think of what other things you wanted to ask him?"

Miku shakes her head.

"Oh no, talk about unprepared..." Ichika sighs dramatically, making Miku pout again.

"I don't want to be told that by the one who always oversleeps and makes the rest of us find her school stuff for her most mornings," she declares accusingly.

"But I'm always prepared for things that I think are important. We go to school every day, but things like this - meeting up one on one with a boy you might like doesn't happen often now, does it?"

"So you know what it's like meeting with a boy you like, then? You've never told us about having a boyfriend."

"W-Well, I mean, I've never actually had one myself, to be fair, but I've been in other situations before where it's normally pretty nerve-wracking." Ichika nonchalantly takes a glance over to the patio to help deflect some of the attention away from her, but in doing so, she notices that the patio is now suddenly mostly empty, the party-goers from before having departed rapidly with the last few now beginning to shuffle out of the patio and vacate it.

"Finally, they're all clearing out now. Miku, it's your chance to get up there," she announces, walking swiftly over to Miku and standing her up on her feet. "Remember everything that I've told you, but most importantly, have confidence in yourself and act naturally like you would around him whenever he's over at our place tutoring us."

Nodding without a word, Miku takes a few deep breaths, composing herself, and once she's done this, she looks back to find her eldest sister smiling back at her reassuringly.

"Now go get 'im, tiger," she encourages firmly, stepping aside so that Miku can make her way to the patio, and Ichika watches Miku slip out of sight to do so.

Trying her best to stay composed and keep everything that Ichika's told her organized in her mind, the third quint looks around, checking to see if anyone else is in the vicinity of the patio or its surroundings. Strangely, all of the party-goers who were just here have disappeared, having already retreated into the resort or dispersed throughout the beach. The situation feels stranger and stranger as she approaches her destination - the ocean breeze has ceased all of a sudden, even though it has no right to on this beach, there is a general unnatural absence of sound, with only her own footsteps being the immediately recognizable sources, and the air itself seems to be growing colder and colder, which normally would be a welcome temperature change in the hot Hawaiian beaches, but not when Miku feels as though she is becoming cold from the inside out.

Then, she hears a twang of an electric guitar. Due to the artificially induced near-total lack of sound, the guitar twang comes off as much louder than it probably is, and it's certainly loud enough to make Miku jump a little upon hearing it, so unexpected does it occur. The party that was going on here on the beachfront patio did have a live band that was playing earlier, so maybe there's someone still left behind, perhaps packing up their instruments still? Miku doesn't really know how bands work, after all...

Carefully stepping as quietly and stealthily as possible, which is a forte of Miku's from the years of staying up late at night playing games and watching shows and anime on her computer and having to traverse the house late at night, the third quint inches her way into the patio, climbing the short stairs leading up to the same drink bar where Nino got her sisters the round of ginger peach sodas yesterday. Next to the bar behind the drink bar is an open area that has been repurposed into a makeshift stage, presumably for the live band that was playing earlier.

And there sits Uesugi Fuutarou on a seat holding a simple, solid black electric guitar next to its amplifier.

Without really knowing why, Miku ducks instantly out of sight as soon as her eyes fall on him, taking cover behind the drink bar and its deactivated soda machine. Perhaps her nerves are just getting to her and is causing her to act much more self-consciously than usual - so Miku takes a minute to recompose herself and peeks out slowly again like a gopher peeking out of its tunnel to see if the coast is clear.

Fuutarou is much differently dressed than when she and her sisters have last seen him. Rather than his usual white dress shirt and dress pants, Uesugi is now sporting a Riviera Hawaiian shirt, complete with a pair of aviator sunglasses, and a pair of white Chino shorts. For someone she's literally only seen once wearing something other than his usual school uniform or clothes like it outside of one other instance, Miku already finds Fuutarou's new look quite refreshing...though she wonders a bit how he even got those clothes in the first place, or perhaps more relevantly, who got him to wear clothes like that.

She doesn't get a lot of time to dwell on these questions though, because Miku sees Fuutarou grunt a little as he stretches out his hands and fingers after checking the guitar he's holding and the amplifier that he's sitting next to. Clearly it doesn't seem like he's packing up the instrument in his hands, so maybe he'll play a little bit more? Miku didn't know Fuutarou could play guitar; perhaps he was the guitarist for that live band that was playing earlier?

The quint, not considering whether or not she's adequately hidden from Fuutarou's view, continues to watch from behind the drink bar as her tutor picks up the guitar on his lap to hold it properly and begins to play.

Perhaps fitting for the early evening setting of the beach, Fuutarou plays a slow, calming, and pensive melody. The notes he plays are crisp, clear, and permeating - they fill the cold, empty air with their presence, as if the sounds they produce are enough to warm the air with their vibrations. They certainly make Miku begin to feel warmer on the inside for whatever reason just listening to them.

Fuutarou carefully watches his fingers as they play the guitar, as if ensuring that he will not allow a single mistake to sully this quiet, calming melody that he wishes to play. E, G, B, A, G, F, B, D, E...the notes are simple, but the sounds they produce are deep, rich, and strong, so much so that even the guitar strings themselves begin to softly emit long lines of blue light. The entire melody itself is also quite short, lasting around only a minute and ten seconds before Fuutarou loops back to play it all over again, but within two repetitions of this melody, Fuutarou gets the hang of it and is able to play without having to keep his eyes peeled on his hands and fingers, instead closing his eyes entirely so that he himself can enjoy the music he makes.

The more she listens to this music, the more Miku finds herself wanting to hear more. Even if all Uesugi is doing is repeating the same pensive melody over and over, Miku finds herself unable to move, so unwilling is she to interrupt Fuutarou now of all times. She wouldn't have wanted to interrupt him anyway even if the music he was playing was bad, since he clearly appears to be enjoying himself playing this guitar, and this may perhaps be one of the only times when he can do something that he appears to genuinely enjoy.

Miku herself feels her uncertainty and nervousness that she was being wracked with coming into the patio steadily bleed out of her system. Her breathing and heartrate that were growing a bit erratic in anticipation of her meeting with Fuutarou tonight have calmed and normalized, the nervous micro-shakes in her hands and the jitters and butterflies in her stomach have disappeared, and the internal coldness has defrosted and warmed up, and Miku overall finds herself standing behind the drink bar, gazing ahead at the lazily rolling waves and the beautifully colored canvas of Waikiki Beach's sky, feeling...

...at peace.

The bad memories that she's kept in the dark corners of her mind...the blood...the distant screams...the muskiness of the air...the nervous, chilling sweatiness...the middle-of-the-night awakenings and trauma...all the things that have robbed her of whatever peace that she could manage to find on her own for the past six years...they all feel as though they are simply...melting away.

And so Miku continues to stand behind the drink bar, also enjoying the single, lone melody that Fuutarou plays over and over like it's the only thing he knows how to play, which Miku doesn't mind. With a small smile of content and the ocean breeze beginning to roll back into the patio gently brushing against her clothes and face, the third quintuplet, having closed her eyes to fully absorb the melancholic but soothingly therapeutic strings, opens them again...

...and her blue eyes are subtly but vibrantly beaming at their irises.

As if her very sense of time were blurred, Miku snaps to attention and blinks a few times as if in confusion when the music suddenly stops. Turning to see why the music has stopped, the shy quintuplet spies him setting the guitar he's been playing down on the ground next to him, leaning it against the wall behind the amp.

As much as she wishes to listen to more, Miku takes one more deep breath. The music just now, whatever it was, has left her with a renewed conviction that not even her usual timid nature can halt, and so armed with it, she steps out from behind the drink bar to approach Fuutarou fearlessly, confidently.

Fuutarou notices her long before she even physically reaches him but waits for her to approach him instead, staying where he's seated and giving her a quick smile of salutations when she nears him.

"Hey, how's it going?" he opens up the conversation first like this, pulling up a second chair that's next to him to offer to Miku.

"Good evening, Fuutarou," Miku answers politely as she gracefully accepts Fuutarou's token of goodwill and takes a seat next to him. "I didn't know you were a musician."

"Oh, you saw me playing the guitar just now?"

"Mhm. It was...really good, I got really immersed just listening to it."

"Did you, now...I'm not really that good. Just something I picked up on the side..."

"For something you just 'picked up on the side', it sure sounded like a lot more than that."

"No, really, I'm not lying about that. It really was something I picked up on the side."

Miku pouts suddenly for reasons Fuutarou doesn't quite grasp yet.

"So you're trying to tell me that you're so talented that even for something that you 'picked up on the side', you're like a professional at it?" she mumbles, sounding incredibly discouraged. "Sure must be nice being that talented...a dummy like me wouldn't know about that..."

"...listen, I wasn't trying to flex my talents or anything to anyone, how the hell did you end up with that conclusion?" Fuutarou groans lightly. "Sometimes, I swear, you girls are a handful to deal with..."

"And now you sound like Ichika."

"Oh for fuck's sake..."

Just as suddenly she started pouting, Miku begins to giggle at Fuutarou's constant reactions of dismay.

"I'm just kidding. But if you don't mind...I would like to hear a little bit more about how you got started learning guitar and your history with playing it."

"Why, what brought this on?"

"Well...this is the first time I've seen you playing an instrument. I'm...not trying to say that you don't strike me as a musically-inclined type, but...I don't think it's unreasonable for me to say that I didn't expect to see you here playing a guitar."

"Hmm...guess not." Breathing in deeply to collect his thoughts, Fuutarou averts his own gaze. "It's...not really much of a story, and it's not like I've really done anything with it."

"You don't need to downplay anything that you did. I know I complained just now about you trying to flex your talents or whatever, but...I really would like to know. Don't worry about coming off as if you're bragging."

"I'll try not to sound like that anyways. I just picked up playing the guitar a while back as part of one of my contracts a long time ago...I needed to act undercover, so to speak, at the time, and playing the guitar was something I felt was appropriate at the time. I ended up liking it, so even though I can't really own my own guitar at home, I do try to play whenever I get the chance."

"Oh...so you weren't like the guitarist for the live band that was playing here earlier?"

"No, no, I'm not that good to be part of an actual band, God no. I guess whoever was their guitarist forgot their guitar here? They were having a party here after all. So when I got here, I saw it and felt like playing it a little."

Fuutarou glances back at the guitar that he's set against the short wall behind the amp.

"Things like playing music requires that you put in a lot of time, effort, and practice in getting to the level where you can start playing in bands, in front of people for their entertainment and enjoyment," Fuutarou says. "Comparing me to the guitarist of an actual band is...I don't know, personally I think that's a bit insulting to them. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but for me to be compared to an actual guitarist, someone who's undoubtedly spent hours, days, weeks, months, maybe even years playing the guitar...I feel like I'm invalidating all their efforts that they've dedicated to mastering their skills."

"...but even still, can't you say that you at least have the talent for it? Because I think you do."

"If it's a question of talent, then the matter becomes subjective, in which case, if you feel like I have the talent to be a guitarist, that's fine...I appreciate those words. I guess my only true gripe with that is that I don't really see myself as 'talented'..."

Producing a small blue rune with his palm, Fuutarou pulls out the sugar tea that Nino bought for him earlier in the afternoon. The cup feels exactly the same as it had when Fuutarou first put it into his magical storage, so it's as if he just bought it five minutes ago.

"The main reason for that is because back when I was younger, I was a dumb kid who couldn't do anything right. I didn't really have a talent for anything," the young tutor confides with Miku, looking down at the wooden floor beneath his feet and taking a sip from his sugar tea, whose taste he finds...unique. "So for me to hear that I'm 'talented' makes me laugh a bit at myself, since I'm still in the mindset that I'm not, and that I always make mistakes and fuck up."

"But that was then...this is now. You obviously don't make as many mistakes as you did before, I'm sure."

"I guess not, no. You could say I'm kind of stuck in the past, mentality-wise."

Hearing this, Miku also breaks off her gaze, opting to put her eyes down at her own lap.

"...you're not the only one who feels that way, Fuutarou," she speaks quietly. Her voice isn't projecting her usual softness like normal, merely conveying her inner sense of empathy. "Out of...the five of us, I'm the one...who'll probably fail the hardest."

Fuutarou slowly looks up, taking another sip from his sugar tea. The more he drinks, the more he's able to adjust to its flavor...and gradually, he thinks he's enjoying it more and more. Only time will tell for sure, though.

"But you're the one who got the highest score on that evaluation test I gave you five?" Fuutarou brings up. "Not to mention, you're the one who follows my lessons the best out of you three who do bother to attend."

"It wasn't always like that, though."

Miku clasps her hands together on her lap.

"Back at our old school, I was actually the one who got the lowest test scores," she reveals.

"You? But when I looked through all your old tests, you were consistently the top scorer among your sisters. Again, it doesn't mean much since most of those grades you got were still failing, but..."

"I know. And it certainly seems that way, right? That's only because...one of my homeroom teachers really liked me. He knew that I wasn't a very good student and that I got failing grades a lot, if not all the time, so he went out of his way for me to inflate my grades. Not by much, of course, since he knew that it would be a bit too obvious if I were suddenly getting perfect scores out of nowhere, but thanks to him, he made it possible for me to go through middle school without having to worry about outright failing."

Fuutarou listens to Miku's anecdote with a quiet but intensifying sense of self-disappointment. He had checked through their test scores, but he didn't think to check each of the questions individually...perhaps he'd put too much faith in their teachers when he should have known they probably weren't the best anyway.

"That was back when I was starting to become who I am now," Miku continues, "a shut-in girl who doesn't care about her appearances for the most part, wears headphones, plays video games, and ignores school. I had more fun being an otaku than being at school, and so during middle school I didn't put any effort into my grades. It was only when my classmates eventually noticed that one homeroom teacher I had who liked me was giving enough clues about the fact that he liked me that I started seriously studying again, because they began making fun of me and whatnot, calling me the teacher's pet and stuff like that. But by that point, it was too late, since I couldn't study properly with all the games I wanted to play and anime and shows I wanted to watch. I did manage to get my grades back up to _not _failing eventually so that I wouldn't need to have my own grades purposely inflated, but...that obviously doesn't mean much when I'm still treading the line between failing and not failing even now."

"I see. But that doesn't explain why you feel like you'll fail the hardest."

"Everyone else has the potential to do better than me, it's just that they aren't tapping into their potentials yet, I don't think. Let's see...I know for a fact that Ichika is smarter than she seems, she just sleeps a ton and concentrates more on her part-time job, whatever it is, than on school. Nino's kind of like me before, she just doesn't really care to study since she'd rather hang out with friends and be the school socialite that she's always been, but she's actually smarter than she lets off, just like Ichika. Yotsuba...er, let's get back to her, Itsuki just studies harder and more than me, so eventually she will actually beat me in grades, I'm sure of it."

"Yotsuba's the only one you're not too sure about, huh?"

"Er...yeah. But a long time ago, she used to be super studious too. She just...transitioned to focusing on athletics and sports clubs early on in middle school. I guess they caught her interest and she ended up wanting to involve herself more in those than studying. But I'm sure if she focuses back on studying, which she's already doing with us, she can beat me, too."

Pulling up her legs so that the soles of her shoes can rest against the edge of her wooden chair, Miku once more sits with her lower face against the fronts of her knees.

"I feel like I've already hit my potential. So while for now it seems like I'm the best among my sisters, that won't last forever," she concludes somberly. "Eventually, my sisters will all get better test results and grades than me because they'll hit their own potentials later at the times when they need it the most. I'm already at my potential and I still can't guarantee myself that I'll graduate - so now here I am, thinking that high school will be just like middle school all over again, but this time with no teacher to bail me out."

Fuutarou suddenly snorts, following it up with a few chuckles.

"...what's so funny?" Frowning at her tutor's amusement, Miku is about to pout when he replies with,

"So...am I a joke to you, then?" Uesugi points at himself.

"B-But you're just our tutor!" Miku stammers quickly, just as quickly as her cheeks fill with embarrassed warmth. "It's not like you can just...forge test scores for me..."

"I mean, _technically..."_

"And you don't need to go that far! I would rather you _not_..." Miku turns away for another moment. "...I've had enough of knowing that I have grades I don't deserve."

"As you should. There's only so much you can do with abilities and skills that you don't truly own..."

The two of them let a silence ensue to help pace their conversation a bit, which Fuutarou uses to take another drink from his sugar tea.

"Then answer me honestly, Miku," he starts, "do you think you can graduate high school?"

"Graduate...high school..." the third quintuplet mumbles to herself - now that Fuutarou is beginning to ask her the real questions, her nerves are slowly but surely returning with a vengeance, like spicy wings whose burn is not immediately felt but ramps up more and more over time. "I...well..."

Miku intentionally stalls, hoping that Fuutarou will take over the conversation for her as she struggles to come up with an answer, but he does not give her that luxury, instead waiting patiently for her to give him a definitive answer as he'd asked with his sugar tea in hand. Recognizing that he will probably wait for as long as he needs to for an answer from her, Miku takes a deep breath.

"...I don't...know."

Fuutarou lowers his plastic cup in response.

"And that's the worst answer you could've given me."

Never before has Miku heard such daggers - and never before has she felt her heart clench so tightly. Her neck weakens, causing her head to hang noticeably, and her own peachy-red hair drapes down like curtains blown shut by the wind to hide the side of her face from Fuutarou's view, even if he isn't looking at her at the moment.

"...why?" is all she can muster to ask. "Is it so wrong to be...unsure...?"

"Well, of course, it's your graduation we're talking about here."

"I know, but...graduation is still three years away. And our first year barely started...is it that important that I know the answer to something like that now?"

"To me, it is."

Fuutarou sets down his half-consumed cup of sugar tea on the ground next to one of his chair's legs.

"My job is to tutor you and your sisters, all five of you, and make sure you graduate without problems - I can only imagine the number of times I've said that over the past three weeks - but what I haven't said nearly as much is the fact that I can only do so much work on my own. I can sit here and teach you all the material you need to know for school to get good grades, but if you learn that material uncertain about how your high school fate's going to turn out, you might as well not even learn it at all; I might as well not even bother teaching you."

Those last three words again send shivers down Miku's back.

"To illustrate my point better...I've told you that I work at your dad's hospital, and that I'm a medic mage. I've treated my fair share of patients over the years, as inexperienced as I am since I'm still pretty young. But it's a pretty similar concept: patients come to the hospital to be treated, because they're sick and want to get better, and they come to the hospital knowing they have a problem with their bodies that they can't fix on their own. We diagnose their problems and treat them, and they, for the most part, receive our treatment willingly and cooperate with us so that we can do the best job we can in fixing whatever problems they have.

"But that's not always the case...I've had to travel out to treat patients, or I've been in situations where people were hurt and I've tried administering first aid to them. But I've had a few people who've rejected my help, people who were in obvious need of help but didn't want it. They would turn me away - sometimes I had the chance to ask them why, sometimes I didn't. But as nice as it was knowing those people's rationale behind why they didn't want to be treated, that didn't change the fact that they didn't want to be helped. And when it gets to that point, the situation becomes dangerous: either I help them anyway and suffer the consequences, whatever they may be, or I do as they ask and leave them be. After being through both types of situations, I've come to the conclusion that just doing as they say is the better option because at the very least, that means I can't be held liable."

Fuutarou now glances over at Miku.

"While clearly that's a very extreme example I told you about, the principle is at least similar, I think. I haven't been teaching Nino or Itsuki thus far because neither of them want to show up to my lessons. I could force them to take my lessons, but that wouldn't accomplish anything - they wouldn't learn anything since they don't want to, at least not from me, and they would hate me even more than they already do."

"Then what about someone like me...? Someone like me who...isn't sure about what she can do?"

"You fall under the same category of 'I can't teach you', but for a different reason. You may willingly let me tutor you, and you may learn the material just fine from me, but if you don't have confidence in yourself or you're uncertain about your abilities and what you've learned, come test time or any situation where you're put under pressure and you'll crack. You'll start doubting yourself, you'll start second-guessing yourself - it's a snowball effect, because once people who are like that first let those kinds of thoughts get in their heads, they can't stop them. And when you start second-guessing yourself in one thing, it spreads like a virus and infects your confidence in a lot of other areas. And soon enough, you let yourself be paralyzed by all this doubt you've let be planted in your head, and so you end up not being able to do anything; you can't progress anywhere, because you both physically and mentally crippled yourself from doing so. Basically, you set yourself up for failure, failure that you'll inevitably have a difficult time recovering from."

"But even if I did have confidence in myself...what if I still fail? Itsuki and I...we both studied a lot on our own, even before we met you. Even then, despite how much we did study, neither of us saw much of an improvement...and sometimes, us studying made our grades even worse. So now that we know something like that can happen...what's the point of trying to be confident?"

"Because the difference between being confident and not is your ability to rebound."

Reaching back and picking up the solid black guitar, Fuutarou stands it up on his left thigh.

"Mistakes will happen. Failures will happen. We'll try one thing and it won't work out; we'll try another thing and that might not work out either. Just because you put in a lot of effort into doing something doesn't always mean you'll be rewarded for it...sometimes because we didn't do it a certain way or the 'correct' way, or sometimes because of things outside of our control that we can't do anything about. There is no guarantee for success...but getting back up and trying again, either because you're confident that you can get it right the next time, or because you don't want to give up on something, is what's important. Of course, it's also important to recognize when you need to stop because by that point it's most likely just going to end up being a waste of your time and effort - but I don't think school is something you should just give up on.

"But back to what I was saying earlier, the reason why I think being unsure is the worst thing you can be is because I have to continue tutoring you with the threat that you'll lose your motivation halfway through it, burn out, and stop wanting to come to lessons if you run into an obstacle along the way that makes you rethink why it is that you're studying and taking tutoring lessons. And if that happens, that means I've effectively wasted both your time and my time, time that I'm sure the two of us would've loved to use in our own respective preferred ways. It's to the point where I would much rather deal with people who flat-out tell me that they don't want to have anything to do with me than people who aren't sure of what they want and so end up burning my time and effort making me try to figure out what it is that they want, only for them to tell me that they didn't need my help after all."

For a whole five minutes, the tutor and student sit in silence on the beachfront patio stage. Again, Miku knows that she must re-initiate the conversation herself if she wants it to go anywhere from this point.

"Then...I'll go ahead and say it, for the sake of...not wasting your time," Miku raises her head slightly, but her hair still obscures her face from her tutor. "Since I'm like this...and I don't know if I have what it takes to change myself...you should give up on tutoring me, Fuutarou."

"I can't do that, either."

At this, Miku finally hits her breaking point. She swiftly stands up and turns to Fuutarou, confronting him with the first look of genuine anger that he's ever seen her wear. No pouts, no clenched fists - just Miku and her blue eyes whose irises appear to smolder softly like embers underneath an extinguished campfire.

"Then what are you trying to tell me right now, Fuutarou? First you tell me that you don't like people like me who aren't sure about themselves and aren't confident in themselves, then I tell you to stop tutoring me because of that and you then tell me no. I understand that I might be the kind of girl you don't like, but it sounds to me like you don't really know what you want out of me either!"

"No, I do," Fuutarou replies curtly. "Let me explain why. May I ask that you give me that chance, at least?"

Miku says nothing, which Uesugi takes as his cue to continue. He slips his hand back into the light blue magic rune that appears once again for him and pulls out a neatly folded piece of paper, which he opens up to show Miku. It's a chart that he's made recording the details of the quintuplets' evaluation test results from the first week, with X's and O's indicating which questions each of the quintuplets got wrong or right.

"Do you notice anything about this?" he asks her, holding the piece of paper up for Miku to see comfortably. After a few moments of scanning, Miku nods slowly.

"We...all got different questions right. Or, rather, probably more accurately, none of our correct answers were on the same question..."

Lowering the paper at Miku's correct answer, Fuutarou keeps his icy gaze locked back at up the middle quintuplet.

"Remember what you told me before as we were talking?" he reminds her. "You told me as your explanation why you feel like the biggest washout among your sisters that all of your sisters have yet to hit their potential when it comes to their grades, that they can do as well as you can if they all put in the effort. What should keep you from thinking that your potential can't match theirs?"

The anger that was emitting from Miku's hot blue eyes dries up almost as soon as it'd started.

"The five of you are quintuplets. Not just any quintuplets - true monozygotic quintuplets. I even double-checked with your dad on that, not that I had to," Fuutarou smirks a little, recognizing the ridiculousness of his own actions when he's been plainly able to see how identical the quintuplets are physically just from interacting with them. "While obviously I didn't bother researching all five of your exact genetic makeups, for the sake of simplicity, I think it's reasonable to say that for all intents and purposes, the five of you - Ichika, Nino, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki - are the exact same person in terms of what you're capable of. You all have the same physical parameters and the same mental abilities. If you all had been born as separate siblings and not as quints, I probably can't make this same argument, but that's not the case."

Fuutarou slips the mock test results back into his storage rune.

"Whatever you can do, the other four can do. Likewise, whatever the other four can do, you can do," he concludes. "So my conclusion is, if one of you can do something, in this case study to the point where she can graduate safely, everyone else can do it too; there's no reason why the rest wouldn't."

This time, Fuutarou slowly gets up from his seat, holding the guitar so that it doesn't slip off his thigh where he's been standing it on. Reconnecting his gaze back with Miku's, Uesugi peers so deeply back into Miku's eyes that the quintuplet forgets to breathe for a second.

"And I never said that it's impossible for someone who isn't confident in themselves to learn how to be confident in themselves, either. Normally I would be hesitant to be confident in someone else for their sake, especially for someone like you whom I've only known for three or four weeks. But even now, there's a sliver of hope that I see with the mock test results that you've given me, and a sliver of hope's all I need to work with to get all five of you to graduation. A chance, no matter how small, is always better than no chance."

Miku blinks up at her tutor.

"...you'd go so far just because of something like that? Something that's just...a faint little sign of hope?" she asks before she can stop herself.

At this, Fuutarou smiles faintly.

"Better that I have a tiny bit of hope to work with than none at all," he sighs quietly, breaking eye contact. "You'd be surprised what people would do when they have nothing else..."

But the faint smile is gone as quickly as it'd appeared.

"But for the sake of this conversation, it's become clear to me that you might have what it takes to get good grades, but you just lack the confidence to know that you can do it. While I can't instill that in you for you just because I'm giving you this kind of a speech, at least know that not only do I believe that you have what it takes, but I'll do my job as your tutor with that exact same attitude. But like I said earlier, for this to work out, you also have to put in the effort. Do I have your trust that you'll continue to cooperate with me on this, after all we've talked about tonight?"

Miku doesn't answer immediately, digesting everything that Fuutarou has said to her up to this point. Once she's done this, she smiles a little, with wry amusement in spite of it all.

"...are you sure you're not saying that just because you have a little too much faith in our whole quintuplets thing?" she asks with a faint smile of her own.

"You asked me why I'd go so far just off a single ray of hope; with that kind of context, having faith in your quintuplets gimmick, or the excess thereof, doesn't seem _that _unreasonable, I don't think."

Fuutarou gives the side of his hair another scratch.

"You don't need to give me an answer now. It's not something I can expect you to come up with on the spot just because I asked, either."

Miku nods in relief. "Okay. And...um, Fuutarou, if it's alright with you, I want to tell you something..."

"Sure. What's up?"

Fidgeting a little as her nerves return, but thankfully not as badly as before, Miku prepares herself for the topic she'd meant to talk to him about before all this.

"I don't know if you've noticed by this point...but for the last few weeks, I've been, um...talking to Nino and...and Itsuki. About...you know...studying with us."

"Really? Thanks for the help...even though that's something I would like to do on my own."

Miku nods, having expected this type of response from him - but then, in light of the conversation they've been having up until now, an urgent question pops into her mind.

"Fuutarou, didn't you tell me how you didn't want to teach us if we were unwilling to cooperate? Then...why were you telling us that you wanted to be the one to convince those two to come join us?" she asks, confused.

"Because I made an exception for them," Fuutarou sighs quickly. "That's how I normally work with people to keep things simple - work with the people who want my help, and don't even bother with people who don't. But given that you're the daughters of a guy with whom I work closely in a hospital that he's the head physician of, and in the hopes that maybe I could somehow get them to show up to lessons, I told you girls to leave that responsibility to me."

"But now...?"

"Now, I've since gone back to sticking with what I usually do. You've noticed how the past week I didn't even say anything to Nino and Itsuki even when I had the chance to ask them to come join us?" Fuutarou shakes his head. "I've given up on that now. The next realistic chance that I have to get them to come to tutor is at midterms. That, and..."

Running a hand up through his short black hair, Fuutarou frowns deeply thinking about his run-in with Itsuki.

"Has Itsuki told the rest of you about this morning?" he asks Miku, almost sheepishly, which again catches her off guard.

"Er, no...? I think I remember Ichika talking with Itsuki earlier this morning before we met up with Nino at the shopping mall..."

"Maybe they were talking about it, then..."

"Why, what did the two of you do?"

"Itsuki wanted to talk to me, so I met up with her earlier today. Like, we're talking midnight or one in the morning."

"Oh..." Miku shies away from Fuutarou a little. "You're not, uh...getting _involved _with her or anything like that, right...?"

"Your dad would actually kill me if he found out, no bullshit. No, but for real, she wanted to talk to me, so we met in the middle of the night while the rest of you were asleep so she could talk to me privately about it."

"Would she appreciate you talking about it like this to me, though?"

"I mean, it's one of those open secrets, because she told me that she wanted to come join us for the tutoring."

Miku's eyes open wide.

"Then, that means - !" Growing excited, she begins to beam, but Fuutarou shakes his head.

"I rejected her on the grounds that I didn't want her to accept me as her tutor if her basis for it was because of what I did last night during your dinner with your dad," he explains calmly. "I would much rather that she join us because her primary motivator is her willingness to learn from me and get her grades up, not because of some silly argument I had with your dad; I feel like that would just be a cheap way to earn your girls' respect enough to be able to tutor you. Naturally she didn't take that well, so I'm back to square one with her."

As her tutor is explaining himself, Miku pouts harder and harder.

"I'd be angry with you, too, Fuutarou. After all the talking that I did to Itsuki and Nino," she, too, complains.

"Hey, I do feel bad about that. I didn't know that you were going around talking to those two whenever you could and whenever I wasn't around, and I didn't mean to make your efforts go to waste, even if I did say I didn't really want you to go around doing something like that. Sorry."

Hearing Fuutarou apologize, Miku lets go of her pout.

"It's okay. You said it yourself, didn't you? That sometimes even if you put effort towards something, it doesn't work out. It's just one of those times, that's all."

"Yeah...you're surprisingly adaptable, though."

"I've been told that before. But still..." Miku tilts her head slightly, looking back up at Fuutarou. "But you said that you shouldn't give up, right...? Talking to Itsuki, that is."

"But I also said that it's still important to know when to fold. When it comes to those two, nothing I'll say's going to convince them to show up to lessons, so in a sense, you trying to talk to them to get them to come has actually been helpful, though to what extent we'll never know. If nothing else, Nino and Itsuki have both been somewhat nicer to me recently, and I don't think it's a coincidence - and Itsuki was even at that point where she would have liked me to be her tutor, if I didn't go and ruin it for myself. So even if I told you that you didn't need to go off and do something like that, thank you, Miku, for giving me a hand anyway."

Not expecting to have Fuutarou give her a word of thanks, Miku quickly turns, trying feebly to hide her warm blush from her tutor.

"N-No...I didn't...do much..." she manages to utter behind her hands on her cheeks, and once she's managed to get over this initial wave of shyness, Miku adds, "...you don't need to thank me for...for that. I was...just trying to help, because...you've been putting in so much effort on your end. I felt like that was...that was the least I could do."

"Likewise, I don't think I've been doing all _that _much for you girls yet."

"Eh? But, but..." Miku is able to push past the barrier of her shyness because her confusion at Fuutarou's statement, again, gives her the courage she needs to inquire further. "You've been coming over every weekday for the past couple of weeks, spending at least two hours with us, teaching us all the material we have right now at school...and you don't think that's a lot? And...and that must be on top of everything else you must have going on..."

"Not really, everything I've been doing's just regurgitating everything we've been hearing at school. Like I said before, it's so early into the school year that for now; all I can do is reteach the lessons in a way that maybe you girls will find enjoyable or at least interesting. The tough part's yet to come."

"Which is?"

"Exam time. Once you all need to start taking exams, we'll see if my lessons actually did anything. And if they didn't, we go over the material that you've had trouble with, and I'll have to rethink how I'm tutoring you all."

Miku sighs along with him. "Still a lot of work to do, huh..."

"For everyone involved, yep. There's no getting around that, unfortunately."

But the normally timid quintuplet smiles again, this time more brightly and, taking Fuutarou's advice to heart, with more confidence brimming from it than ever before.

"Whatever the case," she says, taking a step away from him on the wooden patio floor and then turning to him, leaning slightly forward and looking at Fuutarou at an angle with her newfound smile, "please take responsibility for getting my hopes up. And, of course, do the same for all my sisters, too. On their behalf, even if they won't study with us now, please guide us to graduation, Fuutarou-sensei."

Fuutarou nods, grinning confidently himself. "You got it. Thanks for believing in me."

Resuming his seat, Fuutarou lifts up his guitar to hold it properly again.

"Since I probably won't have another chance to play some guitar for a while, I'll stay for a bit longer." He glances up at Miku. "You said you liked whatever I was playing, right? Wanna stick around for a bit longer?"

Unable to stop herself from smiling from ear to ear at Fuutarou's request, Miku nods hugely, the biggest nod she herself remembers giving in a long time.

"Yes, please!"

So the two of them sit together on their chairs at the hardwood patio floor, as the pensive but relaxing guitar notes once more hum throughout the beachfront patio. As the notes begin to play, Miku, now at the epicenter, immediately feels what lingering senses of anxiety that remains in her heart disintegrate, leaving nothing but a satisfying feeling of warmth and contentedness.

Does she have feelings for Uesugi Fuutarou, the boy playing the electric guitar next to her, as Ichika has wanted her to discover? She cannot say - but what she does know is that the time she has spent with him and is spending with him is something she will not soon forget.


	18. Golden Week - Sausage Bread

Thursday morning of the Nakanos' Golden Week vacation in Honolulu, Hawaii. First thing up on today's schedule is -

"He's gonna hit the gas, girls!"

"Okay, here we go, get ready!"

The private charter boat that the Nakano family, specifically Dr. Nakano before his premature departure back home for work, has booked for this time slot on Thursday morning revs its engine and accelerates quickly, taking its passengers for a thrilling ride at a safe distance from Waikiki Beach and offering a rare and exquisite sight of the beachfront from out on the ocean that only these kinds of private charter speedboats can offer in contrast to the standard cruise boats commonly taken by those not of higher incomes.

The quintuplets and Raiha all scream loudly but with delight at the speed and the thrill, taking in as much of the wonderful Hawaiian scenery as they can, with Fuutarou presiding over them as their acting "adult" wearing his Hawaiian shirt and aviators and standing next to their tour guide and boat driver, a man in his mid-twenties also sporting some Ray Bans and a tye-dye shirt.

After about five minutes of speedy boating, the driver slows down to a more manageable pace so that the girls can comfortably enjoy the shoreline of the capital city of Hawaii. Hotels, resorts, the beaches, the ocean, the spring sun, the pure white clouds, and of course, all the vacationers and beach-goers - everything and everyone is laid out in picturesque view of the private charter speedboat's passengers.

"Fuutarou-kun, Fuutarou-kun!" Ichika hollers over at her tutor so that he can hear her over the rush of the wind and the boat engine, and he looks over at her from gazing out at sea in the opposite direction. Once she's got his attention, Ichika holds up her phone. "Can you take a picture of us, pretty please?"

Nodding, Uesugi calls to the driver next to him and asks him to slow down so that he can walk over to the girls more carefully, and the driver obliges so that Uesugi in turn can oblige the eldest quintuplet. He takes Ichika's phone and tilts it sideways for a landscape shot as the girls bunch up together on one side of the boat at Ichika's guiding.

"Alright girls, three - two - one - "

A distinct shutter sound clicks from Ichika's phone as the cameraman snaps a photo of the group.

"Okay, that looks good. Here, Ich - "

"You've gotta take another, Fuutarou-kun! Okay, girls, change poses!"

Lowering her phone with a scowl, Fuutarou expresses his disapproval at the quintuplets as they decide on some different poses to make for their next shot.

"Isn't one photo enough? That was a good one, too. I don't know if I can take a better one."

"You don't understand, Uesugi-san, whenever you take photos, you've just _gotta _take at least a few!" Yotsuba hollers with a loud giggle as she and Miku rehearse themselves making a heart with their four arms combined, with Miku shying away after realizing that she's doing something quite embarrassing right in front of her own tutor.

"And why's that?"

"So that when we go back home, we can pick out the best ones to put in our photo albums and stuff!"

"Photo albums, huh?" Fuutarou sighs. "Fine. Get ready!"

So for the next half an hour, the young tutor goes along with the quintuplets' camera antics as they, having gotten into their camera moods, try out all sorts of silly, cutesy, and expressive poses for Ichika's phone at Uesugi Fuutarou's hands.

"Thanks very much ~ " Ichika smiles widely at her tutor as the latter returns the camera after a long half hour's work so that she and the girls can review their photos together.

"I wasn't aware that I was your cameraman, too."

"Haha - if it'll make you feel better, you're not the only one."

At this, Fuutarou tilts his head at Ichika questioningly. "Not the only one?" he repeats after her, causing her to jolt a little as she realizes what she herself has just spoken.

"I-It's nothing, don't think about it too much ~ " she hurriedly says with an equally rushed smile as she retreats back to her safe space with her sisters and Raiha, who are waiting for her so that they can review the photos together as is their tradition.

Sighing aloud, Fuutarou turns around to set his eyes back on the endless seascape underneath the bright spring Hawaiian sun. It's a beautiful sight to behold; he's never been much of a guy who openly appreciates stuff like aesthetics and nature, but admittedly, now that he's in a place where he has no choice _but _to appreciate such environmental beauty, he's pleasantly surprised to find such an experience to be quite fulfilling, and all they've done so far is enjoy the boat ride across the sea from the beach.

"Fuutarou?"

The gentle voice of the bunch calls out to him distinctly even through the chatter of her sisters' voices and the watery lullabies of the waves around the boat, and the boy in question turns around to behold Nakano Miku, now in a new solid sky-blue swimsuit with a side-tie bottom and a frilly top that's even come with equally frilly armbands that she also wears around her triceps, standing behind him with her own phone.

"Want me to take a picture for you too?" he asks, assuming the same request from Miku as well, but to his stifled surprise, she shakes her head.

"Can we - May we take a s-selfie together?" Miku stutters once while asking him.

Blinking in surprise that he can't keep to himself, Fuutarou shrugs awkwardly, unsure of what to say to such a request other than yes.

"Er...sure, I guess," he sighs, sitting down on the side of the speedboat so that it'll be safer for Miku to take their selfie together, and Miku promptly joins him on his side of the boat. "I'm just telling you now, I'm, uh, not very good at getting my picture taken..."

"It's okay, you don't need to do anything," Miku grins cheerfully as she raises her phone up. Fuutarou remembers to take his aviators off, figuring it'd be rude for him to wear sunglasses for a picture, and he simply stares back at the camera lens of the phone as Miku snaps the picture. "Thanks, Fuutarou."

"Sure, yeah..."

Pouting a little at the opposite end of the boat, Nakano Nino watches Miku step daintily back to rejoin her sisters.

"Since when did _you _get all chummy with him?" she asks her younger sister.

"And what is it to you?" Miku responds swiftly, not letting her sister's bad vibes check her so soon, not right after she's gotten a picture with her tutor.

"I'm just asking, no need to get all defensive on me," Nino hisses back. "Like, I know you've been taking lessons from him and all, but like, you're not the type to just go up to someone and ask them for a selfie, that's more something Yotsuba or Ichika would do, right?"

"I think we've known Fuutarou for long enough that taking a selfie with him shouldn't be weird or anything, right? Besides, we haven't had a chance to really hang out with him for the week so far that we've been here, so what's wrong with a little picture?"

"I don't even _wanna _hang out with him. Actually, why did he even follow us here in this boat?" Nino covers her surprisingly simple black bikini top, over which she's wearing a light, plain white hoodie.

"Because we technically need an adult with us on this boat, but since Dad's not here, Fuutarou-kun needs to fill in," Ichika answers in a timely fashion, having noticed Nino and Miku begin to slip into argument again.

"Wait, but he's not even old enough for that, he's the same age as us!"

"Yeah, but Dad already booked this charter boat, and we were all looking forward to it too. We're not just going to cancel it now, are we?"

"You let me know when you wanna head back, Nino, I can always tell our driver here that I'm not actually an adult, and so contractually speaking he'll have to take us back to shore," Fuutarou calls over to Nino in a moderate voice, since the boat itself is rather small and so anything the quintuplets or his own little sister say is easily audible to anyone up at the bow.

"Ah, Nino, please don't, the boat ride's been so much fun so far!" Yotsuba begs pleadingly, lurching forward and wrapping her arms around Nino's neck. Yotsuba's toned strength as the most athletic of the quintuplets once again kicks into high gear, and Nino soon finds herself almost suffocating with how strong Yotsuba's armlock is around her neck.

"O-Okay okay okay okay, I'll shut up, just l-let go of me, Yotsuba!" Nino chokes and promptly rubs her neck once Yotsuba relinquishes her immediately upon realizing that her strength is starting to hurt her own sister. "And could you, like, _not _choke someone out whenever you hug them?"

"Give her a break, Nino, Yotsuba has always been like that, no?" Itsuki calls over. She's munching on some delicious and freshly baked sausage bread that she's bought as part of a whole bag's worth of breads and snacks that she's purchased from a local bakery on their way to the charter boat pier. She stoops down and fishes out another sausage bread just like the one she's eating and offers it to Nino. "Here, take one. We did not eat much for breakfast, so you might be a bit hungry by now."

The sight of the sausage bread makes Nino's mouth water, forcing her to acknowledge and accept Itsuki's consideration.

"Also, when you are done, hand the plastic back to me so I can put it away properly," Itsuki makes sure to mention.

"Yes, yes, _mother."_

"Yes, yes, such a good daughter. Now make sure to go to town later after this and buy us more bread from that bakery I went to. Five of those melon breads for me, specifically," Itsuki plays right off Nino's sarcastic comment, now with a big, motherly smile that is anything but.

"Then I'd become your goddamn _maid!" _Nino raises her slender, sunscreened leg up to jab her big toe in Fuutarou's direction. "Tell _him _to do that! I know firsthand that he's got the experience!"

"If you're talking about putting up with the unreasonable demands of the people I'm with, very much so," he retorts.

As Nino and her would-be tutor go at it for a minute, Yotsuba turns to his sister. "Raiha-chan, how've you been enjoying this boat ride so far?"

"It's great! I never thought I could go boat-riding!" Smiling widely with the brilliance and innocence brighter than the sun itself, Raiha thanks Yotsuba. "Thank you, everyone!"

"Awwwww ~ !" Without warning, both Yotsuba _and _Itsuki, strangely, hug Fuutarou's little sister without warning, effectively dispelling the awkward situation that Nino has brought on them almost as soon as it appeared.

"Raiha-chan, you're so freaking preciooooooouuuuuus!" the fourth quint cries, unable to handle how much of an angel Raiha is. "You're an angel, Raiha-chan! An actual angel! Uesugi-san's soooooo lucky to have you!"

"You should see her while she's at home," Fuutarou calls over the cooing quintuplets. "Give her a ladle and she's got an iron grip over the household."

Raiha's face turns like a monster straight out of a horror film towards her brother.

_"Oniiiiiiiiiii-chaaaaaaaaan...?" _she asks in her same cheerful voice and tone, giving him the same wide smile but with absolutely none of the radiant innocence as before.

"Nonsense, Raiha-chan is a pure-hearted girl who must be protected at all costs," Itsuki maintains stubbornly. "Besides, she knows how to be grateful and shows it, unlike Nino over here."

"Sheesh, I said I was sorry, what more do you want from me," Nino gripes back. "And let me remind you who does all the cooking around the house normally."

_"GAAAAAAAN!" _Itsuki cries out an actual onomatopoeia at Nino's truth bomb, unable to refute this.

"Th-That's a low blow, Nino..." Miku mutters in a mock tone of horror.

"It's _not _a low blow, it's the truth! Facts don't care about your feelings, you know!"

"Raiha-chan, we'll be doing a bit of snorkeling pretty soon. It's safe to assume that this'll be your first time snorkeling, right?"

Raiha nods. "Yep! Are we really gonna be able to swim with turtles?"

"Uh huh, we sure are! It'll be tons of fun."

Squeeing with delight, Raiha lets her hands be grasped by Ichika's, and the two of them together laugh in delightful anticipation of a fun-filled cruise that awaits ahead of them. Watching the two of them be joined by Yotsuba, with Nino and Miku looking quietly on, Itsuki can't help but make a happy smile of her own.

"I did not imagine that our trip would be so much more fun with a guest," Itsuki thinks aloud to Fuutarou, who's since put back on his aviators.

"The more the merrier, is what the Americans say..." Fuutarou remarks.

"That certainly appears to be the case here, yes. Thank you for bringing Raiha-chan along, Uesugi-kun. She's made this trip a great deal more fun than it might have been."

"Again, no need to thank me, your d - "

"You already told us that, yes, I understand; we all know very well what our father has done for us. But I must give credit where credit is due: had you not asked Father to let Raiha-chan come with us, she would not be here to enjoy this vacation with us."

Smirking a little, Fuutarou glances back down at his phone, making Itsuki pout a little and lower her own hands holding her half-eaten sausage bread.

"What is it now, Uesugi-kun? What is so funny?" she demands softly, raising her hands back up promptly again to nibble on her bread a little.

"No, it's...it's just weird that you'd say that to me after our last conversation."

"Y-You do not need to bring that up!"

"Bring what up?" Yotsuba calls over innocently, but Itsuki immediately scrambles back with,

"N-Nothing, Yotsuba, nothing at all! I definitely did _not_ have a run-in with Uesugi-kun the other night, nuh-uh!"

"Oh, then there's no problem then!" Smiling widely as ever, the ever cheerful fourth quintuplet who takes everything at face-value pulls out a sweetbread for herself from their bag of snacks.

"There's obviously a big problem!" Raiha shrilly rings out in objection. Wiggling out of Yotsuba's arms, Raiha carefully steps over in front of her older brother, who eyes her carefully in case the rocking of the boat compromises her balance. "Onii-chan, did you have an argument with Itsuki-san at some point this week?"

"We did, but that kind of stuff should be kept between me and her," Fuutarou answers honestly.

"Eehhhh?! Uesugi-san really _did _have a run-in with Itsuki! Itsuki, you lied to me!"

Shock writes itself all over Yotsuba's face as she turns, feeling betrayed, to her sole younger sister with the sweetbread she's taken now firmly held in her mouth with her front teeth.

"Itsuki, why did you tell everyone what you did like that?" Ichika chuckles aloud, unsure of what Itsuki was thinking behaving like that.

"I-I am not good at lying, Ichika, you know this! Yotsuba and I are like this, we always have been!"

"That's not true, you've done it before a few times. Of course, nothing compared to our resident master of disguise, Miku. You could take a few pointers from her, honestly..."

Meanwhile, Raiha is still reprimanding her brother for getting into a fight with Itsuki. "She's your _student_, Onii-chan! You can't just get into a fight with her like that, okay?" she nags at him like she's his mother rather than his younger sister. "No matter how smart you are or no matter how different our circumstances are, you must never get into a fight with your friends!"

Choosing to deal with his sister's miniature rant, Fuutarou nods absentmindedly, alternating glances up and down between his sister and his phone screen, and the quintuplets look on with various reactions on their faces ranging from mild amusement to genuine concern and worry.

"What did you even get into a fight with Itsuki for? Something regarding the tutoring stuff?" Nino calls over, halfway through her own sausage bread. Fuutarou glances over at Itsuki.

"Are you okay with me divulging that from the other night?" he asks her.

"I should ask the same to you. I figured you would be the one to worry more about something like that being revealed to my sisters," she replies curtly.

"I mean, I'm fine with it, so..." Fuutarou clears his throat quickly. "Itsuki came out to talk to me the night your dad left at like midnight or one in the morning to tell me, long story short, that she wanted to join you three for my lessons." He points at his current three students Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba.

"Oooh! So Itsuki-chan's gonna come join us too, huh? Yaaay ~ " Ichika reaches over and clasps her youngest sibling's hands to shake them around in celebration while Nino, initially taken back by this announcement, has reduced herself to looking grumpy and standoffish. Yotsuba, for her part, also cheers with Ichika and glomps her younger sister from behind, nuzzling her lips against the back of Itsuki's long peachy-red hair.

"I-Ichika, we are not in elementary anymore, you do not need to call me 'Itsuki-chan'!" the quintuplet in question stammers in embarrassment. "And besides, th-that was what I initially planned to do! Uesugi-kun, you should tell them, as you were the one to say it yourself, no?"

"Sure, I guess. Itsuki told me that she wanted to start taking lessons from me because after what you all saw me do that night with your dad, she apparently changed her opinion of me. I promptly rejected her on that because I don't like the idea of her joining us for tutoring just because she saw me argue with her dad on a topic that's almost totally irrelevant from what my main job is, which is tutoring."

"Huh? Wait, Itsuki goes up to you and says that she'll take your lessons after all this time you've been bugging us to do that, and then now you're just like no?" Nino balks at the apparent hypocrisy of her would-be tutor. "How're you just gonna flip-flop like that? What was the point of you bugging us for the past few weeks then if you were just gonna end up saying that kind of crap?"

"I'd explain myself, but I don't really feel obligated to answer the other one who's never come to one of my lessons on that," Uesugi points out.

"Yes you do! Even if I haven't come to any of your lessons, you've still been bothering us as a whole just by being at our house every weekday for the past three weeks before this one. And not to mention I've been nearby at the dinner table hanging out at least, unlike Itsuki, who's holed herself up in her own room all that time like a hermit!"

"H-Hermit..." Itsuki repeats awkwardly, pouting indignantly. "I wish not to be labeled as such when you sit next to an even _bigger _hermit!"

"Itsuki, don't even start with me right now," Miku murmurs dangerously, her vivid blue eyes flashing subtly with a kind of assertiveness that Itsuki has yet to witness, and it causes the latter to shrink in posture, perhaps regretting trying to deflect the attention over to Miku.

"Okay, fine, I'll tell you Nino, since I'm sure Yotsuba wants to hear about it too, right?" Fuutarou glances over at the fourth quint, who nods hugely in anticipation. "But in exchange, you'll let me tell everyone what we did yesterday morning."

"Yesterday morni - " Gasping shortly, Nino manages to stifle it, but enough of it comes out that her sisters can clearly tell that was a gasp from her just now. "No, Uesugi, don't you dare, don't you dare!"

"What did Nino make you do for her yesterday...?" Miku asks urgently, glaring a little at her sister next to her.

"I was wondering what Nino would've been doing all by herself yesterday morning at the shopping mall. Normally we'd all go together, but this time was a little different, and maybe you can explain why, Fuutarou-kun?" Ichika asks coyly, giving a bit of a devious smile to Nino, who frets back at her with eyes of small panic.

"Well, it's...not much, really. Nino just dragged me around the shopping mall yesterday early in the morning while the rest of you were still back in your hotel room," Fuutarou shrugs slowly. "That's all. She just wanted me to carry around all her bags for her."

"Ah, that's mean, Nino!" Yotsuba also cries, pointing her finger like a certain ace attorney at her older sister accusingly. "You can't just have our guest carry around bags for you like that!"

"He's not our guest, he's our – our - " Nino hesitates, trying to mentally grope around for the correct word to use to describe Fuutarou. " - our _bellboy!"_

"A bellboy who also teaches the entire school curriculum and then some? Some bellboy that is," Fuutarou remarks to the other quintuplets' amusement. "But she was kind enough to buy me these clothes and a drink, so I don't mind too much."

"You are quite the cheap person, Uesugi-kun, if you agreed to Nino's contract just for some clothes and a drink," Itsuki offhandedly comments while taking the last bite of her sausage bread. "Knowing Nino, it must have been a cup of bubble tea, yes?"

"Yep. You sure know her well."

"I-It's not some kind of top secret that I really like bubble tea, okay?!" Nino yowls like an angry cat. "Besides, I'm hardly the only one of us who really likes it! Ichika always gets one with me whenever we stop by a place back home!"

"Yeah, but, I don't like...go out of my way to pick some up. Besides, you know me, I like my frappuchinos more," Ichika giggles. "Actually, Fuutarou-kun, if Nino's treated you to some bubble tea, maybe I should get you a frappuchino at some point. You like coffee enough, right?"

"Sure, I'll take you up on that. Do I need to carry around bags for four hours like Nino did?"

"Aha, probably not."

"Deal. Free coffee's free coffee."

"You just _love _free stuff, don't you?" Nino sighs, and Fuutarou raises out his arms in response.

"Welcome to the rest of the world outside your own little bubble! I'll be your tour guide to the outside world, Uesugi Fuutarou, and my assistant today will be Uesugi Raiha, who'll teach you how to be frugal and penny-pinch literally everything under the sun for a true and authentic lower-income family living experience!"

"Yeeees! My name is Uesugi Raiha, and I'll do my best to teach you how to cook good, cheap curry on a tight budget for three weeks while also not making everyone in your house sick of eating curry for three weeks!" Raiha squeaks out, causing everyone on the boat to laugh, including even Fuutarou himself and the usually grumpy Nino.

"You should come over and help me teach these dunces how to actually cook at some point, then, Raiha-chan," Nino says in a markedly gentler tone to Fuutarou's sister. "None of these girls know how to cook for themselves to save their lives."

"I-I know how to cook, Nino!" Miku pouts to her nearby sister before quietly adding, "...a little."

"Hmmmm? Sorry, I couldn't quite catch that last part there Miku, mind if you say it just a _teeny _bit louder?" Nino jokingly mocks her sister, leaning in with her hand cupped against her ear.

"Actually, Fuutarou-kun, before I forget to ask, Miku wondered where you were staying this whole time," Ichika, remembering to ask her tutor this crucial question that Miku indeed brought up the night of their family dinner, pitches to Uesugi. "Since you told us that Raiha-chan took your spot on the plane ride and the hotel room."

"I found a cheap room nearby. There's a lot of cheaper motels and such behind the resorts further into the city here," Fuutarou explains quickly. "So don't worry, I'm looking after myself properly."

But Raiha again pouts up at her brother. "The last time you said that, Onii-chan, we found out you were sleeping standing up while leaning against a tree in a park!" she declares, exposing her brother's past lies. "You're not doing that _again, _are you?"

"I'm not, I'm not, calm down, Raiha. Unlike our dad, I actually listen to what you have to say."

"That's only because Dad's a dummy sometimes and doesn't know how to listen. But you'll do the same sometimes too, you know!"

"Right, but not this time."

Looking up from his sister, Fuutarou finds, to his awkward surprise, most of the quintuplets looking on pensively at him and his sister.

"We can, um, get you a room in the resort if you want..." Ichika offers slowly, trying to remember if the resort had any rooms open.

"Like I said, I'm _not _just - "

"Uesugi-san, please don't sleep out in the cold at night!" Yotsuba hollers in fright, scooting over to Fuutarou and taking hold of his left hand too as if to check his body temperature. "That's just too sad, and I don't want that!"

"I'm not, don't worry about it!" Fuutarou insists a bit louder.

"Eh, what's the big deal? Clearly he can handle it, let him be," Nino waves her hand dismissively in her would-be tutor's direction.

"Maybe so, but – but considering this situation, where he had Raiha-chan take his spot and we only learned about it because he told us the other day, you can't blame some of us for being concerned about it now, can you?" Ichika points out.

Then, a light bulb brightens up inside Raiha's head, and the younger Uesugi sibling leans in towards her quintuplet friends.

"How about we just have Onii-chan stay in the same room as us?" she suggests innocently.

Nino, who is taking a drink of water from a plastic water bottle, blasts the water in her mouth out like an exploding water balloon without warning the moment she registers Raiha's suggestion. She tries to lurch straight downwards so that she won't hit anyone in particular, but she can't react fast enough to her own reaction and thus ends up spraying Fuutarou with the brunt of her spit-take. Slowly lowering his aviators that have shielded his eyes from the incoming mist, Fuutarou scowls heavily as Miku hurriedly wipes her sister's face down for her with a nearby towel.

"Just for the record, before you even say anything to me, I never planned to stay in the same room anyway," he pre-emptively states as Nino, blushing furiously at her own embarrassing reaction, takes the towel from Miku so that she can do the job of drying herself on her own while her other sisters look on with bewilderment. Fuutarou himself wipes the water off the rest of his face with the back of his hand while Raiha simply looks dumbfounded that her suggestion could even draw such a reaction from anyone. "I would've taken the same plane ride, sure, but not the room. You and Itsuki would kick me out to the streets either way."

"So you _are_ just wandering around out on the streets, then!" Yotsuba pouts the hardest Fuutarou has ever seen from her personally. Seeing this, the young tutor is immediately reminded of all the pouts he's been given from the rest of the quintuplets - further reinforcing the fact that all five of them are, without a doubt, identical quintuplets.

_"I'm not. _Forget I said that already."

"Well, I know _one _person here who wouldn't mind sharing a room with you, Fuutarou-kun," Ichika suggests with a touch of naughtiness, her eyes slowly creeping over in Miku's direction, who sits up straight as soon as she feels Ichika's eyes begin to leer at her. "And maybe, just _maybe_, a little bit more than just the room, too ~ "

"Ichika!" Miku whines, pouting back at her.

"Yeah, that's exactly what Nino doesn't want," Fuutarou agrees. "If I did that, next time, she'll do this..."

Fiddling through his phone, Fuutarou pulls a certain image off the net and holds up his phone to the girls so that they can see. On his phone screen is a photo of a pair of gloved hands holding an inflated pufferfish spitting out a solid stream of water, and as soon as the girls see this, every one of them, with the sole exception being of course Nino, explode into laughter; Itsuki, the other half of the anti-Uesugi Fuutarou faction of the Nakanos, cannot resist the contextual hilarity of Fuutarou's joke and betrays Nino in favor of facepalming in a feeble effort to try to hide her own savage fit of giggles.

_"Maybe I should just go ahead and do that right now, then?"_ Nino threatens with a tremendously false smile, grabbing her water bottle again and untwisting the cap for added emphasis.

"You'll be wasting water, so don't. Also, this's just payback for those four hours yesterday when you dragged my ass around the shopping mall."

"But I got you those clothes and some bubble tea, what do you _mean, _this's 'payback'?! I already _paid _you back!"

"Yes, Nino, because any person in their right mind would _want _to follow a bratty girl like you around for four hours carrying six bags at once the entire time, just to be compensated with some Uniqlo clothes and a cup of tea."

"Shut up, Uesugi! Shut up, shut up, shut uuuuuppp! ! !"

* * *

After a fun-filled morning and early afternoon of snorkeling, sealife viewing, and cruising, the girls have dispersed to carry out their own vacation agendas for the day: Ichika and Nino have retreated to the resort's spa for another round of beauty treatments; Miku, having had no real plans after their private charter cruise, has opted to tag along with Itsuki to keep her company as the latter visits a luxury eyeglass shop back in the Ala Moana Shopping Mall that she'd seen the day before while all the quints were out shopping there to see if they might have a pair of new eyeglasses for her farsightedness.

Yotsuba, on the other hand...

"There they are...!"

Having almost lost track of them for a few brief moments, the fourth quintuplet who also does not have her own agenda for the rest of the day renews her stealthy pursuit of Uesugi Fuutarou and Uesugi Raiha as the latter two spend the afternoon together at the Ala Moana Shopping Mall. The Nakano girls were kind enough to give Raiha some spending money of her own as part of her time she's spending with her older brother. Because both of them have been through this shopping mall, Fuutarou with Nino the previous morning and Raiha with all the girls together during the previous afternoon, both brother and sister are able to navigate their way through the mall with surprisingly comfortable ease. In fact, so easily do they weave through the existing foot traffic and the layout of the mall that Yotsuba, who herself possesses somewhat below-average directional abilities, begins to wonder how on earth the two of them have been able to learn the layout of this shopping mall as quickly as they seem to have.

But determined not to lose sight of them, Yotsuba continues her less-than-stealthy chase through the mall, stalking her perhaps knowledgeable prey as they frequent the shops that Raiha has already planned to visit with the help of her brother beforehand at their hotel room. Taking cover behind palm trees, trash cans, signs, and corners, she watches them with a keen eye that her sisters, from experience, know is perhaps not so keen as it seems.

"...Yotsuba, what in the world are you doing?"

_"Eep!"_

Jumping a little from the sudden voice of one of her quintuplet sisters, Yotsuba zips around to find Miku, her direct older sister, narrowing her eyes at her.

"M-M-Miku! How di - "

" - I find you? Easy, you literally walked right by me."

Yotsuba looks horrified that her stealthiness was clearly not good enough. "I-I did...?! But, but I was doing my best to stay incognito and stuff!"

"Incognito...?" Miku scans Yotsuba's outfit, which consists of a bright lemon-yellow shirt with the blue numbers 428 blazed across her ample chest and half-jeans that have a few clean cuts across the bottom of the pant sleeves for fashion's sake. "Yes, Yotsuba, because what you're wearing right now will really help you with that."

"Uuuu, Miku's bullying me! Besides, you're starting to sound like Uesugi-san from earlier today, too!" Yotsuba pouts, flicking her face away and pressing her arms against her chest sullenly as she crosses them.

"Me sounding like Fuutarou aside, seriously, what're you doing?"

"Er..."

Her arms weakening and dropping down so that she can hold one arm with the other hand in a somewhat submissive stance, Yotsuba lets her green clover-shaped hair ribbon droop down onto her scalp expressively.

"D-Don't laugh at me, okay? Can you promise me that, at least?" she asks uncharacteristically timidly, as Miku notes. Normally Yotsuba wouldn't bother asking her something like this beforehand...

"I don't know what I would have to laugh at, to begin with."

"Well, I'm...I'm just trying to make sure that, um, Uesugi-san and Raiha-chan are, well, you know, having...fun...?"

Miku snorts before she can stop herself, and now she knows what Nino tried doing earlier that morning on the speedboat.

"Ah, there, right there! You laughed at me!" Yotsuba yells out, jabbing a finger in Miku's direction in catching her red-handed. "You said you wouldn't laugh at me but you did!"

"Th-That was just...just a reaction...sorry..." Miku mumbles, embarrassed at herself and pulling her signature blue Audio Technicas around her neck a bit more tightly. "Honestly, though, I didn't...expect you to have that kind of an answer."

In full pout mode, Yotsuba refolds her arms across her chest with a big ol' frown on her lips. "I know I can end up doing stuff that looks pretty ridiculous in hindsight, but to go on and laugh even when I asked you not to...you're the worst, Miku! Hmph!"

"I said I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you somehow, if you'll let me." Miku puts her hands together in apology, but also because she's got an idea. "I know...I can make you some croquettes once we get back home."

_"That's a punishment, Miku, not an apology!"_

"But Ichika said that they were good the last time I tried them..."

_"Because she was just trying to be nice to you!"_

Miku's head droops as rays of despair begin emitting from her head. "So they really _are _that bad, huh..."

"They're nowhere near as good as you think they are, no."

"Ouch. And you of all people are telling me this..."

"I-I know I don't usually say stuff like that, but..." Also beginning to feel bad for putting down Miku's cooking ability, Yotsuba slowly drops her pouting act. "It's just that I've eaten enough of your croquettes before to know that my stomach doesn't like it whenever you give me some. I don't want our bathroom to suffer from stuff like that..."

"That's a very..._roundabout _way of saying my cooking is bad..."

"That was just the first thing that came to my head, I'm sorry!"

Sighing to reset the conversation, Yotsuba pulls herself together and stands up tall before her sister.

"So really, how _did _you find me?"

Miku turns to point to the luxury eyeglass shop directly behind her. Yotsuba, following her lead, also spies Itsuki sitting with one of the staff members inside who is currently peddling a wide selection of glasses for her to choose from.

"Geh, of _course _I'd end up right outside the shop that you and Itsuki were in," the fourth quint groans miserably. "I guess you were pretty bored in there, huh? So that's why you came out?"

Miku nods. "Only so much I can do in there. It's not like I have any interest in glasses."

"Speaking of glasses, though, you ever wonder if that might be one of Uesugi-san's fetishes?" Yotsuba giggles teasingly, leaning in towards her older sister.

"F-Fetishes?! Er, wait, why're you bringing that up now..."

"You don't have to hide it, Miku ~ ! You were being all friendly and stuff with Uesugi-san today, weren't you? Even this normally ditzy Yotsuba knows!" The self-named quintuplet points with both index fingers up to her clover-shaped hair ribbon that now stands up proud and tall on her head. "There's love in the air, Miku, and I can just _smell_ it!"

"And since when were you a professional in this sort of thing?"

"I'm not. It's just sister instinct ~ !"

"Just because we're quintuplets...?"

"That too, but more because we're sisters!"

Miku gets hit with a small wave of deja vu.

"Anyway, don't you think Uesugi-san's the type of guy who would like girls in glasses?" Yotsuba wonders aloud, raising her hand up to her mouth to appear at least somewhat more intelligent as she discusses this matter.

"He's never told us his preferences...honestly, I don't think he's very interested in stuff like that," Miku answers frankly.

"But everyone's got stuff that they like, don't they? Even if he acts all stiff and cold all the time, even he's got to have stuff he likes seeing girls have, I bet!"

"And so that's why you think Fuutarou has a, uh, glasses fetish?"

"I mean, it makes sense, right? Uesugi-san is like super smart and stuff, he tutors us diligently and he even works with Dad at the hospital. Don't you think it just makes sense for someone like him to have a thing for girls who wear glasses? I can tell you for a fact that Itsuki looks way smarter whenever she's got her glasses on."

"_Looks _smarter, yes."

"I wasn't trying to comment on her actual grades, Miku. Besides, I'm the last person who can do that."

"I know..."

Yotsuba lightly kicks a small pebble near her right foot off to the side. "So...you don't think so?"

"Don't think what?"

"That Uesugi-san has a thing for girls with glasses."

Miku briefly entertains herself with the thought, picturing herself wearing glasses. Before she can stop herself, her imagination then seizes this opportunity to drift her mind off to a parallel world in which she wears glasses regularly, or at the very least like Itsuki where she would wear a pair whenever she needs to do homework or study, and Fuutarou noticing a newfound kind of beauty to her that is only drawn out whenever she dons her glasses.

"Errr...yeah, I don't...I don't know about that..." Miku has to cut off her imagination before it can begin to get dangerous for her own heart and shakes her head to clear herself mentally, but Yotsuba pounces on her vulnerability just now.

"You were imagining yourself in glasses, weren't you? Weren't you? Weren't you?" she teases her sister who feverishly denies it by shaking her head back and forth, her own peachy-red hair whipping back and forth.

"Then how about _you_, Yotsuba? How would Fuutarou feel about _you _in glasses?" Miku returns fire, playing the reverse card and flipping the question back to the original source.

"E-Eh!? M-Me...? Well, I..." Letting her voice trail off awkwardly as she herself is forced to consider the topic, Yotsuba feels her face pop just like Miku's a moment ago, and she begins to giggle just as awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head while doing so. "I don't know, um...I-I don't feel so confident that I'd look any good in them..."

"But didn't we have that kind of conversation a long time ago back when Nino and Itsuki needed to get glasses? Nino said she didn't want glasses to make her look like some kind of nerd, so she went with contacts, while Itsuki went with glasses instead. Itsuki ended up looking just fine with her glasses."

"B-But Itsuki has that, uh, she's got that air about her that makes her fit well with glasses, you know? I don't have anything like that," Yotsuba protests. "At least Itsuki can pull off looking smart. I can't do that."

"I mean, if you're unsure, we can always go in and see for sure," Miku suggests, pointing back at the glasses shop that Itsuki is visiting.

"I-I-I-I'm okay, I swear!"

Yotsuba gasps in fright as she spies a glint of light flash from one of Miku's eyes and barely dodges a sudden grab from her as Miku attempts to seize her to drag her against her will into the glasses shop, but contrary to her nefarious plans, Yotsuba, bar none the most athletically proven quintuplet, with the added motivation of fear and potential embarrassment, banks left and right to spot-dodge all of Miku's grab attempts. Soon enough, Miku is out of breath and is forced to call off her attempts just so that she doesn't end up collapsing from the exertion.

"Ugh...of...of course...it was...going...to end up like...like this..." Miku pants with her hands on her knees as Yotsuba looks on worriedly for her sister's condition.

"I don't mean to be rude about it, but what made you think you could catch me?"

"That's...what I'm...trying to figure out..." Miku recovers enough to at least be able to look back up at Yotsuba. "...being in all those...sports clubs and such...they really did...pay off for you, huh...?"

"Yeah, but like...they don't help me get smarter." Yotsuba awkwardly scratches her cheek a little. "Being good at basketball isn't going to help me graduate high school, I don't think."

"It could...if you were really good at it...enough to get a scholarship, maybe..."

"Ehhhh, I doubt it though, I can't be _that _good..."

Having finally caught most of her breath again to the point where she can stand up properly, Miku clears her throat first before asking,

"So you were following Fuutarou and Raiha around all this time...just to make sure that they're having fun...?"

Yotsuba nods timidly, which is uncharacteristic coming from a girl who's known to give hugs to her sisters capable of mass destruction.

"Uesugi-san and Raiha-chan are...like how we once used to be like, you know...?" she murmurs pensively, and Miku nods in understanding. "We know this is Raiha-chan's first ever vacation outside of Japan, and to have to spend all of it without her brother, even if he's here with us in person, would just be...really sad. And because of Uesugi-san's work stuff of making sure nothing happens to us while we're here, this is the only time that they'll have to spend together."

"So you've been following them around to make sure that they're having fun?"

"Yeah...something like that."

"I don't think you need to worry about that, though. Fuutarou is a good person - even if he doesn't have all the time in the world to spend with his sister, he'll make the most out of what little time he does have."

Yotsuba's pensive look brightens up slightly as the corners of her lips slowly reverse into a small smile.

"...I know this might sound weird coming from me, but...I wish I were that confident, Miku," she confides in her older sister. "I followed them around for the past hour because I wanted to see for myself that they were enjoying themselves here. It would break my heart to think that neither of them had as much fun as they wanted to have while they were here."

Gazing sadly back at her younger sister, Miku takes two steps towards her to close the distance between them so that she can whisper audibly back to her:

"...you don't feel this way because you think this is _your _fault somehow, is it...?"

And to Miku's alarm, Yotsuba says nothing and merely keeps her gaze locked down at her feet.

"Yotsuba, please, talk to me," Miku urgently whispers again. "What did you do to think that those two not spending time together was somehow _your _fault...?"

"Two nights ago, when Uesugi-san confronted Dad," she answers truthfully, raising her eyes back up again. "Or rather, after Dad left."

Miku's face tenses up in reaction. "Let me guess, when Fuutarou said that he'd given up his plane ticket and his hotel room to Raiha-chan?"

Yotsuba gives her a tiny nod. "I felt...horrible, hearing that initially. We'd gone all that time...we'd gone for three days not even knowing what the original plan was. He let his sister be with us up in first-class while he had to sit in the back of the plane in third, he let Raiha-chan stay with us in our hotel room so that she'd have a great time with us while he spent all this time sleeping wherever the heck, and he's spent all this time working to make sure that nothing would happen to us and that we wouldn't have to worry about anything. I couldn't even tell if Uesugi-san was lying to us earlier this morning, when I asked him where he was even staying if Raiha-chan was the one staying with us..."

"It's not your fault that things ended up this way, please don't think that it is," Miku urges quietly. "It's no one's fault."

"I get that, Miku, I really do. But even still, I just can't...shake off this feeling that we at least should've known all the things that Uesugi-san was doing, both for us and for his sister."

"I get that too, I would like to know what Fuutarou is up to so that we can ask him to come join us for whatever we did this week. But...Fuutarou isn't the type of person who would join us normally like that anyway. He probably wouldn't have even joined us if Papa were still here, because in that case, he would just stay back while Papa came with us as our guardian for the cruise."

Yotsuba goes back to gazing straight down at the ground, and so Miku puts a hand on her sister's shoulder.

"We've been through the same thing that Fuutarou and his sister are going through; seeing them in that position must hurt you a lot," she says quietly. "But we can't change any of that, or anything that's happened in this trip so far. But at least now, Fuutarou is spending time with Raiha-chan; that much you should be sure of."

Nodding slowly, Yotsuba twists her lips pensively once more - and then immediately bolts up, her deflated hair ribbon also standing straight up. Miku, blinking at Yotsuba's instant transformation, takes a step back in surprise.

"Y-Yotsuba...?"

"You said it, Miku! You're right, we can't change what's already happened," the fourth quintuplet says, whipping out her phone and immediately beginning to text the two sisters not immediately within her vicinity, Ichika and Nino. "But - ! We still _can _change...the future!"

"Er...those are some big words coming out of you right now," Miku says hesitantly as she wonders what Yotsuba could be texting.

"I know! But even an idiot like me can say smart stuff every once in a while!"

"Anyways, what are you even texting?"

"I'm texting Ichika and Nino. Once Itsuki's done with her stuff, I'll let you in on this."

"Sounds like you've got some sort of plan."

"Yep!"

"For what, though? Something involving Fuutarou?"

"Yeah!"

"A plan involving me, huh? Fill me in on the details."

"Sure! I'm gonnaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAA_AAAAAAAAAA! ! ! !"_

Screaming with the realization that the one person she doesn't want to notify about her hastily-made plans is talking right over her shoulder, Yotsuba stumbles forward and whips around, grasping her phone with both hands and hiding it behind her back as bullets of sweat come pouring from her scalp. Uesugi Fuutarou and his sister Raiha are standing where Yotsuba was, waving hello to the quintuplets.

"Something involving me, huh?" Fuutarou repeats, stepping ominously towards Yotsuba, who yelps and hides behind Miku for shelter. "Suspicious, _very _suspicious. What could the normally bouncy and bubbly Nakano Yotsuba be hiding from the brooding, mysterious, and enigmatic Uesugi Fuutarou, I wonder? Isn't that kind of behavior supposed to be _my _job?"

"I-I-It's top secret, Uesugi-san, you can't know about it yet, it's against the ruuuuules!" Yotsuba hollers as Fuutarou stops before Miku, who awkwardly smiles back up at him.

"Rules? I don't play by the rules, you should know this - "

"Onii-chan _bad!"_

A seal plushie bounces off the side of Fuutarou's head, which he catches on reaction before it can hit the ground as Raiha rejoins them.

"You shouldn't throw stuff like that out in public, Raiha," Fuutarou warns her lightly.

"Yeah, but you shouldn't bully girls like that out in public either, especially when they're your own students!" Raiha counter-scolds.

"So you're saying that I can still bully them, just _not _out in public?"

"Geeez, stop twisting my words out of context!"

"Where did you get all that stuff, Raiha-chan?" Miku asks, noting the old reusable bag with the recycling emblem on it, the same one that Fuutarou used the other day to deliver food to the quints at the beach. It is now filled instead to the brim with all sorts of stuffed animals, plushies, and other miscellaneous prizes.

"The arcade! Onii-chan won a lot of it for me," Raiha smiles hugely in happiness, and she points behind her at the Round One Arcade building behind her.

"She loves going to arcades. I've been meaning to take her to one but I couldn't find the time, but we both saw this one here separately yesterday, so we made sure to stop by here."

"American arcades are a lot different from Japanese ones," Raiha nods sagely, mentally noting the differences. "But there were a lot of Japanese cabinets and stuff there, so it felt a little familiar."

"I think that particular arcade chain makes it a point to try to import authentic Japanese arcade machines, last time I read up..." Fuutarou adds.

"So did you have fun today, Raiha-chan?" Miku asks, nudging Yotsuba a little.

"Yep, lots! And with Onii-chan this time, too!" Fuutarou's little sister smiles with weapons-grade cuteness. "Thank you for letting me borrow him for today! Oh, and thank you for the spending money, too!"

Raiha turns to hand her brother the bag full of prizes that he's won for her and then flattens herself against Miku, throwing her arms around her abdomen.

"I love you lots, Miku-onee-chan!" she joyfully laughs.

The sisterly honorific is super effective against Miku, who doubles over from the cannonball that is Raiha's preciousness and returns the elementary-schooler's hug twofold, stifling a bit of a squeal from herself. She does eventually come back to her senses after a few moments of hugging, and the first thing she does is look up at Fuutarou and ask,

"Fuutarou, can I trade sisters with you?"

"No," is the immediate response.

"I can trade you Nino, Fuutarou!"

"Hell no. Nino's gonna rip my eyes out the moment she hears about this. Why do you want her so badly anyway?"

"So that she can call me 'Miku-onee-chan'!" Miku blurts out before she, once again, can stop herself.

"Just get Yotsuba or Itsuki to say that to you," Fuutarou suggests dryly.

"Yeah, all you needed to do was ask!" Yotsuba giggles at Miku. "Isn't that right, _Miku-onee-chan?"_

"Hnnnng - !" Miku immediately relinquishes Raiha and glomps Yotsuba, much to the latter's delight. "Yotsubaaaaaaa ~ !"

"What on earth are these two doing...?" Fuutarou hears Itsuki's voice and turns to see her approaching them, having done her business at the glasses store and coming out to rendezvous with them. "Miku hardly acts like that even in the house; did you do something to her, Uesugi-kun?"

"That's what I should be asking; you didn't spike her food or anything today to make her act like this, did you?"

"I would not! Why would I do such a thing?"

Before Fuutarou has a chance to retort, Miku dashes over to Itsuki, much to the latter's shock, and asks her plainly,

"Itsuki, can you call me - 'Miku-onee-chan'?"

"W-What the heck are you asking me to do all of a sudden!?" Itsuki yells out, embarrassed at such an odd request.

"It shouldn't be too hard, right? You used to call the rest of us with 'nee-chan' back in the day when we were younger!" Yotsuba laughs.

"Th-Th-That was a long time ago, Yotsuba! I have grown out of it now! Miku, please snap out of it, I will take you to the hospital if this keeps up!"

"Onii-chan, I didn't awaken something in Miku-san on accident, did I?" Raiha asks her brother as he, she, and Yotsuba watch Miku and Itsuki go back and forth on why Itsuki should or should not call Miku "Miku-onee-chan".

"If you did, I might be in danger of losing a sister real soon," he sighs.

"We'll still take her, though!" Yotsuba beams, stooping down and hugging Raiha as well.

"No, bad. Bad Yotsuba."

"Awww ~ hahaha!"


	19. Golden Week - Southern Charm Burger

The following Friday morning, on the Nakanos' final scheduled vacation day -

"You _did _try convincing Nino to come with us, didn't you?"

"I already told you that I did. Like c'mon, you know her, with how her relationship's like with him. Besides, why did you think she'd agree to help in the first place? Not to mention she's got other plans for today."

"But Miku and Itsuki both had other things to do this morning, and Nino was the only one left in the room, so..."

"Even still, fat chance."

Having left their resort to go souvenir shopping, Ichika and Yotsuba, the only two whose mornings are free, have taken a cab to the nearby Waikiki Shopping Plaza, a smaller shopping mall compared to the Ala Moana they've frequented over the past few days, but as it is a mall that they have not visited yet, the two bank on their chances of finding a souvenir suitable to give to Fuutarou and his sister Raiha, but more so Fuutarou, as they have already spent plenty of time and made many unforgettable memories with Fuutarou's little sister. Standing at the entrance of the Waikiki Shopping Plaza, Ichika takes a quick sigh.

"We don't even know all that much about him, though," she remarks somewhat downheartedly. "So picking out something that he might like's going to be one tough nut to crack, huh?"

"I-I'm sure we'll find something! We can't lose hope now!" Yotsuba urges, trying to encourage her oldest sister.

"I know, I know. But still, my point still stands: we know virtually nothing about him. His tastes, his preferences, his likes...nothing."

"Er, we know he likes...studying? Working?"

Ichika squints back at Yotsuba incredulously. "...what kind of souvenir would fit those, exactly?"

"Uhhhh...maybe...test prep flash cards?" Yotsuba suggests hopefully.

"Yotsuba, do you even hear what's coming out of your mouth right now? Repeat that for me one more time, please."

"Test prep...flash...cards..." Yotsuba's green hair ribbon deflates humbly once more.

"Yeah, so you _do _realize how silly that sounds. What on earth kind of a souvenir is that?!"

"I-I'm soooorrrryyyy! It's the first thing that came to mind!"

Sighing, Ichika takes the lead as the two of them begin their initial round of the shopping plaza, just window-shopping for now until they can perhaps find a shop or store that might hold something of interest to them, or perhaps more accurately to their tutor.

"Remember, we can always take the easy way out and just get him something boys in general might like, or some kind of generic vacation souvenir," Ichika mentions to her younger sister.

"I know, but that...that feels..."

"Kind of like a cop-out, right?"

"Yeah...I don't know if 'cheap' is the right word to describe it, but..." Yotsuba straightens up after leaning in towards a window behind which sit a row of stuffed animals from the nearby Honolulu Zoo, where Miku and Itsuki have taken Raiha to go see the animals there. "I want to give him something that...he'd like personally. Something that would mean a lot to him..."

Gazing sideways at her sister, Ichika ponders her words for a moment...and then lets her lips curl into a wry smile.

"Hey, Yotsuba, I'm just wondering, but..." she herself leans in towards Yotsuba with a low voice, "...do you maybe...have feelings for Fuutarou-kun...?"

Yotsuba's hair ribbon jolts up in alarm and surprise as its owner whips towards Ichika with cheeks that quickly pump themselves full of embarrassment.

"F-F-Feelings for him!? No, no, no way ~ !" Yotsuba denies feverishly, shaking both her head and her hands out at her fellow quint.

"Heeeeh, you sure it's not?" Taking another step towards Yotsuba, Ichika keeps up her interrogative vibes as she presses the issue further. "Then why did you sound so..._passionate_ in those texts you sent me and Nino yesterday evening?"

"I was just - just super excited! And the idea just popped into my head at the time!" Yotsuba cries.

"Even with that in mind, though, it's not like we've known him for _that _long, have we? And the most our relationship with him's been is student and tutor for the most part, right? Yet you're still putting your all into picking out just the _right _souvenir to give to him. And you're saying there's maybe not something a little extra riiiight..._here?"_

With a sultry finger, Ichika lightly pokes Yotsuba's bosom.

"I-Ichikaaaaaaaa!" Beginning to pout at her sister's teasing, Yotsuba folds her arms crossly and turns away.

"Sorry, sorry, I couldn't help it."

Apologizing quickly, Ichika closes the distance between them once more and gives Yotsuba a hug from behind.

"I haven't had the chance to tease my cute sisters like that in a while. You could say that I just wanted a bit of a taste of the past..." she whispers affectionately to Yotsuba behind her ear. "I didn't mean to make you angry if you are."

Letting her sister's calming words settle her down, Yotsuba nods slowly in understanding.

"You've been really busy lately, too. You weren't at most of Uesugi-san's lessons last week either because of your part-time," Yotsuba notes softly. "You sure you won't make him angry by keeping that up?"

"Aha...about that, Fuutarou-kun's already talked to me about that."

"And what did he say?"

"He wasn't angry with me or anything...he just wanted to know what I was up to, which is reasonable for him to ask. I told him that I'll try not to let it happen like that."

"...your part-time must be like, really important to you, huh?"

"Er, yeah, of course. And it's not like I can just stop doing it, either, since I've been doing it for a while now." Sensing that the topic is going to hard-shift to her part-time job, Ichika quickly changes the subject back to Fuutarou. "So anyways, if you don't, like, have feelings for him or anything like that, then that's fine, I just couldn't help but wonder what's making you go out of your way like this to get him something and bring me along for the ride. Like, think about it, Fuutarou-kun isn't the type to really want anything from us, don't you think?"

"Yeah, that's...that's true, he doesn't strike me as someone who accepts gifts easily..."

"Even though he should, given his situation."

Yotsuba has since slowly turned around to face her sister again.

"But I still want to get him something either way. Even if he never talks about it, it's obvious even to me that he works super hard, both for his own family and for us. And..."

Regaining her edge of confidence, Yotsuba looks straight back into her older sister's own blue eyes, the same as her own.

"...Uesugi-san is a kind person. He doesn't show it much, if at all, but I can tell that he's someone who cares about us, beyond us just being his students. I don't know by how much, but...the fact that he does care a little, I'm sure about."

At this, Ichika bursts out giggling, causing Yotsuba to pout again.

"I-I'm serious, Ichika! Don't be mean to him!"

"No, no, it's just - I can't help but remember yesterday's cruise we had, and then when Fuutarou showed us that picture of the puffer fish spouting water - "

The mention of Fuutarou's joke about Nino yesterday also gets to Yotsuba, who starts cracking up when she doesn't want to, but she can't stop herself and so joins Ichika in a bit of a giggle fit.

"But I get it, seriously, I do. Fuutarou-kun is a nice guy, and that he just doesn't show it to us directly," Ichika agrees.

"That, and I always get everyone their own personalized gifts too every Christmas, you know?" Yotsuba points out. "So if there's someone I care about, of course I'll take the time to get them something that they'll really treasure!"

_"AHA! _So you _do _admit it!" Ichika jabs a finger straight back at Yotsuba's face dramatically. "You _do _care about him!"

"Y-Yes, I do, but - but - but as a _friend! _Not like _that!" _the fourth quintuplet yelps quickly.

"Tch. Boooooriiiiing..."

_"Why are you trying so hard to be some kind of matchmaker?!"_

Laughing at Yotsuba's deduction, Ichika takes a step back away from her. "It's fun to see my sisters grow up, you know? Going through school, meeting new friends, falling in love ~ that's what our youth should be all about, isn't it?"

"That's true, but...but I'm not...I'm not...!" Yotsuba just can't finish the sentence that she wants to.

"Not what, Yotsuba? Hmmmm...?" Ichika leans in again, once more on the offensive, causing Yotsuba's cheeks to pop brightly once more as she spins around to avoid Ichika's leery gaze. "Tell me, tell me, tell me ~ "

"Uuuuu...! Ichika, you bully...! I should've just asked Miku to swap places with you, or just come here by myself instead!"

"Oh c'mon, don't be like that ~ just follow your heart, Yotsuba, let it tell you what Fuutarou-kun really wants ~ !"

"I don't really want anything if you're thinking of getting me something."

By this point, Fuutarou has shown up unexpectedly enough times that the two Nakanos don't show much of a reaction to their tutor suddenly walking towards them out of nowhere. He has reverted back to his usual clothes of a plain white dress shirt and black slacks, and Ichika scowls at him as he approaches.

"You're not hot in those clothes? At least you could ditch the slacks, who the heck walks around in long pants like that here?" she suggests a bit condescendingly.

"I have my ways of dealing with the heat. You've never seen me complain about the heat now, have you?"

"No, but you were rocking the clothes that Nino bought you the other day just fine too, weren't you?"

"I just like my usual style better. Makes me blend in better."

"Blend in? In clothes like _that? _When everyone else's walking around in Hawaiian shirts and stuff?"

"For the city. You'd be surprised how many people still wear business stuff or, at least, not so vacation-y clothes the further into the city you go." Fuutarou swiftly waves hello to Yotsuba. "So what are the two of you doing here? This hasn't got something to do with that thing Yotsuba was talking about earlier yesterday, right?"

Both of the girls hesitate, especially Yotsuba, who's completely forgotten that her tutor has an idea of what she's up to because of his accidental eavesdropping the previous evening at the mall outside of the arcade.

"Er...well..." Ichika tries to cover for her sister, but Yotsuba talks past her, opting to remain truthful as she prefers to.

"We were, um, thinking about...maybe getting you a souvenir, Uesugi-san," she reveals faithfully. "That was what I was...talking about yesterday. It isn't anything big or anything like that...I thought we should get you something while we're here for all the stuff you've done for us."

Fuutarou nods shortly. "Yeah, I figured."

"Y-You _figured? _How did you figure that one out so fast? And did you even need to let us know that you knew?" It's Ichika's turn to fold her arms at her tutor. "You should've just played along and let Yotsuba get you something. Talk about being too direct all the time..."

"You know me. But it was just a guess, because I'm here to do the exact same."

Both Ichika and Yotsuba gawk back at him.

"Fuu - Fuutarou-kun's buying a _souvenir _for someone?!" Squealing on reaction, Ichika hops over to Fuutarou like a bunny running over to some food. Meanwhile, Yotsuba freezes up, as if in shock to hear his intention. "Who is it for? Ichika-onee-chan'll keep it a secret!"

"What about Yotsuba, then?" Fuutarou points shortly at the other quintuplet.

Ichika slowly turns her neck to gaze back at Yotsuba with closed eyes and an air of pressure that grows the more she turns her neck.

"..._you won't tell anyone either, right, Yotsuba...?" _she smiles with absolutely no generosity in her lips.

"Eeeeek! Uesugi-san, save me, Ichika's gonna do mean things to meeeee ~ !" Yotsuba scampers behind her tutor to use him as cover.

"Fuutarou-kun? Don't try to keep my dear little sister from me," Ichika continues to smile ominously.

"Or else?"

"Or else..._I won't come to any more of your lessons."_

Fuutarou swiftly pivots one hundred and eighty degrees, lifts up Yotsuba with the greatest of ease by cupping his hands underneath her armpits, and turns around to present Ichika her sister back.

"Here you go. Express delivery," he announces dryly.

"U-Uesugi-saaaaaaaaaan! ! ! ! Why'd you sell me out like that so easilyyyyy! ! ! !" Yotsuba's voice gets raised to a low shriek of laughter as Ichika raises her own hands, their fingers wiggling in anticipation.

"You should know why, Yotsuba, I'm a poor-ass motherfucker who's gotta pay the bills somehow. If all I need to do to ensure that Ichika'll keep coming to my lessons, then your sacrifice shall not be in vain."

"B-B-But - but - if - if you sacrifice me here, that means - that means you'll be losing out on another student! ! ! !"

Pausing, Fuutarou digests Yotsuba's point and quickly yanks her out of Ichika's grasp before the eldest quint can secure her prize.

"That's a good point, actually. I take it back, I can't afford to lose Yotsuba," he declares, having changed his mind. Pouting, Ichika doesn't give up yet.

"But Fuutarou-kun, how can you bear teaching a dummy like Yotsuba? She can't even tell the difference between 'rice' and 'lice'!" she points out savagely.

"Also another good point." Flipping sides a second time, Fuutarou presents Yotsuba back to her sister again.

_"Just because of THAT, Uesugi-san?!"_

"The fact that you never seem to get those two correct is starting to get under my skin. I'm sorry, but this is the end of the line. You must atone for your poor English skills."

_"By giving me to someone who's also bad at English too!?"_

"Misery loves company. And five's a crowd."

Setting the quintuplet in his hands down, Fuutarou sighs a bit.

"Anyways, enough fun 'n games. I just wanted to pick up a souvenir for Raiha," he explains quickly. At this, Yotsuba sighs a breath of relief, while Ichika rolls her eyes in disappointment.

"Meh...should've figured," she groans. "Shouldn't have gotten my hopes up..."

"Hopes up? For what?"

"Nothing, nothing! Our dense tutor wouldn't know what for anyway. Hmph!" Ichika cutely turns away from her tutor with the most glorious pout that he's seen her make so far.

"Okay, then." Fuutarou now turns to Yotsuba. "So you two are here to see if you can try to find me something? Like I said, you don't need to bother - "

But Yotsuba shakes her head adamantly. "I _want _to get you something, Uesugi-san! You've worked hard for our sakes for the past couple of weeks, and - "

"_Only _a few weeks. I don't think that's a very long time."

"But to _us, _it is!" Yotsuba argues.

"'Us'...? I'm assuming you're leaving out Nino and Itsuki from that."

"F-For now, yeah, but - but anyways! Please let us get something for you!" Yotsuba bows deeply.

Ichika also steps in to assist her sister, even though merely moments ago the two of them were at odds, even if it was only playful.

"Fuutarou-kun, we're well aware that you're a busy guy and that you'd rather spend your own time by yourself working or whatever, and that you don't want us to buy you anything because you don't feel like you deserve it just yet. But this is a souvenir - it's not meant to reward you because of a job well done. Yotsuba's buying you something because she wants it to be a memoir of our vacation here together."

"But this vacation wasn't meant to have me involved at all. This is _your _vacation, first and foremost, with Raiha. I'm just here to make sure nothing funny happens," Fuutarou tries to insist, but he can tell that this is a losing battle he's fighting against Ichika, who shakes her head back at him.

"While that might be true, the fact of the matter is that we still came here with you. Yeah, you weren't the one who was with us on the plane or shared a room with us all week, but you still spent time with us. You spent time with all of us at some point, either individually or with all of us together. And that's without getting into all the time you've spent this week making sure, like you said, that nothing bad happened to us this week. You might not think much of it, but some of us like Yotsuba do, which is why she's taking the time to pick out something for you."

Having nothing to say to this, Fuutarou awkwardly frowns, scratching the back of his head and being unable to return Yotsuba's gaze.

"Alright, alright...I concede," he raises his hands in surrender, causing Yotsuba's eyes to light up with happiness. "But seriously...I don't know what I would want. It's not just to save face that I'm telling you not to buy something for me; I legitimately don't know what I would want."

"Oh c'mon, there must be _something?" _Ichika asks. "Something, anything at all?"

"I mean, what I would really want, I'm already working towards. I've always been of the belief that if you truly want something, you'd work for it yourself and not have to rely on anyone else to get it for you."

"Okay, Uesugi-sensei, we get that you're all old and experienced and stuff, but leave the life lessons for later."

"Oh that's rich, coming from someone who was giving some of her own life lessons to Miku the other day."

At this, Ichika jumps a little. "H-Hey! How'd you find out...?" she blurts out as it's her turn to avert her eyes bashfully.

"What do you mean, Miku told me the night you told her to come meet up with me."

"Agh, I should've known. I'll have to give Miku a little _talk _later..."

"Don't bully her or anything."

"I'm not going to! Besides, _you're _the bully here, constantly telling Yotsuba that you don't want her to buy you anything! Just because you don't want something doesn't mean you should reject her feelings like that."

"I-I get it, I get it, really." Running his hand up through his dark hair in exasperation, Fuutarou beckons to the girls. "Then we can just hang out together for the morning and look around; I can look for what to get Raiha while we look for something to get me, as weird as that is to say. How's that sound?"

Both Ichika and Yotsuba smile back at him joyfully and tag along behind him as the three of them resume their window-shopping adventure.

* * *

After about two hours of window-shopping and aisle-browsing throughout the stores in this smaller shopping mall, the trio take a break for an early lunch, settling for a gourmet hamburger restaurant called Red Robin.

"This place has a very retro feel, huh?" Ichika remarks once they've taken their seats and placed their orders. She is sitting across from Yotsuba and Fuutarou, who, at her urging, are sitting together.

"Yeah, this place is meant to be evocative of the American 60's and 70's. It was founded back in 1969, after all, in Seattle," Fuutarou explains as classic 60's American music plays at a comfortable level above them through the restaurant's ceiling speakers.

"Wow, you sure know your stuff. You've been here before? It kind of feels like you have."

"Yeah, in fact, a while back. I used to have to travel around a lot, and part of the reason was to visit an old friend of mine who lives over in mainland America, in California, specifically, and he took me out to dinner to a Red Robin over there once. I liked it a lot, so I figured I'd show you girls...though I'm not sure how much you quints like burgers and such."

"Oh don't worry, we love burgers!" Yotsuba giggles happily, clearly excited that she's going to be eating a hamburger for the first time in a very long time. "We usually don't eat them, but that's only because Nino always cooks us healthy food."

"Is it true, by the way, that Nino's really the only one among you five who knows how to actually cook?" Fuutarou asks for clarification, now that Nino's been brought up.

"Ahaha...yeah, it's certainly true. Nino's the only one among us who's taken the time to learn how to cook seriously," Ichika sighs in self-deprecation. "Miku's been trying, but she's been struggling too. Yotsuba and Itsuki just don't have the talent for it, and in the meantime you've got me, who's too lazy to learn."

"Thankfully for the rest of you four, then, that Nino takes care of you all," Fuutarou snorts quietly. "She's flaunted that to me earlier this week when I was hanging out with her; I figured there might be a chance that she was just bluffing or trying to impress me or whatever, but I guess that really is the case."

"It sure is. I mean, think about it, who else have you seen cooking in our house?"

"Miku, but yeah, she's not very good, even I can tell, so your point stands. Unless I count Yotsuba, who knows how to craft drinks."

"B-But that's not, you know, _cooking..." _Yotsuba points out hesitantly.

"Yeah, guess not. Maybe you'd make a great bartender?"

"A bartender?" Yotsuba quickly envisions herself wearing a fancy dress or a tuxedo, standing behind a counter and pouring out a glass on the rocks for a customer. "Th-That doesn't sound too bad, actually..."

"She needs to learn how to mix more drinks than just Shirley Temples and juice mixes first," Ichika chuckles.

"Well, it's a start. Everyone's gotta start somewhere..." Fuutarou says reassuringly, reaching for his tall glass of ordinary water to take a sip. "I thought you girls wouldn't like the idea of having burgers for lunch since it might be too heavy, or maybe since you're all rich girls, burgers are way too 'commoner food' for you..."

"Aw, it's nothing like _that. _Do we really come off as spoiled rich girls to you?" Ichika laughs, taking Fuutarou's lead and sipping from her own tall glass of Cherry Coca-Cola.

"...yes?"

"You could at least say it without sounding like that's the most obvious thing in the world!" Ichika laughs, mainly to herself. "I guess there's no point trying to ask you to be a little less direct, huh? But no, we all like going out for burgers every once in a while. Even Nino too, believe it or not..."

"I mean, even for her, I guess it can become pretty boring just cooking and eating homemade food all the time. And I'm sure she's got nights when she doesn't feel like cooking," Fuutarou reasons.

"That's right. You're surprisingly perceptive, if nothing else."

"Believe it or not, it's one of the ways I make up for being an insufferable, insociable karoshi warrior."

"K-Karoshi warrior...what a _fitting _nickname. Who gave you that?"

"Me."

"So not only are you perceptive, but you've got a hilariously dark sense of humor."

"That's a complement, so thank you." Fuutarou sips some more water. "Either way, I'm glad that my suggestion to come here is working out. The burgers here are great; I can personally vouch for that at least, though remember that they're quite heavy - you'll realize the difference between Japanese and American cuisines right away the moment our food arrives."

"It's okay, we're used to trying out all sorts of different food from around the world. We've vacationed in all sorts of places, after all," Yotsuba reminds her tutor, who rocks his head back a little in realization.

"That's right...then maybe I don't have to worry about that little detail."

"Ehehe ~ you sure do care about us a lot, huh, Uesugi-san?"

"I'm contractually obligated to, so I do put in at least some effort into looking after you all however I can."

"Yeah. Now if only you were getting a souvenir for one of us," Ichika teases him lightly.

"Imagine actually getting a souvenir for one of you, dear God. How the hell is a broke-ass dude like me gonna buy something that's up to your standards?" Fuutarou shudders jokingly.

"It doesn't have to be expensive, sheesh! You think that just because we're rich and spoiled, we want all our gifts to be all classy and expensive?"

Fuutarou looks Ichika straight in the eye across their table, causing her to recoil slightly at his perceived seriousness.

"Uh, _yes?" _he answers with the most bluntness Ichika's felt in a while, even from him. "You even said it yourself, hello? 'Just because we're rich and spoiled'? What the hell else do you want me to say?"

Pouting for a third time today, Ichika reaches over the table to bop her tutor lightly on the head with the bottoms of her fists as he leans in for another sip through his glass's straw.

"Bad Fuutarou-kun, bad! Bully to girls! Meanie!"

"I wasn't trying to bully you, though. You should've seen what I was trying to do to Yotsuba yesterday when I found her talking about her plans for today."

"I-I was just surprised that you'd walked up behind me like that!" Yotsuba protests.

"But you saw me and Raiha walk into that arcade; it shouldn't have been a surprise that we'd come out again eventually."

"Wait, you _knew _that I was following you?!" Yotsuba looks utterly shocked.

"With someone like you tailing me, yes, it was quite obvious. You were stalking us for a good hour and half, which is pretty impressive, all things considered."

"So _that's _what you were doing yesterday while Nino and I were at the spa. Are you _sure _there isn't maybe a little extra something behind this souvenir you're getting him?" Ichika leers teasingly back at her younger sister, whose face puffs into embarrassment again.

"I-I'm telling you there isn't! ! ! ! I was just trying to make sure that Raiha-chan and Uesugi-san were having fun, that's all!" Scrambling to defend her pure-hearted intentions, Yotsuba glances hurriedly at Fuutarou next to her. "See, see, it's - it's just like how Uesugi-san is always nearby watching over us so that nothing happens to us!"

"You make me sound like a goddamn stalker, Yotsuba."

"Oh, you're not?" Ichika asks plainly, sipping nonchalantly from her soda.

"For what it's worth, I don't actually follow you girls around the damn clock, knowing exactly every single little thing that you do."

"Then how do you know what we're up to at all times? Like how you knew Itsuki was heading out of our hotel room that other night?"

Fuutarou looks around - as the restaurant has recently opened and people usually frequent the restaurant later in the day for dinner, he doesn't need to worry as much about getting overheard.

"I spent the first couple nights planting sensor runes all over the city. That way, I can not only track your girls' movements, but also everything else in the city in case there's any strange behavior going on in the city that might be of concern." Fuutarou gazes straight back at Ichika. "Now that you've mentioned it, I can very well operate as if I'm a frickin' stalker. You know those runes I put in your house? On the front door and on the veranda window door? Imagine what would happen if I put those on your room doors instead. I said that I don't do this, but if I really wanted to, I really can figure out every little thing that you do, and honestly, that would be the best way to guarantee the safety of you and your sisters because I'd know exactly where you are and what you're doing at all times."

As Fuutarou goes further and further into detail, Ichika shrinks back in her seat, realizing that she's opened a can of worms that she probably shouldn't have tried testing him on.

"Obviously that'd be going way too far, so I don't do that. I know you only meant this as a joke, but be careful what you joke about when someone like me gets involved...it's more likely to happen than you think."

"O-Okay...lesson learned, Sensei."

"I wasn't even trying to teach you anything there..."

The three of them lapse into a brief silence, quietly enjoying the retro atmosphere of the hamburger restaurant.

"Uesugi-san," Yotsuba speaks up suddenly, and turning to her to his left, Fuutarou can read a look of urgency in her blue eyes.

"Yeah, what's up?"

"If...if it's alright with you," Yotsuba asks slowly, "could you tell us...what it is that you do as a...m-mage...?"

Uncharacteristically for someone like Fuutarou who gives crisp, snappy answers to questions he's presented with, which is what Ichika and Yotsuba have come to expect from him given the context of their tutoring relationship, he simply peers straight back into Yotsuba's eyes, offering no words of reply for a solid minute. Yotsuba can't seem to tear her own eyes away from him - his dull black eyes, even though they are lightless, empty, and infinite, capture her gaze and viciously refuse to let them go.

Empty...

"Er...you two? Fuutarou-kun?" Ichika calls worriedly to them, her voice breaking the trance-like state that Yotsuba has found herself trapped in, and Fuutarou turns to glance back at the eldest quint. "You don't like being asked that question, huh...?"

"It's not a matter of whether or not I like being asked something like that," he sighs quietly. Placing a hand on the table, Fuutarou removes it after a moment, and on his half of the table sits a small blue rune. After another moment, the rune loses its light to become a faint silhouette, then expands quickly, engulfing their table and some space around it before disappearing from view entirely. "Rather, it's something a good mage should _never _be asked."

Sitting up straight and pulling out his phone to do his usual routine of checking emails and texts, Fuutarou puts his phone down on the corner of the table after he finds both of them to be empty for now.

"But I will have to make an exception for you girls...though that doesn't mean I'm obligated to tell you everything, for security reasons."

He glances back at Yotsuba, who, having broken out in a small but cold sweat, tenses up again when she receives her tutor's attention once more.

"So why do you ask? You mentioned earlier when we first met two hours ago that you wanted to get me something because you know how supposedly busy I am. Is it because you're just curious, or because you want to have some kind of reinforcement behind you getting me a souvenir gift?"

Opening her mouth but then closing it immediately after, Yotsuba repeats this process a few times like a fish out of water. The icy, suffocating pressure that seems to emanate from Uesugi Fuutarou returns to oppress her will to communicate effectively, though thankfully it isn't as harsh, perhaps because Fuutarou turns his gaze away again to take another sip from his water. Ichika is not immune from this pressure either, even if she is not the one towards whom the pressure is targeted, and so for both her own sake and for her sister's, she remains a silent bystander, somewhat nervously looking on with her Coke straw in her mouth. Eventually, however, Yotsuba does fight back against the icy pressure and hack up the will to talk with the one weapon that she can feel confident in: the truth.

"...it was...because...I wanted to know...I wanted to get an idea of...just how busy of a person you are," Yotsuba croaks. With all her concentration and willpower points boosting her current Speech stat, Yotsuba has no remaining stat points to allot to other areas of social interaction such as posture and presentation, which means that she's got her head down, hair ribbon deflated yet again, talking straight down at the cushion seats on which she and her tutor sit across from Ichika.

"And why's that?"

Fuutarou is speaking with a cold, emotionless calmness, a stillness that has eliminated all semblances of personal bias and extraneous thoughts. While they have heard their tutor talk like this plenty of times before, neither Ichika nor Yotsuba have heard his voice quite like this, where simply hearing it feels like their chests are being filled with buckets of ice. Fuutarou's voice has demonstrated over the weeks his ability to show some deviating emotions from his default iciness, and the two of them have admittedly been enjoying the times when their tutor acts out of his usual shell and becomes more animated, so his stark relapse into his usual standoffish, almost hostile Arctic attitude gives the two of them a grim reminder that their tutor is no ordinary high school freshman. As a matter of fact, there was someone else who acts this way most of the time too -

"Because - because - " Yotsuba's tongue refuses to cooperate with her properly; she has an answer ready for this, for she has anticipated Fuutarou asking her to explain herself, but she just can't spit it out without stammering a few times first. " - because - I wanted to put the most - the most genuine feelings into - into - giving you - th-that souvenir - I thought - if - if - I knew - more about what you do - then - then - I'd - feel happier - giving you - something - that you'd - you'd enjoy - "

That's the best Yotsuba can do, and so squeezing her eyes shut, she prays that Fuutarou will accept her answer. Not that she knows what he'd do if he doesn't, but she's in no position to assume that Fuutarou will be satisfied with the answer she's given him.

But to her growing relief, the oppressive icy atmosphere that has dominated the air among them slowly fades away, and she is able to look back up at her tutor, who is acting the same as if nothing has happened.

"Putting your most genuine feelings into a gift that you plan to give to someone important to you..." Fuutarou repeats slowly, gazing down at his empty phone screen that is as empty as his own eyes are. "While I'm not fully familiar with that kind of sentiment, at least I can tell that it means a lot to you."

Utterly relieved at his approval, Yotsuba nods deeply, unable to stop herself from smiling radiantly with joy.

"You knew that she was telling you the truth, Fuutarou-kun?" Ichika asks from the sidelines.

"She doesn't strike me as the type of person who'd lie. Or, let me rephrase that: I don't think that she's the type of person to lie when it involves something that means a lot to her. I could be wrong about that; after all, I've only known you girls for barely a month, if that, but that's the gut feeling I got when she said that."

Fuutarou slowly rolls his neck backwards, rubbing the back of his neck at the same time.

"Honesty's not something I come across a lot, and so in appreciation of the fact that you decided to be honest with me, or at least I think you are, I'll talk a little about about my whole mage stuff, but only the things that directly concern you girls. While I'm leaving you all in the dark for the most part for your own protection for now, that can't go on forever - though when I'll get the opportunity to sit down with everyone and explain with full transparency what I do as a mage, I have no idea."

As Uesugi speaks, both Ichika and Yotsuba find themselves leaning more and more closely to Fuutarou.

"But for now, I can say this: I'm not just your tutor. As a matter of fact, as you probably already know by now, tutoring you is not actually my main obligation in regards to the Nakano family. It's intended to be a cover-up for the fact that my main responsibility right now is to ensure the safety of the Nakano quintuplets by any means necessary."

Fuutarou is right; it is no secret, especially after their first weekend's incident, to the quintuplets that their tutor has responsibilities that go beyond mere teaching and tutoring. But to hear him physically say this outright feels as though a foundation has finally been laid beneath their feet in regards to their image of the boy named Uesugi Fuutarou, with whom the girls have spent much time over the past several weeks.

"This is naturally a long-term contract. Protection services usually don't last this long because they involve clients who usually have their own entourages anyway and only require special escorts or protection services when they need to enter a potentially hostile area that they don't already know or are familiar with. But you girls are a different story, because the circumstances of this contract are unlike any I've ever had to deal with before."

"How...how so?" Ichika asks, finding herself becoming more and more invested into Fuutarou's words.

"The threats who pose a danger to your safeties are largely unknown; all I know is that they exist, somewhere out there, but obviously that's not a lot of information to work with. Therefore, I have to search for potential threats, identify them if I deem them as confirmed threats, and eliminate them swiftly if I can, ideally before they can start causing trouble and get any of you directly involved. But as that whole warehouse incident showed, not everything goes according to plan."

Fuutarou looks up to meet Ichika's eyes, and now it's her turn to find herself unable to look away.

"Because I'm starting with only a single lead and not much information to work with, I spent a few weeks both before and after I first met you all covering the entire city with surveillance runes. What I did here in Honolulu is similar, just on a much smaller scale since you girls shouldn't be heading outside my scan range here anyway since we're on vacation. But back home, you girls can go wherever you like, and so I have to account for that by covering the entire city - including the suburbs and outskirts. It also includes the boondocks and the less-frequented areas like that warehouse, and that's how I was able to locate you all.

"But just setting up a magical surveillance system alone isn't enough; just like most modern things, I have to maintain them too, because eventually they degrade over time. The really good mages out there have strong enough runes where they don't degrade as quickly or even at all, but I don't quite have that same experience, so for now I have to check my runes from time to time and make sure that they're working as they should, and if they're not, I have to head out and conduct maintenance on them. That by itself doesn't take long, but running around the city with how big it is does.

"And lastly, you girls. I mentioned this just earlier to you, Ichika, but just like how I've been keeping tabs on everyone here, I also do the same for you all back home, but again, just on a much bigger scale because you girls can go anywhere at any time. While I said I don't know all the exact little things that you do, I will tell you that I know where exactly all five of you are in the city. I know when you leave the high-rise, I know if you're at school, I know if you're somewhere downtown doing shopping, and I know if you're someplace that you're not supposed to be because you didn't go there willingly."

Surveying his two-woman audience, Fuutarou exhales quietly, clasping his hands together across his stomach.

"I won't deny that that sounds really unnerving and creepy, that I know exactly where you girls are at any time, and while I won't be changing any of that just because you girls are uncomfortable with it, I apologize if that's what you feel about it," he says. "And I wouldn't have even had to bother you two with that sort of information, but I felt it was necessary to divulge given that Yotsuba's asked me the whole question of what the hell I do as a mage."

"Well, it...it is kind of creepy, not gonna lie, but...if it weren't for that, then...who knows what would've ended up happening to us back at that warehouse..." Ichika mutters somberly, lowering her head a bit. "Definitely if you told us this before, we'd freak out a little...no, probably a lot, to be honest. But now, at least we know why you go to such lengths like that, because...something like _that _could happen."

"And besides, you've spent a lot of time with us with tutoring, so...I guess it's not _so _bad...?" Yotsuba mentions awkwardly, scratching her cheek nervously while wondering if her input really has any weight in this conversation.

"Yeah, that's a good point you bring up; part of the reason why I've spent a lot of time over at your place is to just be there physically so that in case something did happen, I'd be more likely to be in position to keep you girls safe," Fuutarou nods, causing Yotsuba to sit back up again, happy to know that she's been proven wrong. "It's not something I could just come out and tell you all, especially not to Nino or Itsuki, but yeah...being there in person with you all makes me feel more confident that I can do my job."

"Hmmm...? So does that mean you enjoy being with us...?" Ichika chuckles, offering her sultry finger to her tutor like she did to Yotsuba earlier that morning.

"Enjoy being with potential academic dropouts like you who need me to explain basic shit three or four times over just so that you get it? Talk about having high hopes."

"Ouch, that part really hurt..."

Fuutarou rolls his eyes a second time today. "I shouldn't feel that way, because I've put up defensive security measures on the entire high-rise so that mages or ordinary crooks can't just waltz up to your house. Not only that, but I've installed a teleportation rune at the roof of the high-rise so that I can get there immediately in case of an imminent emergency, so there's no reason for me to worry about not being there, since I can get there in seconds if I need to to respond to a crisis. It's just that knowledge is power, and knowing what you girls are up to myself in person makes me feel considerably more comfortable."

He takes turns glancing at both quints with whom he's about to have lunch.

"Currently, I'm working on identifying potential threats, namely the one behind the warehouse incident. The drug that Nino used on me, Heisei - it's my only lead, but I'm working on following that lead as far as I can in hopes that it'll take me straight to the one who's behind it. I don't expect it to be _that _easy, but on the off-chance that it does, then that means less work and hassle for me. But that doesn't mean there aren't more bad guys out there..."

"Uesugi-san, why do people want to come after us like this?" Yotsuba asks fearfully. "I know we haven't really shown this, and I don't know how my sisters have been acting around you when I'm not around, but...after that incident, I realized just...just how dangerous this world can be. I don't know if I can say that to the same extent that you can, but I definitely have a better idea of it now. And knowing that, I just can't help but wonder why it is that the five of us have targets on our backs like this. What did we do, Uesugi-san?"

"I'm trying to figure out the same thing, Yotsuba. I don't know why you're all under fire right now; your dad merely told me that he thinks your lives are in danger but didn't give me any details other than Ebata's death."

Ichika listens to this part intently, but she offers no comment in particular.

"My assumption is that it has something to do with you all being quintuplets," Fuutarou ventures forward a guess. "It's certainly strange that the five of you are being targeted by hostile mages, because mages don't typically go after normal people with no magical ability or knowledge of magic unless they've got a good reason to do so. Of course, there can always be some who don't care to have a good reason and just go after anyone they want indiscriminately, but if they're that deranged already, they're really easy to weed out and take down. In any case, none of you have any magical talents that I'm aware of, so my best guess is that because the five of you are quintuplets, and obviously finding quintuplets is really rare, you girls might present something that they're interested in."

"And just what would that be?" Ichika asks, almost with morbid curiosity. At this, Fuutarou once more peers back at her with those empty black eyes of his.

"How should I know? My job doesn't entail knowing what other mages do, and for the most part I'd rather _not _know," he replies curtly. "But if you insist on me taking another guess, let's see, how about that warehouse incident? What if those guys sedated you all with their drugs, and then took you back to some godforsaken lab where they tested out more experimental drugs on the five of you to see what kinds of effects they would have? Since the five of you are quintuplets and have the exact same physiologies for the most part, being able to observe what kinds of effects drugs would have on one of you would help whoever's making those drugs be able to easily modify them and test them on you all over, and over, and over, and over again to get the exact kind of drug with the exact kind of effects they're looking for."

Such a grim and terrifying possibility shocks the quintuplets back into silence.

"And that's only what I can think of, and I don't go around doing those kinds of things. Imagine what someone who _does _regularly do shitty and fucked up things like that can think of."

"O-Okay, we...we get it already," Ichika says quickly, having been immediately turned off from this uncomfortable topic. "Forget I asked..."

Yotsuba looks entirely dejected and full of despair. "...magic really is super scary..."

"Which is why I never talk about it on my own accord unless it's a time like now, when you bug me to talk about it. I stand by my point that magic is something you should live your lives knowing nothing about, because most of the time, it doesn't benefit you at all...it just brings you suffering and pain you don't need when I'm sure you have a lot to deal with already."

Fuutarou's heavy words linger in the air longer than they should.

"...then surely you speak from experience on that?" Ichika points out quietly. "Why do you pursue it, then? Why do you work with it?"

"Because when your family's debt-ridden and you need to make money fast somehow to make sure loan sharks and their debt collectors don't come kicking down your door looking for money that your family owes them, there's not much else in the way of options available," her tutor hisses under his breath, and that alone causes the hairs on both Yotsuba's and Ichika's necks to stand straight up. "In a better situation, knowing what I know now, I would've preferred never getting into magic. I would've rather come to know you girls as just an ordinary tutor, hired by your dad just to teach you enough to make sure you all can graduate without dropping out without having to worry about anything else. But that's not the world that I live in - and so here I am."

Shaking his head, Fuutarou runs a hand up through his black hair again.

"Sorry...that was me venting a little," he apologizes quickly. "Another reason why I don't like it when people ask me about magic...eventually at some point I end up complaining about that crap, about how I never wanted to learn it because I'm bitter about how things turned out for me when it was my own conscious decision that I made to get into it in the first place. You girls are the last people I want to bother with that nonsense."

Sitting back up straight, Ichika gazes back at Fuutarou with no expression.

"You want to leave us out of it, then?"

"Yeah, if possible. Though I can see now that there'll be times like these when I can't really avoid talking about it."

"So then what's the point of Yotsuba trying to find you a souvenir gift?"

Fuutarou slowly looks back up at the eldest quint. Detecting creeping animosity in her voice, he confirms it with the hardened look on Ichika's face.

"Wasn't that what _I _was wondering earlier today...?" he thinks aloud.

"Yeah, but in my case, it's a rhetorical question," Ichika responds crisply. "Yotsuba cares a lot about choosing the right souvenir for you to take back home; you even acknowledged it yourself a little while ago. So to rephrase my earlier question, what was the point of you telling us all this stuff just now, only to end it with how you didn't want to 'bother' us with it?"

Fuutarou raises an eyebrow back at her. "...your point?"

"Yotsuba wants to put all of her feelings she's got for you into a gift that she wants to buy for you and give to you. I might tease her about the basis for those feelings that she's got, whether it's because she admires you as our tutor or because she has feelings for you that go beyond that, but that's besides the point. You telling us these things about your involvement with magic and how it relates to us is exactly what Yotsuba wants, what she's asking for. So for you to say all that, and then say towards the end 'you girls are the last people I wanna bother with that nonsense', what do you think Yotsuba feels right now?"

"I-Ichika, you don't need to - it's not that big of a deal," the fourth quint tries to mediate like Ichika herself would do for her own sisters, but Ichika isn't about to let herself be stopped. Glaring now with her own razor-sharp blue eyes, the eldest sister is able to nullify what pressure she's been feeling before while Fuutarou was talking to end her peace with:

"I get that you're a busy person. I get that you're normally not that sociable, that you prefer to be alone and be left alone so that you can do whatever it is that you need to do. But we've known each other for a little bit now; you've spent quite some time with us that I don't think is insignificant, but I'm getting the sense that you don't really care to recognize that we value the time that we have spent together so far. If that's the case, you don't deserve a souvenir from any one of us, let alone Yotsuba. If that's how you really feel, leave us be after you're done with lunch."

Locked in the most intense and cutthroat staring contest that Yotsuba's ever seen, Fuutarou and Ichika remain at odds in silence against one another across the table, and Fuutarou is the first to relent, surprisingly enough. Without warning, he stands up, pocketing his phone and taking one last sip of his water.

"Then I'll save you some time," he quietly declares, his narrowed eyes cast down at Ichika in her seat. "Enjoy your lunch; I'll be going on ahead."

As he is starting to leave and rounds the table for the exit, Fuutarou stops for a brief moment.

"This isn't on your itinerary, but your dad did have something planned for you all later tonight at 7:45 PM. So I'd suggest you all meet up at the hotel lobby after you're done packing at 7 o'clock sharp. See you then."

And just like that, Fuutarou is gone, with just the two quintuplets sitting alone at their table. Yotsuba, unsure of what's just unfolded over the past couple minutes, can only mumble weakly,

"...so what are we supposed to do about his lunch...?"


	20. Golden Week - Thank You

**A/N**

**Red Glasses: For all the non-sequiturs you spam in a few of my stories, finally I've found something worth reading and taking into consideration. Chapter 18 has been slightly revised as per your feedback.**

**Will be taking another small break to work on other stories that sorely need my attention and other projects.**

* * *

Nakano Ichika stands alone on the veranda of their hotel room, overlooking the Waikiki beachfront. Resting her arms folded across the flat wooden railing, she lets the salty sea breeze brush back her peachy-red hair as her sore, vivid blue eyes rest wearily on the pristine Hawaiian sunset laid out before her in picture-perfect form.

But she isn't alone for long. The sliding door behind her rumbles open and closed, and out steps her sister who'd been with her earlier this morning. Ichika doesn't turn to see who it is, despite the fact that Yotsuba doesn't make her presence known like she usually does, in part because the former already has a good idea who it is.

"Ichika ~ !"

Glomping her oldest sister suddenly, Yotsuba throws herself onto Ichika to hug her out of the blue.

"Figured it was you," Ichika is compelled to chuckle, letting Yotsuba do as she pleases. "You all ready to go?"

"Mhm! Miku helped me pick out my clothes for tonight," Yotsuba nods enthusiastically, gesturing down at herself. Ichika looks down as well to see her wearing a set of dark brown overalls over a clean white tee, in addition to her usual green hair ribbon that sways with the wind.

"Miku, huh...I can tell." Snickering, the eldest quint pinches one of Yotsuba's overall straps. "True to her style, she's never had a good eye for things like this..."

"I-I like it, though! Overalls makes me unique, doesn't it? You don't really see girls walking around in these, do you?"

"No, not really, but like...it's _overalls_, Yotsuba. Like, you don't wanna be known as that one girl who walks around in these, do you?"

"I think they're cute! And that's all that should matter!" Yotsuba purses her lips indignantly at Ichika who sounds like she's trying to diss her fashion style for tonight, and Ichika simply giggles some more.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. You're right though, they do look cute on you - but that's only because all my sisters are cute too!" Ichika goes on the offensive a little herself and snatches up Yotsuba in her own arms to reciprocate her hug from just a moment ago.

"Y-You're not just saying that to call _yourself _cute too, right? I know you've done that a few times before..."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"So you _are _calling yourself cute! Who does _that, _Ichika?!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

Bursting into a much needed fit of laughter, Ichika and Yotsuba both naturally resume gazing out to sea, enjoying the panoramic beach view that will be their last for the foreseeable future.

"Did you enjoy everything so far, Yotsuba? Do everything you wanted to? Make all the memories you wanted?" Ichika asks her, her tone changing for the more melancholic.

"Yep. We played on the beach, went surfing - or at least everyone else tried to - got beachside spa treatments, ate tons of yummy Hawaiian food, went snorkeling, swam with turtles, sunbathed, went hiking..." Yotsuba rattles off everything that she and her sisters have done over the past week during their vacation to the best of her knowledge. "Oh, and we made sure Raiha-chan enjoyed everything too!"

"Raiha-chan really did make this trip a lot more fun for us, didn't she," Ichika nods sagely, brushing back some of her bangs that are whipping in her eyes from the wind. "At first I didn't know how the trip would turn out with her tagging along, but she's such a good girl, so sweet, too."

"It was a ton of fun watching her reactions to everything!" Yotsuba nods hugely in earnest agreement. "Watching her was like watching ourselves from years ago, back when Dad first started taking us on vacations."

"Got a point there. The good old days, back when we were just kids Raiha-chan's age, too..."

Yotsuba lets the early May seabreeze fill the silence between them a bit before speaking up again, this time with:

"...but...there is one thing that I haven't done yet..."

Ichika keeps her gaze locked out to sea, taking a deep breath.

"So you're going to give it to him after all?"

Nodding, but this time much more slowly, Yotsuba now sports a smile that has acquired a noticeable amount of uneasiness behind it.

"Even after what I said to him at the restaurant?"

"I did end up going around anyway to find something to give him, right? I can't just...buy him something and...not give it to him," Yotsuba reasons softly.

"I guess not."

"Do you hate him, Ichika?"

Despite expecting this question to be asked in some form at some point during this conversation, the first quintuplet is surprised at how hard it hits her anyway. Lowering her gaze down at the resort grounds below, Ichika rests her chin and lips into her arms that have resumed their place on the wooden railing of the hotel room veranda.

"...I don't _hate_ him, no. Why do you ask?" she murmurs pensively.

"Because...it's not every day you say those kinds of things to people."

The final lines of conversation that Ichika exchanged with her tutor play back in Ichika's ears, as though Yotsuba's just hit a replay button in her memories with her words.

"You usually don't act like that, Ichika," Yotsuba states quietly. By this point, her pained smile is now gone - and only sadness is written on the normally jovial face of hers. "Telling people that they don't deserve something...that they ought to leave us alone. You've never said that to any of us, but you'll say it to people who bother us whenever that's happened over the years, whether it's bullies at school or...or boys around the city who try to hit on us. But today, you said that to Uesugi-san."

Wanting to defend herself, Ichika can't spit out the words she wants to say, instead opting to swallow them back down and listen to the rest of what Yotsuba's got to say.

"Did you, um...have a fight with him at some point over the last week or two, Ichika?" Yotsuba asks lightly, as if afraid to uncover what could be the truth. "Because...you didn't come to lessons for most of last week...I've seen everyone else, even Nino and Itsuki, hang out and talk with him at some point throughout this week, but I haven't really seen you talking much with him...so I kinda figured that maybe something happened between the two of you that would make you not really like him..."

Finally, Ichika stands up straight to explain herself.

"I don't hate him, Yotsuba. And nothing happened between us...it's just..."

Yotsuba patiently waits for her sister to come up with an adequate answer.

"...it's just...when he said that part while we were waiting for our lunch to arrive," the shortest-haired quintuplet recounts slowly, "I remember feeling...angry. Like, actually _angry_, angry. You know I don't really get actually angry at a lot of things..."

Nodding again, Yotsuba confirms her sister's self-conscious words. "You've always sorted out things between the others whenever Nino gets into fights with Miku or Itsuki."

"Yeah, exactly. But what Fuutarou-kun said towards the end...about how all the magic stuff he told us about when we asked him about it was stuff he didn't want to share with us because he didn't want to bother us with it...that sort of...I don't know...it ticked me off a little."

"But...but why?" Yotsuba blurts out in confusion. "Uesugi-san clearly wasn't comfortable talking to us about stuff like that; honestly in hindsight I shouldn't have asked him something like that, because that's...that's his own business, and...it doesn't seem like something we should meddle in ourselves."

"But that's not your fault, is it? You said yourself when Fuutarou-kun asked you to explain why you want to get him a souvenir so badly that you wanted to put the most genuine feelings into that gift, and so learning about what he does for us outside of his tutoring job is important for that."

"Yeah, but...but like, why did that make you so angry...?"

"Because - ugh, I don't know exactly why." Ichika scratches the side of her head in muted frustration. "Something about it just did. My best guess would be...that...he just sounded so indifferent when he said that, when he said his whole 'oh, I shouldn't bother you with this sort of stuff' thing."

"I don't know...isn't that just the way he usually sounds?"

Grimacing at Yotsuba's point, Ichika once more finds herself stumped. Another awkward silence ensues between the two, but Yotsuba once again takes the initiative.

"Ichika, I appreciate the fact that you were just trying to look after me, to protect me and my silly, naive intentions," she speaks with words that go not through Ichika's ears, but through her heart instead. "But...if you'll let me say one more silly thing, it's that I would rather have let Uesugi-san reject my souvenir directly...rather than have my sister make him reject it for me."

As though she's just done the ice bucket challenge, Ichika freezes up, staring back in creeping horror into Yotsuba's own pair of blue eyes.

"...I...I'm sorry, I didn't...mean to come off like that," she apologizes slowly. "I didn't think of it like that when I told Fuutarou-kun to leave us alone, I swear. I just...wanted to make him understand that...that he was being a jerk for not thinking much about why you've spent all of this morning trying to get him something that'll mean a lot to him."

Merely smiling a little back at her older sister, Yotsuba averts her gaze this time as well.

"It's...not just you either, though. I'm also partly to blame...for how things turned out too," she admits softly.

"You? But how?"

"Well...if you think about it, isn't it a bit...selfish of me to give someone a souvenir even though they clearly don't want one...? Like, now that I think about it, when Uesugi-san's said multiple times today that I don't need to get him something, that he isn't interested in receiving a souvenir, why did we go off and drag him around with us for two hours anyway? And even after he left, why did I still spend another hour in that shopping plaza before I finally found something he might like?"

"It's not your fault, Yotsuba, not at all," Ichika says firmly, using her oldest sister vibes to their fullest potential. "Giving someone a souvenir because you want to give them one, there's nothing wrong with that, even if the person you're giving that gift to says they don't want it, because if that's the case, like you said yourself just now, they can always just turn it down themselves...even if it is a bit rude on their part."

"Maybe so...but that still doesn't explain the fact that I never took Uesugi-san's feelings into consideration, only my own. Maybe it could be that he really doesn't value the time we've spent together, either as his students or the time we've spent here on vacation or whenever."

"Oh c'mon, Yotsuba, you know he's only saying that just to stay 'humble' or whatever."

"Is he, though? Then if he is, what reason would he have to do that?" Yotsuba gazes back at her sister. "We've seen how he acts, both around us and at school, and he acts basically the same wherever he is. He says whatever he wants, whatever's on his mind, and he doesn't sugarcoat much, if anything at all. He even blackmailed our homeroom teacher during our first week at school. Not only that, but he's been doing his whole mage stuff for a long time, it sounds like. So I'm sure that means that we're hardly his first clients, and we won't be his last. Why should we expect any special attention from him? Just because we're quintuplets?"

"But you don't think it's a bit much for him to just flat-out tell you that he doesn't want anything from you? Even though you're the one out of all five of us who's done the most to cooperate with him and support him all this time, by far? You don't feel anything about that whatsoever?"

"...I do, and...of course it bums me out a little...but..."

It seems like Yotsuba is about to follow this up with something, so Ichika waits, but her sister ends up remaining silent.

"You still want to give that to him, though?" she apprehensively finishes Yotsuba's thought, and the latter nods in confirmation. "Then...I'd say to give it to him, despite what he thinks about it. Because if you think about it, Fuutarou-kun's the type of guy who's run into plenty of situations where he's had to do things he didn't like. While I'm not going to stand here and pretend like he's used to that kind of stuff, in comparison, you giving him a souvenir is the least of his worries. That, and Ichika-onee-chan'll make sure he keeps it around and doesn't forget about it!"

Flexing her right arm, Ichika pats her own slender biceps confidently, causing Yotsuba to finally break her silence and giggle a little.

"Wh-What, what's so funny?"

"It just looks funny when you try to flex."

"I bet you can do it better, since you're the one who actually goes out there and actively gets exercise."

"Eeeehhh, but I don't know, wouldn't I just look dumb...?"

"Oh c'mon, we're all already book-dumb, it can't hurt to look the part from time to time."

"That's not very reassuring, Ichika!"

"C'mon, just try, I already did it, now show me _your _moves ~ "

"Fine, fine ~ " Giving in, Yotsuba uses both arms to flex playfully, flashing her signature toothy grin. "Howzat?!"

"Oooh, as expected of the most athletic Nakano quintuplet!"

The sliding door opens once more as the two of them goof off on the veranda, and Nino sticks her head out, giving both of them judging looks.

"Just what the hell are you two doing...?" she groans, scowling at them.

"Just the usual Yotsuba stuff. Wanna hang out?" Ichika offers, having Yotsuba in a light headlock while the latter waves eagerly at her other older sister.

"Not when you two are being weird. Besides, we need to meet Uesugi down at the lobby in ten, so we gotta go."

"Whoopsie, that's right, completely forgot about the time," Ichika gives a short gasp of surprise as she checks her phone. "You girls go on ahead, we'll meet you down there."

"Sure thing..."

Slipping back inside the room, Nino retreats from the scene, leaving the first and fourth quintuplets by themselves again. Turning to the younger, Ichika releases Yotsuba from her headlock and instead places her hands on her shoulders.

"Okay, let's start from the top: I'm sorry for chasing Fuutarou-kun away like that. I don't know what came over me when I said those things to him, and while I'm sure _he_ doesn't care one way or another, both for me saying those things to him and for you who wants to give him a souvenir, I didn't consider your feelings regarding the matter at all," she declares to set things straight. "I'll apologize to him when I get the chance to be alone with him at some point if it'll make you feel better."

But Yotsuba shakes her head.

"If you want to apologize to him, I want you to do it for his sake, not for mine. After all, just because you told him to go away, doesn't mean I still can't give him what I bought for him."

"Yeah, fair enough. I'll still apologize to him though...I haven't shown it, but...it _has _been on my mind for a good bit today. Oh!"

Ichika claps her hands together, remembering something.

"We still need to give him the burger he ordered back at Red Robin," she thinks aloud.

"Yeah, you're right. I think we should give it to him after we've come back, since we'll have dinner before leaving for the airport."

"Good point, let's do that then. By the way, what did you even get him?"

Smiling brightly, Yotsuba leans in to tell her sister.

* * *

After those ten minutes that Nino warns Ichika and Yotsuba of elapse, the quintuplets, with the missing exceptions of Ichika and Yotsuba who are lagging behind, plus Raiha step into the hotel lounge next to the reception area, where they spy their tutor on his phone while drinking some free coffee.

"So you wanna tell us how much coffee you've drank while we've been here?" Nino asks him with a less-than-amused expression, and Fuutarou simply takes another sip from his cup in response, giving the second quintuplet a scowl of his own.

"As many times as you've gone to the spa here. So a number that you can't count with just two hands."

Nino immediately begins slapping Fuutarou on his arm. She wants to straight up punch him in his upper arm, but that would be inappropriate for the setting that they're in, so she has to settle for hard slaps instead. Ignoring Nino's harassment, Fuutarou surveys the group as Raiha trots up to him to give him a welcome back hug.

"Where are Ichika and Yotsuba?" he asks the others.

"Nino said that they would follow us shortly. Where were they, Nino?" Itsuki asks her older sister.

"Outside on the veranda. Those two seem to be hanging out together a lot lately, don't you think?" Nino mentions, thinking aloud now that the thought has properly registered in her mind. Ceasing her slapping, she turns to her sisters. "Just earlier this morning, they went off to some nearby shopping plaza or something together."

"What, we can't hang out with whoever one of us we want?" Miku points out.

"I'm not saying _that_, don't twist my words out of context. I'm just saying, Ichika and Yotsuba have wildly different tastes and interests most of the time, so I'm just surprised that they've been hanging out more than usual."

"Well, things like that can certainly happen. I do not think that is a bad thing, either," Itsuki nods happily at this. "That simply means we are all able to get along with each other, right? You two ought to learn from them."

Nino and Miku both glance at each other for a whopping two seconds before flicking their gazes away in opposite directions.

"Get along with _her? _Yeah, in your dreams," Nino scoffs condescendingly.

"I know you have high hopes, Itsuki, but high hopes alone never got anyone anywhere," Miku sighs to her younger sister.

"W-Will you two just _listen _for once?!" Fuming in place, Itsuki pouts at her two sisters, who maintain their standoffish stances, both at each other and towards their younger sister.

"Must be tough tryin'a be Team Mom of the bunch, huh?" Fuutarou remarks, spectating the three-way quintuplet free-for-all with Raiha.

"Yes it is, indeed! These girls have no idea how difficult it is to keep everyone in line."

"Oh, excuse me, Mom, I wasn't aware you were the one who does all the cooking in the house!" Nino challenges.

"B-Being Team Mom has more to it than simply c-cooking!" Itsuki hurriedly casts out to defend herself and maintain her position.

"Like what, Itsuki? Studying?" Miku attacks Itsuki from a different flank, exacerbating her embarrassment. "Maybe if you were the one who got the highest grades among us, you'd be able to use that, but I didn't know your name was Miku and not Itsuki."

"Yeah, I know, right? Maybe if you write your 5's messily enough, you'll turn them into 3's, but you'll never do that since your handwriting's too good," Nino continues to tease in tandem with Miku.

At this point, Itsuki, unable to defend herself against two avenues of attack at the same time, pivots swiftly to her would-be tutor to request his assistance in the war.

"Uesugi-kun, please tell these two to settle down and stop being mean to their own sisters! Including me!" she cries, her face almost as red as her hair.

"But you won't even show up to my lessons," he tells her dryly.

_"Th-That's because now you won't even LET me!"_

"But you did say that you changed your mind because of it."

_"And whose fault is THAT?!"_

"Besides, you two seem to get along better than Itsuki makes you two out to," he points out to Nino and Miku. "Or is it only because you two have a common enemy for now, and after tonight, it'll go back to being a quintuplet battle royale?"

At this, both Nino and Miku glance at each other uncertainly.

"Th-This is only a truce for now. Afterwards, anything goes!" Nino declares first.

"Fine by me. I'll take you on any time," Miku retorts, assuming a rather poor wing chun fighting stance with the straightest of faces. "I'll have you know that I've won the last three out of four chopstick fights we've had, and that I'm the undisputed Suma-Bura champion of us all."

"That's because the rest of us don't play Suma-Bura like nerds like you!"

"Sounds like your problem, honestly. Feed me more salt, Nino, I'll need it for dinner later tonight."

"Oh, yeah, lemme just get you some _salt_ real quick, don't mind me..." Nino sidesteps her way over to the coffee table to grab a handful of salt packets, but Fuutarou steps in just in time to check her by firmly grabbing hold of her left wrist.

"As much as I'd love to watch the two of you throw salt at each other, it's gonna be _my _ass that they'll roast once hotel management gets here and starts asking who's responsible for you all," he hisses in a low voice with his face mere inches away from Nino's. "So drop the salt, please."

Reluctantly, the second quint complies, rubbing her wrist a little once she's done so and Fuutarou releases his grip on her wrist immediately afterwards.

"Ehehe, Onii-chan, you sure get along well with everyone," Raiha smiles up at her older sibling, having watched everyone's interactions as a bystander.

"Get along with everyone? I'm not so sure if you can call it that..." Uesugi ponders, his face contorting with doubt written all over it.

"Yeah, Raiha-chan, we don't get along at _all_. You couldn't be more wrong about that one!" Nino also claims. "If there's one thing the two of us can agree on, it's that."

"Well, compared to how Onii-chan usually is around other people he works with..." Raiha begins to wonder, but Fuutarou places his left hand carefully over her mouth.

"Mmkay, that's enough outta you. Where're the others, anyway? It's five past - "

"We're here, we're here!"

Ichika's voice calls across the lounge as she and Yotsuba, the last two to show up, jog hurriedly out of the elevator lobby to rendezvous with the rest of their family and friends.

"Okay good, that's everyone then. Nobody's forgetting anything? Room card, wallets, purses, phones? No? A'ight, let's - "

"U-Uesugi-san, wait, before we go - !"

It's not just Fuutarou who turns to give Yotsuba the attention that she apparently demands; all of her sisters, with the exception of Ichika, and Raiha also turn to her, wondering what is the matter. Once she's got everyone's attention, the fourth quintuplet raises a small but sleek and clean black case with an apple emblem blazed on the center.

"I didn't have the time to get it wrapped, so...I have to give it to you like this," Yotsuba confesses. "I know you kept telling us that we didn't need to get you one, but - but if I don't give it to you now, you might just ignore it altogether."

His eye twitching down at the black case, Fuutarou can do nothing but simply shake his head.

"I didn't know you could play dirty too, Yotsuba. Giving me this in front of everyone so that I'd feel worse about it if I say no now," he grumbles off to the side.

"I-I'm sorry! But I had to, please forgive me ~ !" the ribboned quintuplet apologizes profusely.

"What is this? You're making her apologize for giving you a gift, Uesugi?" Nino thunders aggressively, crossing her arms judgingly as she glares up at her would-be tutor. "You're the worst, the absolute worst. You don't deserve anything from any of us, let alone Yotsu - "

"Nino, Yotsuba isn't done," Miku snaps back at her to give Yotsuba the room she needs to finish what she was saying.

"A-Anyways! This is - this is from all of us," Yotsuba continues, once more stretching out her arms with the black case in offering to her tutor.

"All of you? Including these two?" Fuutarou points back and forth from Nino and Itsuki.

"Hey, Yotsuba, you never told us we were a part of this!" Nino also cries out, shocked at Yotsuba's intentions. "I hate to say it, but Uesugi's right, you _are _playing dirty right now!"

To her sisters, however, Yotsuba gives back her signature toothy grin.

"And so on everyone's behalves, please accept this!" Yotsuba hops forward and practically shoves the case right into Uesugi's hands, which have no choice but to take it from her.

"Ugh...I...really don't..." Grimacing hard down at his reluctantly accepted souvenir gift, Fuutarou looks up at the quintuplets. "I'm telling you, I haven't done anything worth thanking like this."

"Now, now, Fuutarou-kun, while _you _might not think so, there are in fact some of us who value all the time and effort you've put into teaching us and spending time with us," Ichika intervenes gently. "That was what I was trying to get at earlier today. Even if _you _don't think of it as anything special, there are still some of us who really do appreciate everything you've done for us so far, both the things we've seen you do and the things we haven't. It's time to step out of your comfort zone and learn how to accept the feelings of others, don't you think?"

The young tutor scowls back at the eldest quint, wanting to point out her contradicting behavior from earlier at lunch and now. Ichika herself senses this intention from him and braces herself to confront him when he does point this out, but to her mute surprise, Fuutarou does not say a word back to her and simply gazes down at the box that Yotsuba has handed him.

"Th-That looks really expensive, Onii-chan, what did she give you...?" Raiha asks breathlessly. Even she can tell just from looking at such a sleek box like the one her brother's holding that whatever it is that Yotsuba has gotten for her brother, it shouldn't be something that can be rejected so easily.

"That's...what I'm about to confirm..."

By this point, all the quintuplets notice an uncharacteristic shaking from Fuutarou's hands as he is unable to do anything but stare down at Yotsuba's gift.

"Ah, Uesugi-san's nervous!" Yotsuba observes aloud.

"Wooooow, who knew that the cold, mean Uesugi would be _scared _of taking a little gift like that?" Nino snickers maliciously.

"...are you really _that _unused to getting stuff from other people, Fuutarou?" Miku asks with a genuine touch of concern.

"If the gift is really something you _absolutely _cannot accept, then we can try to do something about it..." Itsuki also speaks worriedly, though she's looking more at the gift rather than Fuutarou himself.

"Are we popping your souvenir cherry, Fuutarou-kun? It's okay, it's not as bad as it seems, haha ~ " Ichika teases her tutor, as per usual.

Already having somewhat of an idea of what this could be, Fuutarou cringes one last time as he slowly opens it to reveal its contents for good, and the quintuplets and Raiha all crowd together more to see what Yotsuba's gotten for him. Inside the sleek black case sits -

"...a _smartwatch?" _Nino scoffs loudly, unable to believe it. "That's it?"

"All that suspense just for that..." Miku also sounds a bit disappointed and physically deflates, feeling awkward for having gotten her own hopes up for no real reason.

"Er...maybe..." Seeing all the negative feedback from her sisters, Yotsuba begins to have second thoughts about the souvenir she's gotten her tutor and starts wishing she got something else that she had in mind. "Is it...not that good...?"

"Why did you even get him something like that anyway?" Itsuki asks, curious to know her sister's rationale, if there is any.

"I mean, like, I figured since Uesugi-san's a busy guy and he's super smart and stuff, he might appreciate something like a smartwatch," Yotsuba tries to reason nervously, finding herself put on the spot again. "But then again, I don't really know much about this super high-end tech stuff since I'm just a dummy and I don't know half the stuff they even do. I just thought it might be something he could find useful...but...I guess it's no good..."

"Actually, Yotsuba..."

The quintuplet in question looks up back at her tutor, as do her fellow siblings. Fuutarou, still wearing that uneasy look on his face, keeps his eyes glued to the brand new smartwatch that gazes back up at him with crystal clarity.

"...this was..." For once, Uesugi is having a hard time finding the proper words to speak. "...this was one of the things that I probably would've wanted..."

At this admission, Yotsuba throws off her nervous look immediately and fills herself instead with glee.

"Then - then that means - ?!"

"Yeah. I'll..." Closing the box, Fuutarou averts his eyes and scratches his scalp with a single finger. "...I'll take it. Thanks."

"See? It wasn't so hard!" Ichika laughs out loud at how amusing it is seeing her own tutor awkwardly accept a gift like this, and she pats him on the back in congratulations as though he'd just finished a triathlon.

"Wait, wait, wait, you _actually _wanted a smartwatch? I thought only techies and nerds liked that kind of stuff!" Nino gripes back at her would-be tutor.

"He doesn't come off as one to you, Nino?" Miku points out calmly.

"Well, it certainly doesn't help that the only electronic thing we've ever seen him work with is his own phone! And besides, don't you already have like a really good phone to begin with? What is your phone?"

"Google Pixel 3A, but it's a bit of a budget phone. There are better ones out there, and as much as I'd love them for what I do, obviously cost is a big concern for me..."

Itsuki frowns up at Fuutarou. "So...when your hands were shaking just now...was that because...?"

Fuutarou is nodding even before Itsuki can finish speaking her peace. "Yotsuba got me a Double Tour Stainless Steel Hermes from Apple's Series 5," he mutters, as though merely saying the name in full will charge him an arbitrary fee of some kind. "I don't know how much Yotsuba ended up paying for this, but...last time I checked, off retail, it's supposed to go for at least fourteen hundred US dollars...so something roughly like a hundred and forty thousand yen."

"What, only that much? That's nothing," Nino rolls her eyes.

"To _you_, I'm sure. But for me and my family, this thing alone's enough to pay for up to three months' worth of rent and utilities."

"Should we call Dad, Onii-chan? I think he mentioned one time that he knows a couple of pawn shops back at home..." Raiha mutters, she herself also shuddering in awe at the sleek black case that her brother's holding.

"Yeah...we might have to keep this as a contingency plan in case the debt collectors come knocking..."

"Like brother, like sister, huh?" Ichika chuckles once more while simultaneously delivering karate chops to both Raiha's and Fuutarou's heads. "I get that you aren't exactly well off, but is that really what you should be thinking the moment you get something like this from one of your students?"

"Sorry, just some poor people instincts coming up there."

"How do you know so much about that smartwatch, Fuutarou?" Miku asks. "Since clearly you can't normally afford something like that."

"Like I said before, I'd...actually been thinking about saving for a smartwatch like this, though obviously something a lot cheaper that doesn't have me staring at it for what it's worth," Fuutarou darkly chuckles to himself. "Having a smartphone is really nice - I can check my emails on top of texts and calls wherever I go, but after I finally got one recently and started learning about all the things it can do or I can have it do, I started realizing that there's so much stuff you can do with things like phones and other modern tech devices like smartwatches and tablets."

Taking a quick glance around, Fuutarou leans in a little and drops his voice, but he makes sure to keep himself audible to the girls.

"Stuff like smartphones are also really easy to work with magically, for those of us who know both magic and technological stuff. So while having a phone is super nice and helps me a lot, when I found out that smartwatches were a thing, I looked into those to see what they can do, and I've been thinking of all the stuff I could do with one if I got one eventually."

"Really? Doesn't a smartwatch just like, keep track of your heartrate or whatever? Doesn't seem _that _useful," Nino says.

"Well, if we're talking ergonomics, a smartwatch is actually superior to a phone in the sense that I don't have to keep pulling it out of my pocket and unlocking the home screen over and over whenever I want to use it. With a smartwatch, though, I can just go like this - " Fuutarou mimes wearing a watch on his left wrist and brings it up to his mouth as if to talk to it. " - and have the watch do what I tell it to instantly. Long story short, it'll let me do stuff more efficiently, and just more stuff in general."

Watching her tutor talk briefly about this tech-related stuff, Yotsuba can't help but smile happily at the fact that Fuutarou is behaving more animatedly now that there's a topic at hand that he clearly finds enjoyable to talk about - and of course, the fact that her gift ended up being appreciated. As a matter of fact, just seeing Fuutarou's reaction to her gift the entire time was well worth all the trouble and anxiety surrounding the circumstances of giving it to him in the first place.

"But anyways, that's enough of that, we're gonna be late at this rate." Fuutarou turns to the quint who's given him this extraordinarily generous souvenir that is perhaps a bit more than just a mere souvenir. "I know you've all got stacks to burn, but this's pretty up there. You sure your dad isn't gonna see this on your bank statements and wonder why you bought this?"

"Oh you don't need to worry about that at all, Dad lets us buy whatever we want!" Yotsuba smiles widely again, exuding her usual _"Shi shi shi shi ~ !" _chuckle.

"...and here I was, thinking Nino was the spoiled rich girl of you lot."

"I can _hear _your dumb ass, loser," Nino growls at him from no more than a meter and a half away.

"I know. But well...if I don't need to worry about your dad jumping down my own throat for accepting something like this..."

Fuutarou takes a deep breath, holding the box with both hands, now that Yotsuba notices when she glances down at the smartwatch case she's given him.

"Thank you, Yotsuba. I still don't think I'm quite worth dropping this much money for, but in spite of that, I'm sorry for saying all that nonsense earlier today about how I don't want anything and that you don't need to bother with it," he exhales formally, making it quite apparent that he is inexperienced in properly conveying his thanks. "I'll definitely put this to good use and make sure the money you put into getting this for me isn't wasted."

"You won't pawn it off later once we get back home, now, will you?" Ichika coos mischievously, leaning over next to her tutor.

"I already said I won't!" Fuutarou snaps, starting to look annoyed, and all the quints and Raiha break into a smattering of giggles.

The only one to show no such laughter of camaraderie, Nakano Nino looks on with a surprisingly calm and expressionless face, as if she, too, is a mere bystander like Raiha was earlier. Watching Ichika continue to tease Fuutarou about his newly received souvenir, Nino soon turns away and watches the live band nearby briefly until they depart the hotel for their final scheduled event of their Hawaii vacation.

* * *

"So where exactly are we going?" Itsuki calls over to her would-be tutor, who's up in the front passenger seat next to the limousine driver. The same limousine car that the Nakanos have used to arrive at their resort at the beginning of the week is now taking them to their final event of the week.

"There's another resort further up along the beach; it's called the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort," Uesugi explains, having to raise his voice so that everyone in the limousine can hear him from up in front. "Like I said back at the hotel, your dad scheduled one last thing before he left. I guess he did this as an apology for not being able to stay the entire time with you all."

The quintuplets all glance at each other with funny looks at this.

"...pretty sure Dad's never done something like _that _before," Ichika remarks with a shrug. "Wonder if that's really the case."

"It is certainly possible. He has done a few things like that in the past," Itsuki reminds her sisters. "For example, that one time when he bought us all cakes from a bakery we visited in Paris when we went there the first time and found it closed."

"I don't know...it doesn't feel _quite _the same, but I guess they're similar enough. Doesn't fully sound like him, though..."

"Do you think Fuutarou could be the one who scheduled this for us, then? And not Papa?" Miku suggests quietly, eyeing the passenger seat to see if Fuutarou is able to overhear. "He _is _technically our guardian now that Papa's gone back home ahead of us. Wouldn't _he _be the one scheduling events for us?"

"But I bet Papa had everything planned out already before he left. We all know how meticulous he is to a fault," Nino gestures dismissively.

"Yeah. That, and..." Ichika hesitates, recalling the events at Red Robin earlier that day and deciding to paraphrase a little. "When he told us about it earlier today, now that I think about it, it kind of sounded like it'd already been planned a good while ahead of time. So as much as it doesn't sound exactly like what Dad would do, I don't think Fuutarou-kun's behind this."

"I mean, why would he? That's not within his jurisdiction, I bet," Nino shrugs. "He's the kind of guy who's going to act strictly within his boundaries of operation, so to say. I really don't think coordinating stuff for our vacation is something he'd do."

"Indeed, that...does not seem like something he would be interested in," Itsuki agrees.

"But there sure is a bit of mystery going into this, isn't there?" Yotsuba says. "Uesugi-san hasn't told us anything about this final event that we're going to, and we can forget about Dad telling us anything since he never mentioned anything about this. What could it be?"

The quintuplets plus Raiha all postulate the possibilities of their final event of their Golden Week vacation.

"Raiha-chan, you wanna try asking your big brother where he's taking us?" Leaning in towards the elementary-schooler, the eldest quint smiles deviously down at her.

"Hey, Ichika, no cheating, bad Ichika!" Yotsuba protests this underhanded move. "We should figure it out by ourselves!"

"It's probably just going to be some kind of lame Hawaiian dance or show or something. I've already looked through most of the shows that the hotels around here put on for their guests," Nino rolls her eyes somewhat. "Live bands, Hula dancers, you know, that kind of stuff."

"I mean, we _are _in Hawaii..." Miku snorts a little.

"Actually, come to think of it, we haven't ever tried Hula dancing while we were here, right? That's a shame," Ichika sighs at the opportunity missed.

"I am _not _Hula dancing, you can't make me!" Nino exclaims suddenly.

"And that's a shame too. I'm sure all of us would look absolutely _fabulous_, don't you two think...?" Ichika sneakily points to both Miku and Yotsuba.

"Wh-Why are you pointing at us in particular...?" Miku asks, starting to feel rather defensive at Ichika's point.

"C'mon, Miku, don't you wanna dance for Fuutarou-kun ~ ? I heard from him earlier that he played some guitar for you earlier this week, you should pay him back with _something_, you know?"

Her face popping with another fierce blush, the usually reserved third quint is forced to imagine herself in a Hula getup, dancing horribly awkwardly with a Hawaiian shirted Fuutarou strumming a guitar and immediately plunges her face into her hands.

"...I'd rather die..." she mumbles.

"Oh c'mon, it's not that bad, you get used to it. See, even Nino's done performances before, right? Remember, Nino? Back in middle school, you participated in that one school idol competition?"

"F-Forget about that, I was just super into idols and stuff at the time just because some of my friends back then were..." Nino tries to brush the topic off, but Ichika doesn't relent.

"Just teach Miku how to sing. You teach her how to cook already, you can even teach her how to sing while _also _teaching her how to cook! See? Two birds with one stone!"

"She doesn't need _me _to learn how to sing, and I don't even _want _to teach her! I've got my hands full trying to make sure she learns how to properly crack open an egg and not just smash it against the side of the frying pan and let half the egg spill out onto the side!"

"I-I'm _trying _to get better at _not _doing that..." Mumbling dejectedly, Miku reburies her face back into her hands.

Scowling but with less intensity than before, Nino continues to bark at her younger sister, "Look, you listen to plenty of music, right? You carry around those headphones all the time, I'd expect you do. Just try singing on your own, that's how I taught myself!"

"Yeah, but like..." Miku once more peeks up from her hands with her dulled blue eyes. "...I'm not as naturally talented as you are. There's a reason why you're teaching me how to cook and not the other way around..."

"Oh for f - for crying out loud, don't give me that crap. We're quintuplets, okay? We can do whatever each other can do, is there any doubt about that?"

Miku blinks at Nino's words, as they give her a strong sense of deja vu.

"...what's with you? Why're you _smiling _at that?" Nino recoils a little upon seeing Miku give off a small but happy smile, having expected a bit of a different reaction from her sister.

"No, it's...it's nothing. I'm just realizing...how right you are," Miku answers softly.

"That's right! That means that everyone here can go on weekly five-kilo runs around the city with me too!" Crashing the conversation in spectacular Yotsuba-esque fashion, the fourth quint laughs jovially as the rest of her sisters all groan in unison at her ridiculous suggestion.

"Here, take Ichika, she shall be our sacrifice!" Itsuki says hurriedly, reaching over and tugging on Ichika's shirt towards Yotsuba's direction. "You go on morning jogs every once in a while, do you not?"

"Y-Yeah, but - but not full-blown five kilometer runs like the ones Yotsuba does! Do I look _that _athletic to you?!" Ichika shrieks a little, laughing all the while too. "I only do that to keep fit, not because I'm trying to become some kind of marathon runner!"

"Then how about push-ups?" Raiha suggests playfully. "Onii-chan lets me sit on his back while he does push-ups sometimes."

"He - he does that...? You aren't trying to lie to us to make him sound strong, are you...?" Nino stutters a little in the beginning, eyeing Raiha suspiciously, but his younger sister nods wholesomely.

"It's true! Since he doesn't have a gym membership, he'd sometimes work out a little at home or at the park. Sometimes Onii-chan and Otou-san have push-up contests to see who can do more push-ups with me sitting on them!"

"Haha, that sounds just like in those shounen animes Miku and I used watch back in middle school, where the main character would train like that, but with one finger pushups!" Yotsuba says.

"Ah, he does those too," Raiha says without batting an eyelash. "With me sitting on him still."

"What is he, a freaking anime protagonist...?" Nino wonders aloud under her breath.

"And not just _any _shounen anime protagonist, a _harem _anime protagonist," Ichika giggles vibrantly at the thought.

"Ew, what the heck, Ichika? Have you been watching those kinds of anime lately?"

"No, no, it just kinda came to mind. But am I wrong? Think about it, Fuutarou-kun's tutoring, or is supposed to tutor, all five of us, all five of us beautiful, gorgeous identical quintuplets. Don't you think that's the perfect setting for something like that?"

"Hard pass, Ichika, you can miss me with that lame crap."

"I-I refuse to participate in that. Such things are - should not be allowed for our age...!" Itsuki blurts out, feeling embarrassed just from Ichika suggesting such a thing.

"Aww, you two are no fun. Then how about you two right here? I'm sure maybe you two might be interested ~ " Ichika turns her attention to Miku and Yotsuba.

"Ichika, harem animes are so 2012, get with the times," Miku bluntly states.

"W-Whoa, I guess I shouldn't have challenged our resident otaku here. What about you, Yotsuba?"

"Eehhh...U-Uesugi-san's just a friend, and besides, he doesn't really care for things like that..."

"Well, maybe a bit of _Hula dancing _can change things ~ "

As Miku practically slaps her hands back onto her face, Nino scowls at Ichika. "You're really into that whole Hula thing. How about _you _give it a shot, then? See how much of an idiot you can make yourself out to be in front of Uesugi."

"M-Me? Er, uh..." Suddenly realizing that she can't quite back up her own words, Ichika backs down from her own suggestion. "I mean...if...if it's just in front of a random crowd, maybe I'd be okay with it, but..."

"See? _You'__d _feel awkward as heck too!" Miku pouts back at her oldest sister, seizing the opportunity to hit back verbally.

"Hey, I can't help the fact that doing something like that in front of my own _tutor _is super weird!"

As the girls continue to banter, talk, and laugh, the limousine slows to a stop just outside the parking lot of the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort. Giving the driver instructions to wait for them so that they can return to their own resort once the event is done, Fuutarou opens the door for the girls, helping the girls and his sister out of the limousine.

"Look at you, being all nice and gentleman-like," Nino smirks at him as she lets him take her hand to help her out of the vehicle.

"I was just given what's basically three months' worth of living costs in a single gift from one of your sisters. This is the least I can do, even if it's for someone like you," Fuutarou retorts back without missing a beat, just like his little sister.

"Gee, thanks a lot."

"As you should. Is everyone out? Okay, follow me."

Fuutarou guides his all-female entourage past the hotel through a side path that leads directly down to the beach below. As they follow him, the girls notice the considerable concentration of people who have already gathered down at the beach, with many more standing in their own hotel room verandas from the towering hotel buildings sitting on the beachfront.

"This must be quite the event for there to be so many people here," Ichika remarks, also taking a full three-sixty look around them. "So are you going to keep us in the dark forever about this, Fuutarou-kun, or are you going to tell us what this's all about?"

"If I were to just straight up tell you now, Nino's gonna yell at me for not having enough delicacy," Fuutarou snorts back.

"Ah, you're right, that does sound like Nino all right."

"You just _love _picking on me, don't you?" the second quintuplet smiles with her left eye beginning to twitch with anger.

"You bring that shit on yourself. Follow me, I think I see a free spot on the beach over here. And hurry it up, it's gonna start really soon."

Fuutarou spearheads the way, carving out a path through the people already waiting on the beach until he reaches a relatively unoccupied stretch of the beach where the Nakanos and his sister can comfortably stand without feeling crowded or boxed in. While they're wading through the initial throngs of people, Nino, the most well-versed in English, picks up some bits and pieces of conversations going on around her.

"Yo, I heard tonight's is gonna last a lot longer than usual. You know if that's true?"

"I dunno, it's just a rumor until it starts. That's why there're so many people tonight compared to usual..."

Checking his phone for the time once he arrives first at his designated spot, the young tutor conducts a head count to make sure everyone's here.

"Alright. Just wait here until it starts, I guess," he nods with satisfaction at a job well done.

"So what exactly are we supposed to be watching here? Even if it is for the sake of being delicate, telling us about this surprise event we need to attend right before our own flight back home on the day that it is supposed to happen is a little bit much, no?" Itsuki scowls up at her would-be tutor.

Pocketing his phone, Fuutarou looks Itsuki dead in the eyes.

"Fireworks," he finally divulges - with a soft smile. "Enjoy."

A telltale, distant _pop _confirms this - and instinctively, like it's second nature, all five quintuplets immediately look up at the darkening sky, and after a few seconds, the first firework pops in the sky, illuminating the Hawaiian evening with its brilliant pink and red hues.

Thirty minutes of joy.

Thirty minutes of sorrow.

Thirty minutes of anger.

Thirty minutes of love.

Thirty minutes of life.

Light, color, thunder, breeze, and cheers dominate the beachfront ambience. Ichika, Nino, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki, along with their special guest Raiha, feast their eyes upon the unexpected, but always welcome, lightshow that spreads across their final evening here at Waikiki Beach. With each explosion, with each gunpowdery flower that blooms in the darkening night, memories wash over each of the girls - warm, delicate memories long passed, rarely visited, but never forgotten.

At some point during the fireworks show, Yotsuba turns to Fuutarou. The smile she has on is brighter than all of the fireworks being launched into the sky for the entire beachfront to see, only meant for and visible to exactly one person not just on this entire beachfront, but in the whole world.

"Uesugi-san, thank you for bringing us here tonight!" she laughs exuberantly.

As if on cue to put emphasis behind her words of joy, another rocket detonates, once more illuminating the beach and the adjacent ocean waters. Yotsuba opens her eyes to rest them on the person to whom she's delivered her pure, unfiltered, and heartfelt sentiments.

Uesugi Fuutarou is nowhere to be seen.


	21. Golden Week - Quintuplet Cake

**A/N**

**Managed to find the time to squeeze in a chapter, will still be slow with updates. Thanks for all the kind words so far.**

* * *

_"Uesugi-san, thank you for bringing us here tonight!"_

Her own words and the lingering echoes of fireworks bursting in the sky overhead have both lulled her to sleep and woken her up as Yotsuba finds herself gazing up at the ceiling of her plant-filled room from her bed.

Slowly blinking, the fourth quintuplet lets herself lie in bed for a little bit longer than usual. Normally her seemingly boundless energy and active nature would provide her the will to escape the comfortable grasp of the bed that some of her other sisters seem to have trouble escaping from themselves, but today, it would appear that she is unable to call upon her usual strength to leave the confines of her bed.

The Nakanos' flight departed at 11pm sharp on Friday, and no thanks to time zones, such a flight meant that they landed safely back in Japan at roughly 2:30 in the morning on Sunday, with another hour's worth of driving back to their high-rise penthouse home in the city. Because the girls slept partway on their eight and a half hour flight back home, they were able to return home with enough energy to unpack their belongings, begin laundry, sort souvenirs, and share their freshly made memories and experiences from Honolulu over some snacks and tea before heading to bed to adjust themselves back to their proper time zone and shed their jetlag.

Share their freshly made memories and experiences, like a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

Uesugi-san.

Thank you.

Uesugi-san?

**There was no Uesugi-san.**

"...Yotsuba...please...calm down..."

Such quietly spoken words crawl across her sheets, destined to stay confined within the walls of her self-made greenhouse that houses a miniature forest of indoor plants that she's watered before going to bed. Having squeezed her own eyes shut, Yotsuba slowly sits up and rests her back weakly against the bedframe behind her and just as slowly presses her palms against her closed eyes. She doesn't do this to rub them like one may normally would immediately after waking up, but rather to stop them from shaking erratically.

She can't stop the flashback of what she saw back at the beach. It plays in her eyes when they are open, and if she attempts to shut it out by closing her eyes, it plays in her mind's eye anyway with unrelenting impunity.

Or perhaps she is terrified of what she did _not _see back on that beach. By this point, she's not really sure.

After a few minutes sitting like this in bed, Yotsuba finally musters up the will to peel her hands off her eyes, and looking down at them, she notices moist, clear drops on her palms. She quickly rubs them away out of sight with the folds of her bedshirt and does the same for her eyes before pushing herself off her bed to get dressed. Her digital desk clock reads 13:41 hours.

Lacking the usual enthusiasm with which she gets ready for her day, Yotsuba puts on her clothes for the day in utter silence - a green short-sleeved t-shirt, a comfortable pair of red running shorts, and a blue hoodie with the numbers 428 stitched across the chest, one of her personal favorite hoodies. The fact that it's already almost about to be two in the afternoon certainly doesn't help to lift her spirits, for she usually prides herself on being able to wake up early to start her day off right. She thinks about her sisters - Ichika is probably still asleep, but the others she can't quite predict, as they've all shown that they can both wake up earlier than usual or sleep in later than usual.

It should still be fine, though - if she gets questioned, then all she needs to do is use the excuse of jetlag...even though that would be a lie, and her sisters would probably see through it instantly. So maybe it's not actually fine.

Not actually fine...

Gently resting her forehead against her dressing mirror, Yotsuba remains this way for a minute or two. She's not doing this because she's tired or sleepy...but in a strange sense, she supposes that she is, a little bit.

But she pushes off the wall and stands up tall before her dressing mirror. Gazing straight into her own blue eyes that peer back at her inquisitively, Yotsuba puts her index fingers on the corners of her lips and pushes up with them, letting go to let the smile that she's fabricated on her face to remain as they are. Given enough time, even fabrications can feel real if you want them to be.

And so, armed with this particularly familiar fabrication, Yotsuba turns to head out of her room and go downstairs in search of breakfast - which would really be lunch at this hour. Down in their penthouse's first floor, she finds Miku sitting alone at the empty dinner table with her laptop open in front of her and a mug of warm green tea at a safe distance beside it, with her Audio Technicas on to listen to a video that she's watching. The moment she hears someone climb down the stairs, Miku pauses the video and switches to another tab with far greater reaction time and speed than one would normally expect out of someone like Nakano Miku and turns to see who it is.

"Morning, Yotsuba. Or I should say afternoon," Miku greets her younger sister with a small wave. "Nino's already made us lunch to eat; it's in the kitchen, you just need to heat it up in the microwave."

"Okay, gotcha! But where's Nino? You sound like she's gone off somewhere," Yotsuba asks cheerily, heading straight for the kitchen. "And what about everyone else? Are Ichika and Itsuki still sleeping?"

Miku nods. "Ichika's self-explanatory, and Itsuki should be too. We all know she isn't the best at dealing with jetlag..."

"Yeah, that's true. Some things'll never change, huh..."

Grabbing one of the dinner plates with plastic wrap draped over it that's safely sealed a sizeable mound of fluffy but cold fried rice with peas, sliced green onions, scrambled egg bits, small carrot cubes, and mini-shrimp, Yotsuba peels off the wrap and sets it aside to dispose of it properly later as she sticks the plate inside the microwave to heat the food up.

"Did you already eat lunch, Miku?" Yotsuba calls over while she's punching in the numbers to the microwave.

"Yeah, I woke up at around the same time that Nino did, so we ate together."

"Got it, got it. And by the way, where'd Nino go again?"

"Oh, she left to go to a cake shop that she's been by a few times."

"Cake shop? But why?" Yotsuba turns to walk over to the kitchen counter to gaze back at Miku from the kitchen, and Miku returns her gaze solidly.

"...today's our birthday," the third quintuplet says plainly.

Yotsuba almost falls over in complete shock that she's forgotten that today's their birthday.

"E-Ehhhh!? Wait, hold on, it's - it's really May fifth already?!" she cries, gawking back at Miku from the kitchen where she stands.

Miku pulls out her phone and turns on the screen to show the date to her younger sister, and with such proof, Yotsuba is forced to accept this reality.

"We even had a pre-emptive birthday dinner on our second-to-last night back in Hawaii. Remember? At the Korean barbecue house that Fuutarou took us to," Miku reminds her sister, who reels dramatically as though she's getting hit with a wave of memories that are coming back to her in droves like she's an amnesiac regaining her memories.

"I-I completely forgot about that! I like totally forgot - ehehe, my bad, guess I'm just being Yotsuba ~ " she playfully raps herself on the side of her head and turns to attend to the microwave once it starts chiming to indicate that its reheating task is done. Taking her big plate of homemade fried rice with her back to the dinner table, Yotsuba sits across from her only other sister present on the first floor, puts her hands together to give thanks for the food, and begins digging in, armed with the usual spoon.

"So how long have you been awake, Miku?" Yotsuba asks with a half-mouthful of chewed fried rice.

"Not that long...maybe only an hour or so. Like I said, Nino and I woke up at around the same time."

"Wow. Wouldn't Nino get like, mad or something? I don't know..."

"It's Nino, she gets mad at anything that even remotely looks at her funny. But I will say that I'm pretty sure the two of us are the best among us at dealing with all the jetlag we get for traveling around everywhere."

"How was she today, though? I'd imagine that she'd be a bit crankier than usual, even if you two _are _the best at dealing with jetlag..."

"Not so bad today, surprisingly. At least we didn't make you wake up from us arguing like we do sometimes."

Yotsuba cringes a little as she shovels some fried rice into her mouth, remembering some of the fiercer confrontations between her older sisters.

"Y-Yeah...I guess not, huh?"

The two sisters spend some time in silence, Miku continuing to watch her Sengoku-period documentary video on her laptop while Yotsuba finishes her lunch quickly. Once she's done with her plate, Yotsuba claps her hands together to deliver her post-meal thanks as per Japanese mealtime custom, but before she can get up from her chair to put her dish away, Miku swiftly but softly shuts her laptop and pulls off her headphones to look Yotsuba straight in the eye, the same eyes that she herself shares. Coincidentally, Yotsuba glances back at Miku just as she lowers her clapped hands so that the first thing she sees after finishing lunch is her immediate older sister gazing back at her with a kind of intensity she only really sees in Miku's eyes during certain moments like whenever the latter is cooking.

"Er, Miku? What's up? You look like you wanna talk to me about something," Yotsuba says uncertainly, unable to determine Miku's intent. Given her introverted nature, her oftentimes obstructive bangs, and the brooding look she has on much of the time, regardless of the situation around her, it's admittedly difficult to know what Miku wants or intends just from looking at her; not even Ichika, the eldest of the quintuplets and the most gifted at reading the rest of her sisters, has a perfect track record with deciphering Miku's behavior, though she still is the most accurate among them.

"Is something bothering you, Yotsuba?" Miku asks.

In the few times that Miku has expressed herself clearly, directness is a defining trait of hers, but Yotsuba physically reels from the sheer straightforwardness of Miku's five words.

"W-Wait, Miku, what's - what's the deal? Why do you - " Yotsuba tries to regain her composure, but Miku doesn't let her.

"You're not being you lately," the third quintuplet points out quietly. "It's to the point where even I can notice."

"Oh...c'mon, it's - you're just overthinking it, right?" Trying to pass off Miku's accusation, Yotsuba tries to work up her usual cheery smile, but that isn't fooling Miku.

"You forgot our birthday when you're the one who usually reminds the rest of us about it," Miku says as she begins to lay out the evidence like she's a prosecutor in a court case. "The entire time on our flight back home, you were pretty quiet when normally you'd be the most energetic one, helping out with all our luggage and making a ruckus up in first class, none of which you did this time. Even before we left, after the fireworks show, you didn't really say much, and you weren't as hyper as you'd normally be after one. You didn't even talk about which firework was your favorite, which you'd always do."

Each piece of evidence forces Yotsuba to droop noticeably more and more in her seat, both her figure and her hair ribbon, unable is she to refute anything Miku is saying. Watching Yotsuba carefully, Miku leans forward a little in her seat.

"Yotsuba," she says with an even softer voice, "what happened? Is it something you can tell me?"

Slowly looking back up at her older quintuplet, Yotsuba tries to pry her lips open to answer, but she can't get them to open. For a whole four minutes, she simply sits at the table across from Miku, unable to utter anything, though the reasons why she isn't quite sure of herself. Or maybe she does know, but she doesn't want to acknowledge them. All the while, Miku remains patient, vigilantly waiting for an answer that she faithfully knows will come with time.

"It's..."

Finally, Yotsuba manages to push a word off her tongue, rewarding Miku's patience, but the latter continues to wait, not wanting to interrupt Yotsuba's slowly awakening train of thought.

"...it's Uesugi-san," the fourth quint finally admits. Her own blue eyes are fixed down on the tabletop, not on her sister. "He's...well..."

"What about him? What did he do?"

"It's, it's - he didn't - " Recognizing that she's starting to get her words jumbled up, Yotsuba tightens her fists and takes a deep breath to mentally reset herself. "At the fireworks show...when it started, um...I noticed that...that he wasn't...there..."

"Wasn't there? What do you mean, he was the one who brought us to that place," Miku tilts her head a little, confused at Yotsuba's allegation.

"Well, I don't...I don't know for sure, but...while the fireworks were going on, I, uh...I turned to him during the middle of it..."

Beginning to fidget, Yotsuba lets her eyes wander off to her right side, something Miku can clearly see.

"...I wanted to thank him. I wanted to tell him thank you for taking us to see those fireworks that night because...it was something we didn't plan for because we didn't know about it at the time. And, well, not just the fireworks, too...all the work he's been putting in for us, whether it's the tutoring or everything else...I don't mean to sound like a broken record about all that, but...I just wanted to let him know what...what we all felt at the time, I'm sure."

Miku develops an uncomfortable look of her own. "...now that you mention it, we were all so busy watching the fireworks...I don't remember seeing him with us there either..." she mumbles with furrowed eyebrows. "I _could _say that we were all just so engrossed in the fireworks since, like you said, we didn't expect them because we didn't know about them prior...but..."

"I swear, I'm not lying about this. I really did turn to tell Uesugi-san thank you, but he wasn't there. I'm sure I didn't see him there with us!" Yotsuba insists.

"I get it, Yotsuba, I know you're not lying. You're the one who's the worst at lying out of all of us, after all."

That little bit of truth slaps Yotsuba in the face a bit harder than she would like it to.

"But when the fireworks ended, Fuutarou was there with us; that much we know for sure," Miku continues, recounting the events of their final night at Honolulu. "That's how we got back to our limousine and back to the resort so that we could eat dinner and head off for the airport afterwards. You don't think he might've just stepped away for a bit to take a call? He's done that before while tutoring us, you know, getting calls in the middle of our lessons and having to answer them real quick."

But Yotsuba shakes her head adamantly again.

"This time - this time was different. It didn't feel like he just walked away to answer a phone call or something," she claims sadly. "If that were the case, then at least I would've seen him off to the side or something on his phone. But...when I turned...and looked at where he was standing when the fireworks started, he just...disappeared. He was gone."

Miku gazes silently back at Yotsuba, who's managed to scrounge up the courage to look back at her sister after she's done talking but immediately relapses to looking away once their eyes lock briefly.

"And that's what's been on your mind since then?" she guesses correctly, evoking a short nod out of her younger sister.

"It felt like...it felt like..."

"Felt like what?"

Yotsuba swallows back a bit of her anxiety.

"...it almost felt like...Uesugi-san didn't want to be there with us...when the fireworks were going on," she finally concludes.

With Yotsuba putting the situation in this way, Miku, too, finds herself all of a sudden short on breath, and she, too, is forced to drop her gaze down at her closed laptop, briefly considering the truth behind Yotsuba's words.

"Uesugi-san initially didn't want me to buy him anything as a souvenir," Yotsuba confides with Miku. "I had to give it to him in front of everyone at the hotel where there were a lot of people around before the fireworks started just to get him to accept it. Honestly...he probably accepted it mainly because he didn't want to make me look like an idiot if he kept insisting on not taking it."

"That's...that's not true...he said himself that he was interested in smartwatches and that type of stuff, so..." Miku blurts out slowly, trying to convince both herself and her sister of their tutor's perceived intentions.

"E-Even if it isn't, there are other things to consider, too!" Yotsuba continues with a strained voice, the result of wanting to raise her voice but simultaneously being quiet enough so that she doesn't accidentally wake up Ichika and Itsuki still in their rooms. "Think about it, Miku! He's been working hard every day for the past month to tutor us and prepare lessons for us, us five dummyheads who can't get good grades to save our lives. And he isn't even able to teach all five of us like he's supposed to because Nino doesn't like him being here, and Itsuki isn't cooperating either. And now, as of late before we went on vacation for Golden Week, Ichika hasn't been showing up either, so he's only really been tutoring the two of us."

Now that she's got a firm train of thought going, Yotsuba assertively sits up in her chair to relay her argument to her quiet, attentive sister across the table.

"I'm not trying to pretend like I know how easy or difficult it must be to be a tutor; maybe Uesugi-san is just putting in too much effort into tutoring us. But it's not like he's tutoring regular high school kids who just need a bit of extra help to get a higher grade on their tests or something; he's got to work with the five of us who'll very likely flunk out of another school if they don't do something about their academics soon, so never mind what I said earlier, he _has _to put in way more effort in tutoring us than other people, right? He doesn't have a choice! And he has to deal with Ichika, Nino, and Itsuki not even showing up at all...!"

Yotsuba pauses for a moment to see if Miku has anything to say, but Miku looks like she's at a loss for words herself.

"And that says nothing of everything _else _he's doing for us. His work as a mage, what little of it that we do know. He told me and Ichika that he's spent a lot of time after he got his contract to protect us going around the city here to build some kind of, uh, magical surveillance system, I think he said? To make sure that he knows where we are all at times so that bad guys don't get us like that one weekend. And he was doing the exact same while we were on vacation in Hawaii for the past week! And we still don't even know where he was spending all those nights since Raiha-chan was sharing the bedroom with us, not him!"

"Yotsuba," Miku finally cuts her sister short, though Yotsuba was going to pause again there anyway. "What are you saying?"

The fourth quintuplet at first returns Miku's gaze intently before dropping it sadly.

"...I can't help but think...that...Uesugi-san...is getting tired of us." Murmuring pensively, Yotsuba once more looks back up at Miku, her eyes having traveled a good distance throughout the entire conversation. "I think he doesn't really want to work with us anymore."

Smiling awkwardly, she reaches up to scratch the side of her head.

"I mean...who would, right? Haha..."

Hearing these words, Miku feels pressure well up suddenly, without warning, in her chest. She recognizes that this is anger that she's feeling - but she's not exactly sure why. At least, not in this moment. And she certainly doesn't want to come off as sounding angry when Yotsuba is like this, but to keep this anger to herself would be more painful than the alternative.

"He's not tired of us, Yotsuba," she says quietly, but the brief period of uncertainty that she was feeling before in the middle of Yotsuba's speech is now eradicated, replaced now with conviction. "He's not mad at us. And it's not that he doesn't want to be with us. It's not like that."

Taken back by Miku's strong, unwavering words, a tone which she rarely uses, Yotsuba finds her own train of thought halted yet again. "R-Really...? Well, then...how, um...how do you...know...?"

It appears that Yotsuba can throw verbal curveballs of her own, not that she'd be aware of them, for Miku, too, opens her mouth only to close it immediately afterwards like a fish out of water upon realizing that she's about to divulge a rather intimate moment that she's shared with their tutor. And it'd be especially dangerous to let someone like Yotsuba know about it because unlike Ichika, who can keep secrets, she probably wouldn't be able to do the same.

"It's...it's because...Fuutarou's the kind of guy who fully commits himself to a job once he's accepted one, right? Doesn't he come off that way to you?" Miku says quickly, saying the first thing that comes to mind the fastest. "You said it yourself, he's a hardworking guy. And he's been tutoring us even though not all of us have been coming to his lessons. He's the type of person who cares about the principle behind his work, not necessarily because of what he's getting out of it."

Yotsuba nods slowly at her sister's point, and Miku internally sighs with relief that her frantic thinking has paid off for now before continuing.

"Of course, obviously money is important to him and his family, but remember what he told us when we were on that private charter cruise? He said that he turned down Itsuki's offer to join us for his tutoring because he didn't like Itsuki's reasoning for wanting to do so, because he wanted Itsuki to recognize his tutoring ability, not because he stood up to Papa during dinner that one night, because that had nothing to do with his tutoring."

Miku leans forward a bit more in her chair towards Yotsuba.

"I don't claim to know Fuutarou all that well, either. After all, we've only known him for a month tops. But something tells me that he's not like that, Yotsuba. I don't think you need to worry about him feeling that way."

Somberly and somewhat hesitantly accepting Miku's reassuring words, Yotsuba stares down at her empty plate that once held her fried rice lunch.

"...okay. I guess I was thinking about...about this a bit too hard. Sorry, Miku," Yotsuba gives her best smile, given the situation. "But still, I just...can't help but keep wondering...where he went off to..."

"I still think he probably just stepped away to answer a call or something that night. And even if that weren't the case and he really did just disappear while the fireworks were going on, I think he just wanted to let us five - well, the six of us, since Raiha-chan was with us - enjoy the fireworks by ourselves. He's the type to keep his distance, right?"

"Yeah...I guess so." Yotsuba smiles again, having let herself be convinced by her older sister. "Thanks, Miku, for cheering me up. Want me to buy you something for our birthday? I'll keep a secret from the others ~ "

Miku snorts suddenly with amusement. "But you can't keep a secret, though. As soon as you buy something, you're gonna let the whole house know - "

"Aaaaaaa, no I won't! Not this time! I promise, I pinky-promise!"

"Otherwise swallow a thousand needles?"

"Y-Yeah!"

"You said that last time, and you ended up folding a thousand paper cranes..."

_"You don't need to remind me!"_

"Haha. Well, in that case, you don't need to buy me anything, since I can just get whatever I want myself. But there _is _something you can do for me."

"Whatwhatwhatwhat? What is it? Tell me, tell me ~ "

Miku leans in even more, to the point where half of her upper body is now hovering over the table and the laptop is directly underneath her chest. With a coy smile full of warmth, as rare as a blue moon, the third quintuplet lets rest her eyes on her younger sister.

"You can call me 'Miku-onee-chan' for today."

"Okay! Miku-onee-chan ~ !"

Getting out of her chair, Yotsuba speeds around the table to glomp her dear older sister as the two of them wind up in one of their old, nostalgic sisterly giggle fits on a warm, lazy Sunday afternoon.

* * *

A taxi cab pulls up to the small parking lot of Revival, a cake shop and bakery in the heart of the city. Nakano Nino steps out of the passenger's seat, giving the driver instructions to stay while she goes inside, and she quickly checks her Oyster Perpetual Datejust Rolex on her left wrist.

Given that they'd been treated to a hearty Korean barbecue dinner back in Hawaii, complete with a five-layer Neopolitan cake topped with wafers, pretzels, cookies, and small cinnamon rolls, Nino isn't in the market for another heavy cake like that. Just a small cake will do to share with her sisters...though as she walks through the door, causing the bell to ring out her arrival, she wonders to herself if simply baking her own cake wouldn't have been better. Then again, she's jetlagged, probably needs more sleep, and can't be bothered to cook at the moment - and not to mention that baking cakes isn't exactly her forte, though she isn't against trying her hand at it at some point.

"Hello hello! Welcome to Revival!" the cake shop owner enthusiastically calls out from the kitchen, stepping out to greet his first customer of the day. "So glad you've come to visit us! We've got the city's finest selection of cakes, scones, breads, cookies - you name it, we bake it! Customizable items and catering is also available if you're so interested, and - "

"I'm just gonna take a look at these, thank you," Nino bluntly says, not even making eye contact with the proprietor of the shop as she walks past him to the glass displays showing off their wares.

"By all means, madam! Seems like you've got an eye on what to look for," the shop owner beams, maintaining his aura as he tussles back his magnificently short blonde wavy hair. "Then allow me to give you the time you need. I will be in the back with some business, so do excuse me."

Nino surveys the interior of the store briefly as the shop owner ducks back into the kitchen. The shop itself is actually quite spacey and quaint, with plenty of empty tables like a cafe decorated with paintings of cakes and other bakeries on the walls, fake indoor plants lining some of the shelves and table dividers, and light jazz playing down into the store from speakers on the ceiling. It's a perfect place to come and hang out with friends for a snack after school or for a date. If the actual products of this shop are good, perhaps she'll bring her sisters here in person - though with the shop being as empty as it is on a Sunday afternoon of all times, she's a bit unsure if she wants to bring her family to a place like this that clearly isn't very popular.

Maybe that shop owner's over-the-top personality has something to do with that.

Storing her thoughts about this cake shop relative to her sisters, Nino begins her self-imposed task of selecting a cake to take back home with her. Chocolate stripe cloud cream cake, Triple Delight Coffee Cake, Blueberry Yogurt Cream Cake, Green Tea Cloud Cream Cake, Mocha Buttercream Cake, Caramel Mocha Cream Cake, Red Velvet Cake, Vanilla Chocolate Heart Mousse Cake, Tiramisu Cake, Strawberry Cheesecake...the wide variety and types of cakes available certainly does not fail to leave an impression with Nino, who is immediately caused to ponder all these different kinds of cakes and wondering which one of them would fit all five of the quintuplets' tastes the best. Of course, there's always the option of buying five separate cakes, but then that would feel like the sisters are all celebrating their birthdays individually - something Nino knows wouldn't sit well with any of them, herself included. So it has to come down to a single cake - at least Miku's adamant dislike of chocolate narrows down the list of cake contenders significantly, so if there's anything to thank Miku for, it would be that.

Still, even with all the cakes containing chocolate as a majority of their compositions out of the way, a veritable number of cakes still remain in contention. Ichika would probably love the Mocha Buttercream cake, but Yotsuba would really like the Orange Caramel Creme Mousse Cake. She herself finds her mouth watering a little at the sight of the grape Tiramisu Cake, but Miku would go nuts over the Green Tea Cloud Cream Cake - and as much as Nino prefers black tea, she silently admits to herself that the Green Tea Cloud Cream Cake does look appealing due to its simple yet elegant presentation and the toppings of grapes, raspberries, cherries, and Belgian milk chocolate wafer sticks. Miku can just let the others take the chocolate wafer sticks.

As she continues to pore over the cakes, the cake shop owner steps outside the door to the kitchen again, calling out to her.

"Madam, I'll be busy working on some prototypes for more products for the shop. If you need me, just ring that bell you see on the counter near the cash register, and someone will be with you to assist you with whatever you need."

"Okay, thank you," Nino calls back without even turning her neck.

The minutes roll on, and recognizing that she's being too indecisive about what cake she ought to pick, Nino decides to ask the shop owner for his recommendations but then remembers that he's already told her that he'd be busy working on some prototypes. Even though he'd probably be more than happy to talk to her about the house recommendations, she'd feel bad for interrupting his work, as she's had her own sisters interrupt her while she's baking cookies or cooking food in general. Hopefully his assistant or whoever else is working here can be of use - though, strangely, other than the usual kitchen noises she's heard coming from the back, Nino hasn't heard much else the entire time that she's here...

Walking over to the counter, specifically the cash register, the second quintuplet presses the bell to ring it and waits for a response. She can hear the immediate reaction of the cake shop proprietor barking out at his employee to go help their customer.

"Yo, Uesugi, get out there, our lovely customer needs some assistance!"

Nino almost drops her phone out of shock when she pulls it out of her pocket to check her texts. But sure enough, as soon as she looks up, out walks from the back room none other than Uesugi Fuutarou, who is yelling back at his boss as he does so.

"I'm not even wearing the uniform, that alright?" he calls back.

"It's only one customer, don't worry about it. You're not even on duty anyway right now, so it's whatever!"

"Alright, then."

Having his boss's permission to attend to their customer in his usual school clothes of a plain white dress shirt and black slacks, the young Nakano tutor nods back at Nino as he plants himself in front of her, across the counter.

"Hello, welcome to Revival. What can I assist you with today?" he asks professionally, as if he really were on duty as an active employee.

"Y-You fucking _work _here...?" is the first thing that Nino is able to blurt out in shock. Fuutarou pulls on a difficult look, taking a deep breath and scratching the side of his neck.

"It's...complicated. I'm actually almost done with work here for today - in fact, if you'd like to wait for me, not that you'd even want to, I can explain this whole thing."

"I'm actually a bit curious, yeah. I can wait."

"Huh, surprising."

"What's surprising?"

"That you'd wait a bit for me to finish up here. I thought you'd just tell me to fuck off and go about your business."

Nino pouts back at him darkly. "You're gonna say shit like that to me when I took you around shopping last week back in Hawaii? Some gratefulness you show."

"I figured that was just a one-off exception. I didn't expect you to keep being nice to me."

"Do you think I _constantly _hate you or something?"

"...what else am I supposed to think of you?"

For as blunt as she herself is, Nino is once again stumped and irritated by Fuutarou's own bluntness, which consistently seems to be several degrees stronger than her own.

"J-Just help me find something to buy for my sisters, okay...? I don't wanna deal with your bullshit here," Nino hisses in a low voice, pointing in the direction of the cake displays.

"Sure thing. There's a big selection to choose from, and I assume you've taken some time to look through them, so did you want some house recommendations or something?"

Nino lets her jaw go slack to gape at him again.

"H-H-How did _you _know...?!" she asks hoarsely at him.

"It's not magic or anything," Fuutarou smirks back at the second quintuplet. "No, but seriously, it's a common question customers here ask. My boss back there loves baking all sorts of cakes and cookies and other baked goods, and he's always coming up with new products, and since this is a relatively new shop, the few customers we _have _had get a bit overwhelmed by the sheer variety of products we have, so they usually ask for recommendations. It's not just you."

Sighing with relief at Fuutarou's explanation, Nino heads over to the cake displays again, with Fuutarou mirroring her movements to assist her.

"So what _do _you recommend?" Nino asks in a low voice, becoming quite self-conscious about having to ask someone she isn't fond of, at least not on the surface, for help picking out their birthday cake. Fuutarou surely knows what this cake is for; he just hasn't made it known to her that he does.

"Among the cream cakes, I think the Chocolate Cloud Cream Cake and the Green Tea Cloud Cream Cake are by far the best; they're the ones my boss spent the most time working on perfecting to build up his experience working on cream cakes," Fuutarou explains, clearly and rationally. "Same with the Caramel Mocha Cake; there's been a big trend of coffee drinking lately in the city, and a corresponding number of coffee shops opening across the city, so he's made this one to take advantage of that trend. The Tiramisu cakes are also great - you might like the grape one."

"So the Tiramisu is good, huh..." Nino's voice trails off somewhat, as she feels a bit reassured that the cake she personally was looking to get to suit her own tastes is a house recommendation. Still, she exhales tiredly, resting her head against the glass display. "There's just so many options...and all five of us have different preferences, too...I didn't think a trip to the cake shop would have me _this _stressed out..."

"Yeah...I've tried telling my boss that making _too _many products is a bad thing, especially when the shop itself hasn't been open for that long, like only two months or something," Fuutarou nods in agreement. "I've been telling him it's part of the reason why he hasn't been able to establish a consistent customer base, because people don't know what they want since there's too many to choose from, and they don't know where to start."

"Honestly, a good way to solve that is to let customers have some small samples. That way they can see for themselves how good something is," Nino suggests.

"That's true. I'll bring it up to him later, though having to make samples of _everything _is gonna be a big pain in the ass..." Fuutarou grimaces, looking down at all the cakes.

"You sound like _you're _the one baking all these," Nino giggles, teasing Fuutarou with a playful grin that's half-malicious and half-joking.

"I mean, when my boss's usually got his hands full working on prototypes and new product ideas, _someone's _gotta bake the actual products," Fuutarou shrugs.

"Yeah, I know right."

Nino pauses.

"Wait, _**YOU'RE THE ONE BAKING THEM!?"** _she bursts out in even more shock.

Fuutarou nods matter-of-factly, as if Nino's revelation were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Didn't you hear my boss earlier? I'm an employee here. As in, I actually work here."

"You didn't need to explain to me what an employee does."

"Sorry, I have to tutor you somehow to make up for the fact that you d - "

"Shut up. Shut up, Uesugi, shut up, shut up."

Sighing exasperatedly, Fuutarou gestures down at the cakes. "I don't mean to be rude then, since you still are our customer at the end of the day, but I've given you our recommendations. Unfortunately I can't give you any samples since that's out of my jurisdiction as an employee."

Nino looks back assertively at Fuutarou behind the displays.

"Then do you take custom orders?" she asks.

"We actually do. Though it'll cost you extra, and obviously it'll take some time," Uesugi swiftly answers. "What did you have in mind?"

* * *

About an hour later, both the proprietor and Uesugi walk out of the back kitchen, the latter holding a basic two-layer cake but with five unique and equally sized sections, with each section representing a different flavor that suits each quintuplet: mocha caramel for Ichika, grape and Belgian chocolate for Nino, green tea for Miku, orange creme for Yotsuba, and strawberry-cherry creme for Itsuki. Each individual section is divided by sweet graham crackers, and all this topped with whipped creme, chocolate sprinkles, small cubed brownies, and lemon wafers, as Fuutarou places the luxurious cake before Nino and begins gift-wrapping it carefully for Nino to take back home.

"This was quite the cake you've had us make, madam," the cake shop owner and head baker chuckles heartily as he rings her up on the tablet register. "I'll admit, for all the cakes that I've whipped up for this place, not soon would I've imagined a customer request that I basically take five of the cakes I've made and put them all together into one."

"Sorry if it was a bother," Nino says quickly, handing him her credit card.

"No no no, you have nothing to apologize for. On the contrary, it was quite the rejuvenating experience!" he says just as quickly, as if overriding his own customer's consideration. "Going through a lot of my old recipes like that, you've given me the idea for new fusion-style cakes. I'll have to write them down quick before I forget...this old man's at that age where he'll forget everything he thinks of if he doesn't write them down within five minutes..."

"Boss, you're not even thirty years old yet," Uesugi replies in a flat voice, tying the red ribbon on top of the cake's carrier box to finish the wrapping. "Save the old man talk for later, in about another twenty years."

"Oof! Uesugi with the harsh words as always - but it's okay! This old man will always offer you a job here!" The shop owner puts a hand on Uesugi's back and flashes him a thumbs up.

"As always. Let me know when you need me again."

"You got it." The shop owner then hesitates, raising a hand up to the stubble on his chin. "Actually, now would be a good time to test out our delivery service, Uesugi. How about you deliver this cake to our customer's place? Of course, if you're alright with that, madam."

"We were about to head back together, actually," Uesugi says plainly, pointing at Nino.

At this, the head baker flips his shit and reels backwards like he's been shot through the heart, stumbling and stopping himself against the counter behind him holding an assortment of cookies and breads.

"Y-You - " The shop owner slowly raises a wobbling, trembling arm with a single extended index finger to point at Uesugi. " - you - you _TRAITOR! ! !"_

Both Uesugi and Nino stare back at the shop owner, then at each other, then back at the head baker again.

"Boss," Fuutarou says clearly, "what in the actual fuck are you talking about?"

"Don't play dumb with me, I know you're too smart for that!" the shop owner emphasizes, pushing off the counter to gesture wildly at his own employee. "You're going back home with a girl your age?! That can only mean one thing - _you've got a girlf - "_

"Boss, please do not make our customer uncomfortable with your ramblings about how you're still single at twenty-eight years old," Uesugi again says flatly, instantly silencing his own boss. "Besides, she's my classmate, and I've been tutoring her recently so we know each other a little bit. Is there anything else you'd like to ask about our relationship, whatever it is that you perceive of it?"

Sighing a breath of sweet relief, the shop owner resumes patting his employee on the back.

"Good, good, I knew you wouldn't betray the club. In any case, I've got more prototypes to work on, so Uesugi, why don't you, uh, give our delivery service a test run by delivering this product to our customer? That way we'll know how to organize our delivery routes later on once we're ready and business is booming."

"Work on your advertising first, damn it!" Uesugi calls after his boss as he ducks quickly back into the kitchen. "Ugh, that idiot...brilliant chef and a great baker, but goddamn, he doesn't exactly know how to run a business..."

He glances next to him at Nino, who isn't too sure herself what to make of what just happened.

"Here - as an apology for Boss's dumb behavior..." he stoops down beneath the counter and pulls out a box of toffee macarons that are half-dipped in chocolate. "This one's on the house."

"Er...sure, thanks, I guess..." Nino hesitantly receives the free box of macarons from her would-be tutor. "So, uh, are you like...off your shift now or something?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Not many customers today, and I've already done what I had to do here to help out. Do you have a ride back?"

"Yeah, I've got a taxi waiting outside."

"I don't need to pay for it, do I?"

"Do you _want _to?"

"Of course not."

"Then don't bother asking." Nino notices Fuutarou pull out what appears to be some sort of hardcover book, also from behind the counter. "What's that?"

"Oh, it's nothing. Just a book I was reading when I got here."

"You study _while _you're working? I seriously can't believe you right now."

"Not that I would ever ask you to."

Bantering as usual, Nino and Fuutarou, both carrying their respective items, exit the Revival bakery with their products and head to the taxi that has been diligently waiting for Nino to finish her business in the store. Explaining to the driver that she'll be paying for an extra passenger's fare, Nino climbs into the back seats with Fuutarou, sitting on opposite seats next to their respective windows. As the taxi begins to get a move on, Nino glances briefly over at Fuutarou.

"So what were you doing there?" she opens up.

"For today, I was helping out with some IT stuff. That's my primary responsibility as an employee there, IT management," Fuutarou explains. "Like I said, my boss is a great baker, and his stuff's top-notch. Studied at and graduated from one of the top culinary schools in the country, came here to the city to work culinary jobs and then eventually, as of recently, opened up his own bakery since he loves baking cakes and other stuff the most. But since he's so focused on baking, he kinda neglects everything else that should go into running a business well. IT, advertising, etc. Though I guess his interior designing skills are okay."

"I thought the shop looked fine, layout and aesthetics-wise," Nino shrugs. "This is coming from the one girl in our family who actually bothers to give a shit about looks and appearances."

"I'm not surprised."

"See, you get it."

"Surprisingly, I do, yes..."

"Why 'surprisingly'?"

"Since we usually don't get along, y'know?"

"Why do you feel the need to keep reminding me of that? I know full well how much I fucking hate you."

"It's a bit weird, isn't it, then? Talking like this."

"Who says I still can't at least talk to someone I don't like if I feel like it?"

"I'm just not used to that. That's a bit of a foreign concept to me..."

"You should be a bit more flexible-minded, then. Wouldn't kill you to consider that, would it?"

"I could ask the same of you and coming to my tutoring even though you clearly don't like it."

"Sh-Shut up..."

The two of them listen to the engine of the taxi purring away, watching their respective sides of the cityscape pass by.

"Just out of curiosity, and nothing else," Nino begins to hiss, throwing daggers with her blue eyes over in Fuutarou's direction, "did you bake this cake? Or did you have your boss help you?"

"He helped me with it. I can bake cakes just fine; it's also part of my employee responsibilities in case there's an emergency and he can't be there at the shop for whatever reason. It's just that this one was one I'd never done before, baking a cake with five separate sections to it, so I consulted my boss for advice. Seems like it turned out okay, though we'll find out if it's any good once you girls actually start eating it."

Nino turns away again, casting her gaze out of her own window.

"...so you do know how to cook and bake," she concludes quietly. Her voice bounces off the window so it's easier for Fuutarou to hear her despite her lowered voice.

"I do. I don't often cook, so I'm a bit rusty at actual cooking, but I do a decent enough job of it. I definitely can't cook better than you, though, since I'm sure you cook every day for your sisters."

"Of course not. You think I'll let a guy like you be better than me at _cooking_, of all things?"

"Hey, you never know, guys can be good cooks too. Just look at my boss."

"I didn't mean it _that _way, I just meant it as in, someone like you who always seems to be busy with something and can't possibly have the time to cook consistently can't cook better than me."

"Oh, that's what you meant. My bad - then yeah, of course not. That's...kind of what I implied earlier, though."

"You didn't make yourself clear enough."

Fuutarou just rolls his eyes and ignores Nino.

"On that subject, though...you seem like you're a busybody all the time. How the hell do you have the time to also work a part-time at that bakery?" Nino wonders aloud. "That's about the _last _place I expected to see you at, let alone learn that you're a part-timer there."

"Normally I wouldn't work there, no," Fuutarou shakes his head in agreement. "But I've known my boss for a good while now. That's why, as you saw when we were talking, I was being super casual with him even though he's my boss there."

"Hm, how so?"

"So remember how I said he attended culinary school, graduated, and then came to this city to find a cooking job? He got started first at a Korean barbecue restaurant called Gen; it's actually not that far away from the bakery, in the heart of downtown. I also happened to get a part-time job there at around the same time, so we were coworkers at one point."

"Coworkers..." Nino does some quick math in her head, math that she can actually do and not school-level mathematics. "Wait a minute...when was this exactly?"

"Hmmm...by now...this was probably five years ago...?"

"You were working a job at _ten years old?"_

"Bills and rent don't pay themselves, do they? And the family debt doesn't give a shit, either."

"No, I get that, you don't need to tell me, but like...isn't that kind of..._illegal? _How did that restaurant even let you work when you were _that _young?"

"I looked older than I was at the time, so I was able to convince the managers there that I was old enough. They didn't buy it at first though, if that makes you feel any better. They initially didn't want to hire me because of that reason, but at the time they were low on staff members and business was booming faster than they could manage, so they hired me in the end. I did the best I could, so they couldn't really complain, and they were kind enough to keep my employment there on the down-low."

Fuutarou pulls out his phone to check it briefly.

"So yeah, that's where and when I met my boss. He knew my situation, and as eccentric as he comes off as sometimes, he's a good person. He looked out for me when I was young, helped me sneak some food out if I wasn't able to get dinner for the family otherwise...eventually after about a year or so, he quit the job so that he could get jobs he preferred at bakeries around the city and some catering jobs on the side in the hopes that eventually he'd be able to open up a bakery of his own, and when he left, I promised him that I'd give him a hand at that bakery that he'd open whenever it came time for that. Fast-forward five years, he finally accrued enough capital to open up his own place, and after I got wind of it, I came down to see through my end of the deal."

Nino listens quietly, watching the city blocks cruise by inside the taxi.

"...how did you know he'd finally opened up that bakery? Did he call you or something? 'Cause it doesn't sound like you two kept in touch much," she asks, still watching the city zoom by.

"No, I just kind of...stumbled upon it by accident as I was making my rounds around the city. It barely opened like two months ago, like I said...I usually notice whenever there's a new shop in town or if a store closes for good. So I noticed this one, and the kind of bakery that it is, specializing in cakes and stuff, sounded like something my boss would do because he used to gush about how much he loved baking, and sure enough..."

"Sounds like some kind of janky reunion story."

"Well, I will say that it was nice to see him again. He helped me through some bad times five years ago...so being there in that shop means quite a bit to me. I want it to do well, so that's why I've been helping out with all sorts of stuff, from actually baking with him to doing IT stuff. We do need to hire more staff at some point and figure out how we're gonna start advertising the place..."

Trailing off, Fuutarou raises a palm facing upwards slightly, gazing down into it to mentally list out all the things that the bakery needs to get done in order to keep going. Nino watches him for a moment as he contemplates bakery responsibilities silently before turning away slowly for the last time, pretending to look out the window like usual but instead resting her gaze down at the door handle instead.

* * *

"Ah, welcome back, Nino - oh, you too, Uesugi-san! Welcome ~ !"

Greeted by the ever expressive Yotsuba, Nino and Fuutarou, having taken off their shoes, get escorted by Yotsuba into the comfortably familiar living room of the Nakano penthouse, where the rest of the quintuplets are already gathered. It is already early evening, with the sun beginning to set in the horizon, and the clear glass table between the couches is already set with plastic forks and knives, napkins, beverages, and small store-bought party candles.

"Fuutarou? Did you run into Nino on the way here?" Miku asks, surprised to see their tutor join them.

"I work at the bakery that Nino happened to visit. It was pure coincidence," the young tutor explains.

"'Pure' coincidence, huh? Do tell Ichika-onee-chan more about that, hmmmm ~ ?" Ichika teases suggestively.

"Ichika, it seriously _was _a coincidence! Neither he nor I even expected to see each other there! How the hell was I supposed to know he works part-time there? He doesn't even look like the type of person to part-time at a bakery of all places!"

"Now, now, don't fret, today's our birthday so let's just have a good time instead. Fuutarou-kun, would you like to join us?" Ichika invites their tutor.

"It's fine. I've already bothered you all for long enough last week during your vacation, I think today you all should celebrate this by yours - "

"Fuutarou-kun, it's not polite to turn down an invitation from a girl, you know?" Ichika presses the issue, so Fuutarou just blankly stares right back at her.

"...and since when have I cared about being polite again?" he points out.

"Could not have said it better myself!" Itsuki agrees wholeheartedly, nodding her head in self-righteous fervor. "Uesugi-kun doesn't need to be here for our birthday party."

"He's right, and Itsuki's right too, Ichika. This guy's just here to deliver our cake, nothing more," Nino gripes. "We've already dealt with this guy for all of last week during our vacation. We should just do this among ourselves!"

"But he cooked us dinner at that Korean barbecue restaurant for our birthday dinner a few days ago; you girls seriously don't want him to stick around? He doesn't have to stay for _that _long, what with him being so busy all the time..." Ichika asks with a sheltering tone only a big sister like herself can provide.

"Yeah, that's also true, I've gotta get going here pretty soon..." Fuutarou checks the time on the large clock on the wall above the living room TV.

But as Fuutarou is checking the time, Miku begins to get up from her seat at the couch to ask him to stay -

\- but Yotsuba is faster, not surprisingly. Clasping her hands around Fuutarou's free right hand, the fourth quint looks up at Fuutarou dead in the eye when he turns to look down at her.

"Just have a slice of cake with us before you go, at least!" she asks, almost pleadingly. "If you're working late tonight, don't you think you'll...need some energy before you go?"

Put in a difficult spot, Uesugi hesitates uncomfortably, allowing Nino to object.

"He can take care of himself just fine, Yotsuba, you don't need to worry about him. Now get going, you! You've overstayed your welcome for today anyway, with today being Sunday and all. Shoo, shoo!"

Nino begins to try to push Fuutarou out towards the door, but to no one's surprise, she can't budge Fuutarou one bit. Sighing, Fuutarou waits until Nino wears herself out and is forced to take a breather to say,

"...fine. I'll stay for some cake. But I won't be long."

Amidst mixed cheers and groans from the quintuplets, Fuutarou sits down with them at the glass table and sets down the hardcover book that he's brought with him on the floor next to him as the girls prepare the cake and light the candles to bring a sweet and cozy end to another Golden Week vacation.


	22. In Good Faith

**A/N**

**"This story...seems to have strayed from its original concept" - because it's not as if it's already strayed enough from the original manga with the inclusion of magic, right?**

**Snarky answers aside, that's the exact opposite reaction I was expecting given how much of a twist I'm giving the original manga; typically when you mix stuff like magic into a story that had no magic elements originally, that kind of thing usually gets received poorly (read: speaking from experience). So I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that two of the more recent reviews as of this chapter actually want _more _of the magic/action stuff. Did the ending of the original manga really upset you all _that_ much?  
**

**Jokes aside, in response to why there is such a big break from the "action", the Golden Week arc was designed to return the fic to a more familiar setting/atmosphere to the original. In a manga like Gotoubun no Hanayome that's strictly a slice of life harem manga where death as a concept is only really prevalent in one area, chapters 9 and 10 are quite the vibe check, especially since I hadn't really done much in the way of world-building yet leading up to those chapters to make it clear to the reader that such scenes should be expected (unless you count reimagining Fuutarou as a mage). Really the only place that could have warned the reader about it was the giant A/N that you should've read in the first chapter, but even then it doesn't do those scenes in chapters 9/10 justice. What it _should _have made clear, however, was my intention to focus more on character interaction and less so on my own machinations for this fic - though you may argue that those are precisely what make this fic interesting in the first place.**

**I can't promise you that the action of this story will be consistent in terms of pacing; I'm thrilled to know that at least some of you like it enough to be vocal about it and ask for more, as writing action sequences is some of the most fun in writing I'll ever have, but in spite of this, I have to ask that you be patient with me if the pacing of the action, or the lack thereof, is too slow (or God forbid too fast) for your liking.**

**All this being said, of course it would be just my luck that I begin to write a chapter with some action in it and then have people wonder where all the action went while I'm in the middle of writing it. Being a fanfic writer is suffering KEKW**

**Edit: after doing a bit of research, I realized that the bakery's name is supposed to be "Revival". Chapter 21 has been adjusted accordingly.**

* * *

3:03 AM.

A high school boy wearing a set of not-so-high-school clothes stands on the edge of a tall corner building, at the bottom of which sits an SMBC bank location, though the automatic teller machines outside should be seeing no customers at this time of the night. Traffic is correspondingly light, with really only taxis and the odd private car occupying the streets and roads below - should this be a weekend night, then traffic would be considerably heavier at around this time, even though this place is still a good twenty minutes from the heart of the city's downtown.

Uesugi Fuutarou raises a hand up to his black cap and pulls the visor down a little, as if that'll somehow help shield his eyes against the whipping high-altitude winds of the night that slap and pummel the fringes of his black hoodie jacket and the black half-kilt that ruffles about behind his legs. He's stood here, vigilant and surveying, for the past hour now, as he realizes when he raises his left hand to check his smartwatch for the time.

Armed with this knowledge, Fuutarou carefully scans the landscape from his vantage point, mainly checking the streets and sidewalks. There is a chance that the target has diverted from their usual path tonight, and that Fuutarou will have to track them down himself. Should that be the case, then that would imply that his presence would be compromised, and he'd have to forfeit his pursuit of the target, which the young tutor is unwilling to do, given the past week's worth of effort he's put into locating, studying, and tailing the target.

He waits another ten minutes to account for possible delays in the target's pathing, and in the meantime, he pulls up a news app on his smartwatch, reading the headline article about the fifth missing person case that has been registered with the city police in these past two weeks. But after those ten minutes elapse with no different results, Fuutarou moves into action. Once more raising his left wrist, he toggles the smartwatch's display off its usual clock functionality to pull up his own custom app that he's downloaded on it, which pulls up a map of the city block that he is currently occupying, running in real-time, as the diagram of a vehicle moving down the street indicates while its engine rolls across the streets down below. One more toggle, and Fuutarou's smartwatch suddenly projects the interactive city map like a hologram that its owner can manipulate directly as though operating a tablet.

"Display pathing with timestamps," Fuutarou orders his smartwatch.

Immediately at his directive, the holographic map zooms out to cover the southern half of the city, and a red line paints itself snaking through the city's buildings and streets. The timestamps confirm Fuutarou's estimates that he should have seen his target at this juncture at around the one hour mark, as the target's previous excursions through the city at this time of night produced enough data to suggest such an average.

What a coincidence that the night Fuutarou has reserved to track the target in person, the target would appear to be compromised. How suspicious.

Pulling out his Google Pixel 3 and unlocking it with one hand so that he can keep the map of the city up before him, Fuutarou dials a familiar number and waits for the call to go through.

_"Hey kiddo, what'cha need?"_

"Giving you clearance to operate Dragon, I need you to track tonight's target."

_"Got it, booting up Dragon now. Target location?"_

"Unknown, possibly compromised."

_"What about you?"_

"Unknown as well. I haven't done anything to blow my own cover, but we'll see for sure."

_"Got it. Running scans now along intended route, stand by."_

On Fuutarou's hologram map, cautionary notifications pop up, pointing down at numerous circle-shaped outlines that are faintly painted into the city floor, underneath the building and street models. These notifications indicate the locations of Uesugi's surveillance runes of the network he's planted throughout the city that are now scanning their respective zones for a match on their target. This is a risky move on Fuutarou's part, as he himself knows all too well, because having the runes scan for the target directly like this will certainly tip off any mages within their zones, as they can sense the unnaturally rising levels of magical energy in those areas. He has to bank on the chance that whoever the target may or may not have run into are not also mages themselves.

The young high school mage continues to stand on the edge of the roof of the SMBC bank building, with his left arm raised to support the live model of the city and his right hand also raised to hold his phone, patiently waiting for feedback from his father who is manning the auxiliary remote controls of Uesugi's magical surveillance system from the relative comfort and safety of their home.

_"Negative, Ghost Rider, no positive ID."_

"Toggle to history scan, that might give us something."

_"It might, yeah. Scanning again."_

As Isanari controls the surveillance runes to execute a second round of scans, this time having the scans check their surveillance logs of the past hour and a half, Uesugi navigates through the model of the city from his smartwatch with his right pinky finger, again dragging the cityscape across as though he were on a tablet doing this.

_"Bingo, looks like your hunch was right. Target was on her intended path tonight, but..."_

"Where did she break off?" Uesugi asks, swiping the cityscape back to the start of the intended path so that he can work along with his father.

_"About halfway through. Do you have your map up?"_

"I do, send it."

Isanari remotely updates his son's smartwatch map, and Fuutarou observes the red-highlighted path get truncated to indicate their target's area of disappearance.

"Keep tracking history scans; even if Rio's on the move, he shouldn't know about Dragon," the young mage says.

_"Already on it, keep an eye on your map since it's getting updated as we speak."_

A new blue-highlighted line begins to etch itself onto the map as Isanari is talking, showing Fuutarou the direction in which their target has diverted. Recognizing the new streets, the tutor gets a move on and immediately bounds from the roof of the corner bank building he's been keeping watch on to the roof of the building across the street. While he traverses the roofs of the buildings in this fashion, he toggles the hologram map into a more portable rune panel that breaks off from the smartwatch and hovers on Fuutarou's left, sustained by magical wireless signal from the watch so that he can maintain full movement while still being able to keep an eye on the updating map guiding him towards the target's new and unintended location.

_"So what's the deal tonight? You haven't been around lately so I'm not in the loop yet," _Fuutarou hears his father's words creep into his ear. He's also toggled on another small magic rune that's hovering next to his right ear so that he can keep his phone in his pocket as he moves about.

"During the week that we were down in Hawaii, there've been a few disappearance cases. People heading out at night and failing to return home; the ones who had families or friends, they reported them; the ones who didn't, usually their workplaces reported them or something."

_"And you think they're kidnappings?"_

"Just a theory. We already know the city's becoming a hotbed for drug trafficking and drug use, but the city's also big enough where people can start manufacturing drugs right here; drug dealers don't want to have to import shit into the city all the time since that's expensive, so being able to simply bring in the materials and then make the drugs themselves is the cheaper alternative; that, and they can start branding their own drugs to gain an edge over their competitors. They can hide their drug labs around the city and the police can't possibly find them all; even if and when they do find one drug lab, another two or three'll probably pop up somewhere else to replace the one that got raided."

_"So how do the kidnappings factor into this?"_

"They need lab rats to test their drugs on, and obviously no one's gonna do that shit for free unless you're a goddamn junkie with a death wish to begin with. These are home-brewed drugs we're talking about - meaning that most people don't know what the fuck they're doing, so God knows what they'll end up making, and even worse is what kind of shit they'll do to a human being if someone takes them."

_"And that's why the quints were almost kidnapped the other month? To be used as lab rats?"_

"Probably. Though in their case, there's a real chance there's a bit more going on behind the scenes than just that..."

_"Judging on the timing of these incidents, though, I think Rio tried to get his goons to kidnap the quints so that they could use them as guinea pigs, but since you intervened, he had to get his guinea pigs elsewhere."_

"And laid low for a few weeks after the quints incident to make sure his trail went cold? Yeah, that's quite possible. He's at least going about this a bit smarter than the rest, I'll give him that. Most idiots start panicking the moment something in their plans goes off."

_"Speaking of the quints, have you told them to stay inside at night? I'd suspect Rio'll jump at any chance to try to grab the quints again if he could."_

"I actually didn't. This'll sound pretty bad, but ever since I found out about the disappearance cases, my first guess was that Rio is back on the move, meaning that he might go after the girls again."

_"So you're using them as bait?"_

"Yes."

_"Not even ashamed about it one bit, huh?"_ Isanari chuckles darkly.

"No such thing as shame in this line of work. We both knew that going into it, didn't we?"

_"Good answer, kid. I'm glad I raised ya right."_

"Raising your kids in near-abject poverty all their lives? Some job _you_ did..."

_"Haha, let's just ignore that part now, shall we?"_

Noticing the updated pathing on his map rune stopping soon ahead, Fuutarou halts on the roof of a family cafe that is closed for the night.

"History scan ends here; target's probably in the area. Going dark."

_"You got it, see ya on the other side."_

Deactivating the telecommunications rune, Fuutarou keeps the map rune active to see if the history scans will indicate the target's location elsewhere, but another few minutes of waiting shows that this is not the case. Once he confirms this, Fuutarou taps on the rune itself like a tablet and activates the surveillance rune in his vicinity to run a full scan. He runs the risk of alerting any enemy mages if there are any in the area, especially if it's Rio himself, which would also potentially compromise the target, but this is a risk that he's willing to take.

After all, it's not like the quintuplets are involved.

Immediately, the map rune pings a location, and Fuutarou identifies it - in an alleyway behind a closed coffee shop. The map rune also detects three unknown signatures in the same immediate area as the target's ID, and the mage now spies the vehicle likely used for this kidnapping case, a third-generation black Suzuki Wagon R parked just outside the closed coffee shop.

Double-checking his Presence Concealment rune to make sure that it has remained active all throughout the night, Fuutarou springs into action. Leaping off the roof of his current building, he crosses the street, making as little noise as possible and using sound suppressing runes placed on the soles of his shoes to do so, to sneak up to the corner of the coffee shop where the alleyway begins. This is where he waits for a moment to eavesdrop on any conversations that may be going on to pick up any tidbits of information that could prove useful later on. But even before he begins to actively eavesdrop, he can already hear subdued groans and heavy breathing coming from down the alleyway.

"Oh...ohhhh yeah...dude, I haven't had a pair of tits this good since after that one concert I went to last year...high school girls are still the best...!"

"It was that one Mike S. concert, right? Come to think of it, he hasn't given one in a while..."

"Yeah, so like, whenever you're fuckin' done, dude, we ain't got all night just to sit here watching you titfuck this chick."

"You fuckin' kiddin' me, bro? Like _hell _I'm done with her, I haven't even gotten to the actual _good _part yet! As if _you'd _know anything about getting laid, you fuckin' loan shark piece 'a shit."

"Says the guy who needs to pay for whores or drug bitches off the streets to get laid, is that supposed to be some sorta accomplishment for you? Hey, Ichikawa, stop fuckin' recordin' this shit, where's the shit?"

"Ah fuck, I left them back in the car, it looks like..."

"Fucking dumbass, go fuckin' get it."

"Fine, shit, dude. You better not start 'til I can get back so I can record the rest of this, Kasai."

Footsteps begin as the last speaker is still talking, and they travel in Uesugi's direction at the corner of the coffee shop. Fuutarou, deciding on his course of action that he wants to take quickly, opts to wait for the thug named Ichikawa to pass by him to get to the Wagon to unlock it and begin rummaging through it for the things he'd accidentally left behind. When he's properly busy searching, muttering to himself irritably why he can't find what he's looking for, the young mage walks up to him from behind carefully and jams his left elbow swiftly into the back of Ichikawa's head, instantly rendering him unconscious and causing his body to slump messily against the seat of the car.

Pulling out the unconscious thug and propping him up on the asphalt against the rear right car tire, Fuutarou searches the car quickly himself and finds what Ichikawa was probably looking for: a small plastic bag of injector needles, all filled with a familiar white substance. Pocketing the bag of injectors for the time being, he then shoves Ichikawa's body into the car, searches his pockets for the key and takes it for himself, then closes the door and locks the car behind him as the mage himself takes Ichikawa's place and dives into the alleyway.

"Yo guys, I got 'em, what're we gonna do with these?" Fuutarou calls out casually to the others once he rounds the corner to where the other two thugs are. The guy named Kasai is in the middle of snapping pictures with his own phone of a girl, also clearly unconscious and slumped against the wall of the adjacent building next to the coffee shop, her messy upper body exposed with her high school uniform top forcibly removed and tossed aside, and the third unnamed assailant is sitting on an overturned plastic grate, also on his phone while having watched his buddy assault the girl.

The unfamiliar voice of Fuutarou, however, immediately grabs the other two men's attention, and they both stare back at him for a moment, as if not understanding what's going on.

"Hey, who the fuck are y - "

Fuutarou immediately puts his left hand against the side of Kasai's head and slams it against the wall next to the slumped girl. To the unnamed thug still sitting on his plastic grate, watching the young mage do this to his partner in crime is like watching someone smash a pie into someone else's face, except replace the pie with an actual human head and someone else's face with a brick wall. Unblinking, Fuutarou watches Kasai's eyes roll up somewhat in their sockets as blood slowly oozes down the wall where his head is pinned against it, and letting go of his head, he keeps his dull black eyes on the body as it crumples pathetically to a heap next to the unconscious girl.

"What the - hey, back off - !"

Noticing movement from the third thug, Fuutarou immediately identifies his movements as those of someone about to draw a gun, and without hesitation, he draws a playing card from his pocket faster than his adversary can draw his own weapon and flicks it. The Ace of Clubs jams itself square into the man's neck, lodging a corner in the middle of his trachea and blocking it off. Dropping his weapon that clatters onto the ground beside him, the unnamed hoodlum stumbles backwards, struggling to breathe but merely "inhaling" some of his own blood instead that clearly does not supply his lungs with the oxygen he needs to survive, so the only noises he can make as he falls on his back are pathetic gargles, a clear sign that he is drowning in his own blood.

Fuutarou didn't throw the card hard enough to pierce the spine, since the hoodlum is at least able to tear the card out of from his own neck with some admittedly impressive willpower, willpower that is unfortunately wasted on a worthless piece of trash like him. All he can do at this point as he suffocates on the ground, choking and retching, is stare weakly back up at Fuutarou who slowly walks over to him and simply stands over him, staring back down at his next victim until he expires. Once he confirms the gangster dead, the young mage retrieves the bloody card to remove the evidence, wiping the blood on the card against the suffocated man's shirt before pocketing it. He'll have to remember to put his dress pants into the laundry tonight to get rid of the smeared bloodstains inside the pocket.

Then, the young tutor turns to analyze his target. A first-year high schooler, just like himself - neat, metallic-brown hair that exposes her forehead is her most defining trait. Picking up the shirt that'd been forcibly removed from her, Fuutarou recognizes it and the discarded blazer nearby to be from his own school. A bit strange, since their school is quite the distance from these parts of the city, but he can attribute this to the gangsters' agenda. Checking her condition, Fuutarou monitors her heart rate, her light green eyes, her breathing - her condition is fine and is not in danger, but her symptoms match those of a Heisei user, and checking her body quickly, Fuutarou finds no telltale puncture mark of a needle. Perhaps she was forced to drink it, much in the way that he had when Nino gave him that drugged water a month ago.

Taking the tank top off the gangster named Kasai, Fuutarou uses it to wipe the girl's chest down thoroughly and tosses it back onto the concussed Kasai in mute disgust before planting a rune that wraps around the girl's midsection, then slowly rises up like a scanner to detect any amount of Heisei currently circulating through her system. The results are almost immediately conclusive, as the rune paints itself white the moment it begins scanning from its usual blue.

The student-mage ponders the situation at hand to himself as he works to remove the bodies himself, not opting to call in a clean-up crew to pick up after him this time since there is no need for their assistance. It would appear that Rio is back on the move again, once again hiring miscreants to do his dirty work of kidnapping people for the sake of testing out new strains of Heisei - but for the gangsters here to have been planning on testing the drug on this girl here in this random alleyway, it feels as though Rio is taking bolder moves. Rio should know, with his intervention at the quintuplets' attempted kidnapping, that he's in Fuutarou's magical turf, so is this a power move on Rio's part to fight back against Fuutarou's magical hegemony, or is it craftier than that by being a bait to draw him out? This clearly isn't a bait that he's familiar with, since nothing further has happened after he dispatched of the thugs here...perhaps Rio is monitoring these gangsters but is willing to sacrifice them to make sure to keep tabs on Fuutarou himself. Though if Fuutarou himself is being watched, he'd know about it.

Once he's stuffed the bodies of the thugs into the Suzuki's rear passenger seats, Fuutarou backtracks to clean up the blood splatters with his runes, meticulously removing each and every speck that he can find to remove all traces of his presence here. He spends by far the most amount of time cleaning, a good half an hour hunched over every blood spill to ensure that the alleyway was the way it was before it became tainted with death and abuse.

And once that's done, Fuutarou gathers the pistol that was dropped by the last hoodlum - a Glock 26 9mm handgun. Fuutarou scowls hard down at the subcompact firearm - mages have traditionally shunned modern technology, at least those who either come from families with deep-rooted ties to magic or have been raised and taught in a more conventional magical setting. But while newer-age and self-taught mages like Fuutarou are more willing to incorporate elements of the normal world into their art, even Uesugi draws the line at firearms.

With the rise in drug trafficking, naturally there will also be a growing illegal market for firearms such as this once drug gangs begin to form and turf wars begin to happen that require more than just a baseball bat and some brass knuckles. Fuutarou needs to step up his investigations throughout the city and stem the tide of drugs coming into and circulating around the city before it can get to that point, and he'll use these gangsters he's picked up to "help" him with that.

Fuutarou puts the shirt and blazer back on the girl and carries her back to the car, setting her in the front passenger seat this time and fetching her student handbook in her bag that's been left behind in the car to get her address.

"Matsui, huh..." he mumbles to himself.

A few moments later, a black Suzuki Wagon R rumbles down the street, away from the alleyway and coffee shop into the rest of the city night.

* * *

3:03 AM.

Nakano Miku lies in bed, eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling.

The feeling is back. The feeling that she is somewhere else. Even if she is very clearly in her own bed, in her own room, in her own home, Miku feels as if she is somewhere totally unfamiliar, when it is in reality a place that she should be more than intimately familiar with.

She does not even bother to sit up in bed again like before; resigning herself this time to the imminent horror, Miku closes her subtly glowing blue eyes, as though rendering herself unable to see her own physical surroundings will do anything to mitigate what she knows is about to hit her with the same traumatic force as always.

And the phantom pain returns as was foretold, striking Miku's body with a particularly fierce vengeance. Like before, the pain starts in her head, specifically branching out from her temples, but tonight, Miku feels her eyes begin to pulse painfully, her eyelids twitching as a result despite being closed. As Miku turns onto her left side underneath her covers and puts up her hands to her eyes to hold them in a desperate attempt to shield herself from this pain that she cannot stop, which is as futile as a kid raising her arms over her face to defend herself from bullies several grades older, the pain seizes control of her body, paralyzing her where she turns. Her breathing quickly becomes heavy, labored, and stifled, like she's being suffocated. Sweat once more leaks out of the pores in her skin all over her body at a sharply accelerated rate.

Even if they themselves are physically shrouded by their eyelids, Miku's rampant blue eyes, radiating darkly behind their warm curtains, tear open the visual portals to a vision that Miku does not want to see. There is no escaping what she is fated to see.

A mirror blood sea, once more - underneath the glass black sky.

Liquid drips audibly into the sea in all directions, one drop at a time.

Miku, for a brief moment, finds herself standing in the middle of this blood sea. As if she weren't gripped hard enough by fear already, upon realizing this, Miku feels absolutely terrified - for as many times as she has found herself in this horrible lucid dream, only a few times has she ever physically sensed herself to be part of this hellish landscape.

Because when she does, she sees the one thing that, more than anything else in her life, scares her the most.

Slowly, hesitantly, fearfully, Miku turns around.

She doesn't know why she turns around.

She doesn't have to turn around.

Nothing, not even the pain, is forcing her to turn around.

But she still turns around.

Because behind her, lying on its back on the surface of the blood sea, staring hollowly into the black glass sky, is a corpse.

Pale, cold, dead.

A beautiful woman whose beauty, like a snipped rose, has expired too soon.

It's not seeing the corpse alone that Miku is dreading.

It's the fact that as soon as she sets her terrified eyes on it, the corpse mutates white, as if turning itself into dry ice, crumbles, and evaporates right before her, with the bigger chunks of ice that fail to evaporate into carbon dioxide into the air and disappear sinking into the bloody waters beneath them.

Miku reaches out a feeble hand towards the corpse, even though she knows there is nothing she can do. Yet she does it anyway - and to add to this, she also tries to open her mouth and scream - even though she also knows her voice will not come out.

Not that she needs to, because that same shrill scream that she hears every time she sees this place once more shatters the cold, brittle air with

_**"MAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! ! !"**_

Miku's outstretched right arm slumps across her bed underneath the edge of her blanket as Miku finds herself once more, sweating and shivering like an abandoned and homeless kitten in the rain, back in her bed.

Sniffling, the third tortured quintuplet tries her best to hold back her complicated emotions, but the tears begin to flow against her will, so she remains on her side in bed in the middle of the night, allowing her tears to drip out of her eyes and down to her pillow for a minute before finally having the strength to at least turn over to bury her face into her pillow properly so that she can empty out her terror and heartbrokenness in liquid form.

Miku doesn't know how long she takes to cry her fill into her pillow, but she doesn't care. At least in the relative safety and isolation of her own room, she doesn't need to deal with anyone judging her for crying like this. She doesn't need to worry about people giving her weird looks or tell her mean things about her. Perhaps most importantly, she doesn't need to bother her sisters and get them to worry about her, because this is something Miku doesn't think can be shared with anyone, and especially not with her own quintuplet siblings. This has to be something she must keep to herself forever.

Or, at least, that's what she thought at first. Pain does wonders to change minds, it seems.

Finally sitting up, Miku wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands and gazes forlornly down at her blanket at her lap. These..."incidents"...she's not sure what to call them, exactly. Visions? Hallucinations? Lucid dreams? Nightmares? She's never been quite sure. But what she does know is that they happen completely randomly, without warning. That, and most of the time when they do happen, she usually experiences them in very strange, out-of-body-like sensations. But a few times like tonight, she will have a seemingly physical presence in that field, in that blood sea under the black glass sky. And every time that happens...

She doesn't know why there are two variants to this lucid nightmare of hers. It's already bad enough having to deal with the usual occurrence, but to have to be forced into that hellhole herself...

Clenching her fists tightly, Miku subconsciously converts her lingering fear and terror into anger and frustration. So tightly does she pack her fists that her nails begin to pierce the skin on her palm, drawing actual blood and causing real pain that pricks Miku's mind, reminding her the stark difference between the pain she feels now versus the pain she felt moments ago.

Miku's anger and frustration deflates rapidly once she realizes that she's hurt herself for real. She's done this before, getting riled up to the point where her usual fist-clenching becomes fierce enough to draw blood in this fashion. Nino, from whom she learns cooking from time to time, is the first to notice the scars on her palms, and Miku would prefer not to have anyone ask about such scars, so she's done her best to control her anger as best she can so that she doesn't end up with more scars. It would seem for tonight, she's failed that objective of hers.

Heaving her heavy legs out of bed, Miku keeps her palms facing upwards to keep her blood from dripping haphazardly and leaves her bedroom quietly to go down to the bathroom to clean up. She winces as she runs cold water over her palms and treats them with disinfectant wipes, but for as sharp as the pain is now, nothing will compare to the pain she feels whenever she gets those lucid nightmares.

Once she's done disinfecting and wiped her hands dry, Miku gazes down at her upturned palms before she starts wrapping gauze around both hands.

She can still remember the days when she first started having these nightmares. It wasn't like she was born with them - would they ever stop? Or will she have tortured nights like this for the rest of her life? As much as she wishes it not to be the latter, Miku has a sinking, hopeless feeling that it very well may be.

Just thinking about it makes Miku want to punch the mirror in front of her. But she doesn't, as that would practically invalidate the whole reason why she came down here to the bathroom to begin with - not to mention, she'd wake everyone else up for sure doing that too.

Hands dried and wrapped and with a heavy heart, Miku trudges back up the stairs and quietly closes the door behind her to return to bed.

Listening to Miku's door click shut, Nakano Ichika, also laying in bed amidst her piles of discarded clothes, trash, and other miscellaneous accessories, gazes into the wall next to her bed, underneath her curtained window.

For a moment before Ichika closes her eyes to return to sleep, a pair of soft, divine yellow lights float in her pupils.

* * *

"Fuutarou? Fuutarou ~ "

Waking motionlessly to a soft but soothingly familiar voice, Uesugi Fuutarou inhales slowly but deeply as he promptly sits back up in his seat in his homeroom class, having fallen asleep during his last class of the day. The clock at the front of the classroom reads almost four in the afternoon, clearly well past the time that school has ended.

"You didn't need to come back for me, Miku," he murmurs, picking up the messenger bag next to him that he hadn't even bothered opening for his books and notes.

Nakano Miku, in her usual school clothes of a drab blue cardigan, white button-up dress shirt, green pleated skirt, dark thighhighs, and Audio Technica headphones, stands to Fuutarou's right, straightening up now that she's successfully woken up her tutor.

"It was late, and you'd fallen asleep during our last class. I called my sisters to see if any of them ran into you on their way home, which is usually what happens when you come over to tutor," Miku states, demonstrating her own perceptive ability. "So I figured you were still sleeping here."

"With deduction skills like that, I kinda have to wonder how you can't pass your tests."

"Mmm! That was uncalled for!" Miku pouts back at him suddenly. "And I'm trying my best, too."

"I know. And sorry about the joke, I had to."

Looking down at his desk since he's noticed a piece of paper that he doesn't recognize that someone must've slipped underneath his arms as he was dozing, Fuutarou picks it up as he reads its contents.

"Our homeroom teacher put that there. He was going on about how since you always sleep in his classes, you must already know all the material, so he's left those as instructions to have you make a study guide for the entire class."

"I vaguely remember him talking about something like that, yeah." Fuutarou opens his messenger bag and slips the study guide instructions sheet inside before clasping it up again, and Miku watches him put the paper away.

"Sorry that he's been trying to get back at you. I wish we could tell him what's going on," Miku mumbles apologetically, still gazing sadly at her tutor's bag.

"Don't bother, this isn't something worth getting worked up over. Besides, it's also something that...you can't exactly just _tell _someone about, you know?"

These words resonate much more deeply within Miku than she expected, and she briefly looks up at him to meet his own dull black eyes before lowering them quickly again and nodding slowly.

"...yeah. I know...that feeling."

Fuutarou watches Miku's reaction, having sensed a slight change in her tone of voice with that last discourse.

"Something bothering you, Miku?"

Sharply looking back up at Fuutarou, the third quintuplet, alarmed at her tutor's own sharp perception, reflexively shakes her head, blurting out before she can think her actions through,

"N-No, not at all...I'm...I'm okay..."

"Hm. Sorry I asked, I guess I was overthinking that. Let's get going."

Miku trots after Fuutarou, following him as the two first-years begin to make their way out of the school grounds.

"I've been meaning to ask, but...is there a particular reason why you sleep at school?" Miku asks out of curiosity. She's more than happy to simply walk beside her tutor in comfortable silence, but now that she's woken Fuutarou up this afternoon, the question has formed in her mind as they step out to the school plaza.

"Mages either operate during the middle of the night or in ways so that they can't be seen or otherwise observed by others. So being at school, where there are a lot of people around, I don't need to worry about getting ambushed by another mage or worry about them trying anything funny," Fuutarou answers swiftly, almost as though he wasn't sleeping fifteen minutes ago. "It's rather convenient; I work throughout the night, come to school and get sleep wherever I need to, then go back home or go tutor you girls before going back to do other work."

"So it's a safe place for you to get some rest?"

"More or less."

"Why not just sleep at home? It's not like you _need _to come to school, right?"

"Wow, and I thought _I _was the blunt one."

"I-I'm just saying it how it is," Miku defends herself quickly, again with another pout.

"Fair enough. I would, actually, but..."

The quintuplet's tutor takes a pause as the two of them hit the streets and step off the school campus, waiting for a crosswalk signal to turn green for them.

"The thing is, as you've seen yourself, my line of work is pretty dirty. I've made plenty of enemies along the way with what I do, any one of whom could turn up in this city to attack me. I don't want to involve my own family or, even worse, get them caught up in the crossfire if that ever happens. So whenever I'm with my dad and my sister, I'm always keeping an eye out. So I've decided that the best place to get some sleep is at school where it's the least likely that people are going to try some shit. It's scummy of me to potentially put the lives of other kids at school on the line rather than my own family, even if statistically speaking it's next to impossible that anyone's gonna attack the school directly because of me, but the fact of the matter is that I care about my family more than random other kids at school, and so I'll prioritize their safeties above everyone else's."

The signal turns green, and Fuutarou and Miku cross the street, passing other pedestrians along the way. Dwelling on Fuutarou's last words silently, Miku walks for a while with her eyes pasted on the sidewalk.

"No...that's not scummy at all. I would do the same," Miku finally speaks up. "Isn't it natural for you to want to look after your own family and keep them safe?"

"It probably should be, yeah."

"Actually, now that you mention that, since you're working with us now, how does that change things for you?"

"Doesn't really change much, if I'm gonna be honest. I still do my whole routine of working through the night, coming to school to sleep for the most part, and then head back home or go do whatever I need to. I suppose the only real difference it makes is that if something _does _happen at school during the middle of the day, my top priority is making sure you and your sisters are safe above everyone else. It's part of the reason why all six of us are in the same class, because if something does happen during school, chances are it'll be in the middle of class."

"...is that why all of us are in the same class together?"

"You're telling me it took you _that _long to figure that one out?"

"W-Well, I thought - we thought it was only because we'd transferred in a week late, and it was just going to be a temporary thing..."

Fuutarou shakes his head. "I had your dad arrange for the school administration to move five kids from our class out to other classes during the first week of school, before the five of you joined, so that there'd be room for all of us to be in the same class."

"P-Papa can do something like that...?"

"He's the head physician of the best hospital in the city. While you might not think that someone like him would have much power in the grand scheme of things, he can pull quite a few strings, more than you can imagine. How else did you think he was able to transfer you and your sisters out to Asahiyama?"

"I mean, we knew _that_ part...but...being able to get us all in the same class..."

Scowling heavily, Fuutarou clicks his tongue irritably. "Your dad spends so little time with you all that you're not even aware of just how powerful of a person he is in this city? That fucking bastard."

Miku raises a cautionary hand up to Fuutarou. "It's...it's okay. We're used to him working most of the time..."

"Mm. And I guess I've got no room to criticize him for that either..."

Lowering her hand once Fuutarou backs off from verbally attacking Mr. Nakano on his own, Miku begins to sport a very small smile.

"Fuutarou, are you getting more comfortable being around us?" she asks with this sudden change of topic.

"Hm? What do you mean?"

"Oh, like, um...you talked with me about some of your other work. I figured you didn't want to talk about stuff like that...since you told us before that you'd rather keep stuff like that to yourself just for our sake, and for the sake of keeping your tutoring and your mage work separate."

"Well, this was stuff I didn't mind talking about since it's not like I'm going into detail about my mage stuff. It's also understandable for you to ask why I'm sleeping in class all the time since that's not exactly normal student behavior. And, of course, you're someone who knows me a bit better than our average classmate, so I'm more willing to talk more about stuff like this."

Miku feels her cheeks warm themselves when she hears the last reason.

"But am I opening up to you girls? Maybe I am. I just can't be bothered to tell for sure myself." Fuutarou pauses again. "...and I hope you don't take that the wrong way."

"It's okay, I'm used to you being insensitive."

"You get what you pay for."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"As in, I'm being paid to be your tutor and look out for you. Getting all intimate and such wasn't part of the terms of contract, so I don't need to be bothered with stuff like that."

Pouting a third time, Miku glares playfully up at her tutor. But before she can think about what she's about to say, she finds herself asking,

"So what if your contract _did _tell you to do that?"

"Cut the contract."

Slumping over, Miku hangs her head and arms in instant depression. "Fuutarou...you really _are _an insensitive dummy, aren't you..."

"I'm serious, though. How the fuck am I gonna get all friendly with someone like Nino?" Fuutarou's face contorts horrifically with disgust and fear. "Imagine being friends with someone like Nino, can't be me!"

Fuutarou's reaction causes Miku to let loose a snort of laughter, which she quickly stifles even though she wants to laugh harder than this.

"See? You agree with me on that one," Fuutarou points out to the Miku who's struggling to contain her laughter.

"N...No...F-Fuutarou, I wasn't..."

"Lies, all lies! Just let it out, Miku, laugh at Nino with me! You know you want to!"

_"I'm not laughing AT her...!" _the third quint insists with a squiggly smile still lingering on her face. "B-But seriously! Nino isn't...isn't as bad as you think, Fuutarou."

"Oh, is she now? Convince me." Fuutarou crosses his arms in jest, holding his head up high.

"Nino is actually a very sweet girl underneath that tough, bratty facade of hers. Once you can get past that facade, she'll open up to you."

"So they're what those otaku kids call 'tsundere' or something like that?"

"Um...yeah, actually, she's probably a tsundere, to be honest."

Once more, the young tutor's expression twists to express his confusion.

"Nino being a tsundere makes sense, I guess, but _sweet?_ Forget the 'dere', she's got as much of a potty mouth as I do, and she can throw some mean punches, too," Fuutarou remarks as he recalls all his moments with Nino. "She's gotta be all 'tsun'. Granted, she's bought some stuff for me, but that's not because she genuinely cares about me or anything like that."

"Like those Hawaiian clothes during our vacation last week?"

"Yeah. She also bought a crepe for my sister when we ran into her at Tsutaya's last month, so that was nice of her. But again, I can't really imagine getting along with her."

Miku smiles again, this time with a more kindhearted tone. "If you approach her in good faith, she'll come through for you one day," she says reassuringly. "I'm sure of it. She always does, even for me."

"In good faith, you say..." Fuutarou scratches his head. "I mean, I've been doing that, or at least I think I have. What else do you mean by that?"

Chuckling, Miku looks back up at her tutor warmly.

"Isn't figuring that out _your _job as our tutor?" she points out, the afternoon May sun soothingly illuminating her face and peachy-red hair. "And besides, you wouldn't get it even if I told you."

"I'll agree with you on that one."

Suddenly, a particularly large growling comes from one of their stomachs, and it isn't Miku's.

"Nngh...ignore that," Fuutarou tries to brush it off, but Miku immediately steps in front of her tutor to get him to stop in his tracks.

"Fuutarou, be honest with me," she demands in a low voice, half-pouting, half-glaring back up at him. "When was the last time you ate?"

Cringing with silent embarrassment, the young mage averts his gaze while putting his hand over his mouth.

"I didn't get a chance to pick up dinner or breakfast," he admits finally after deciding he probably shouldn't lie straight into his own student's face.

"Then I'll buy you something. We passed by a McDonald's just now, didn't we?" Miku points past Fuutarou, back at the restaurant that they walked by a few minutes ago.

"You don't need to, I can just wait until dinner later toni - "

"I don't want our tutor teaching us on an empty stomach," Miku pouts a fourth time. To add emphasis, she straightens up her back and mimics Fuutarou with his crossed arms, even throwing in a chin turn to look away from him to assume an air of supreme self-righteousness.

"Okay, _Itsuki_, calm down."

Fuutarou's joke instantly breaks Miku's guard, and she doubles over snorting out another laugh that she again must stifle.

"Are my jokes really _that _funny, or are you just one of those weird people who laughs at anything that sounds even _remotely _funny?" Fuutarou wonders aloud as Miku has to regain composure once again.

"It's because you don't seem like someone who can make jokes like that, and so when you do, they're funnier than they have any right to be!" Miku blurts out in frantic self-defense, mainly of her pride.

"Okay, good. You didn't seem like the type, anyway." Sighing, the tutor begins to turn around. "Fine, I'll bite - pun not intended. Don't laugh at _that_, either."

"I won't, sheesh."

So the two of them double back to the McDonald's so that they can get Fuutarou a quick bite to eat, lining up in the relatively short line.

"I'll just get something small...something like - " Fuutarou begins to say, but Miku raises a hand up to him to stop him.

"Get a combo. And make it at least a medium. You get a small, and I'm making _you _pay for it."

"...then I just won't get anything if that's gonna be the case."

Miku simply pouts for a fifth time back up at him.

"...Miku, you can't just pout at everything that you don't agree with just because."

"You can't stop me." So Miku keeps pouting back up at him.

"Ugh...fine. I'll go with that...that 'Mega Teriyaki' or whatever..."

So the two of them head up to the register when called, place their order, and split up after they do so so that Miku can find the two of them a table while Fuutarou fills up his fountain drink.

"Did you see the cashier when she saw you pull out your card?" Fuutarou groans as he plops himself down across from Miku in their small two-seater table along the wall of the McDonald's. "She looked like she was gonna bite my damn head off for making you pay for me."

"You deserve it, for not taking care of yourself properly for the past twelve hours," Miku retaliates swiftly.

"Look, that's not...oh forget it."

Resigning himself to his perhaps undeserved loss, Fuutarou sips on his blue Powerade as they wait for his order to be called.

"By the way, you didn't get anything?" he asks, gesturing back at his student.

"Oh, no, not really. I had lunch so I'm not very hungry yet."

"Okay. And what about the others? I'm already running late for tutoring today because I slept in at school, so with this we're gonna be even more late."

"I texted the others already, so they know. They'll be waiting for us back at home."

"Assuming Ichika doesn't leave again for work."

"I mean, with how late we'll be arriving, yeah, she probably will."

"Bleh." Fuutarou lets his tongue hang out in defeat. "I'll have to start sleeping earlier in class, then."

"I never thought I'd actually hear those kinds of words get spoken _seriously _like that..."

Having checked his smartwatch, which alerts him to a few new emails that he's received, Fuutarou pulls out his phone to check them, so their conversation is truncated for the time being. This gives Miku some time to herself, which she spends surveying the rest of the McDonald's, in which, besides themselves, there are a handful of other people, including two high school girls, wearing the same base uniform as she is with the white dress shirt and green pleated skirt, are sitting together nearby at their own table, chatting it up animatedly.

"I just don't know what to do for our date. It's coming up this weekend, too..."

"This is your first date, right?"

"Yeah. You gotta help me, Otorin ~ "

"How the heck do you want _me _to help with you something like that? Figure it out yourself."

"Waaahh, that's mean ~ ! That's why no one ever wants to go out with you, since you're always so cold and distant like that..."

"Well, I was never interested in that type of thing to begin with..."

As the girls nearby continue to converse and banter, Miku finds her own blue eyes drifting back into place, eventually settling back onto Fuutarou who is still on his phone, now texting a reply back to one of the emails he's received.

Then, it hits her.

Hearing his order called, Fuutarou swiftly pockets his phone and fetches his meal, returning with it and an extra set of napkins.

"You alright, Miku? Your face's lookin' kinda red there," Fuutarou notes down at his friend and student. "You ought'a be taking care of yourself, no?"

Miku weakly shakes her head, wishing that her bangs were longer so that they could hide even more of her face than they already do.

"...it's...it's not that..." she mumbles bashfully, pulling on her headphones to isolate herself from her own embarrassment.


	23. Effort

"Wake up, samurai. I've got a city to save - and you're gonna help me do it."

A young man with a bowl cut, unkempt wifebeater, and torn jeans stirs uncomfortably and is compelled to wake up, finding himself in a dimly lit room of some kind with only a single lit incandescent lightbulb hanging directly over his head like the Sword of Damocles. He looks as though he ought to be in university, yet instead here he is, somewhere where he doesn't remember going to and still feeling a painful throb in the back of his head.

After a few lethargic minutes that he spends to regain enough of his senses to carry a cohesive conversation, the man tries to move his arms but finds that he cannot, for they are tied behind his back to this plastic folding chair that he's forced to sit on, as are his ankles to the chair legs.

"Who the hell are you? Where am I?" the young man croaks tiredly. Having been out for an undetermined period of time, he can feel the exhaustion in his limbs, that his body hasn't exactly gotten the best of rest while he was out. He can't seem to remember how he knocked out exactly, either.

"Sorry, I wasn't aware that you were the one who's supposed to be asking questions. How does it feel, sitting in that chair like a little bitch and still having the balls to be asking questions like that like you run this damn place? Must be nice being that fucking stupid."

"Bro, what the fuck do you want from me? I ain't got money, and I don't know shit. You're not gonna get anything from me, I'm tellin' ya right now," the restrained man growls roughly, struggling a few times to try to break his limbs free, but the knots are too well tied to allow such an easy escape.

"No, I think you do know something. That's why you're still alive right now and not dead as a fucking rat in some ditch outside the city."

Hearing a few ominous footsteps, the man on the chair looks up just in time to find a boy younger than himself, sporting a black cap, black hoodie, and black dress slacks with a black half-kilt trailing behind his legs, step into view of the light. Just like his clothes, the young boy's eyes are also black - perhaps an even darker shade of black.

"That's why you're here, Ichikawa," Uesugi Fuutarou murmurs in a small voice that demands great authority and no questioning. "You will answer my questions and tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. At any point that I feel you are not doing this, there will be consequences. Do you understand? Good, I hope you will."

"Bro, I don't even fucking know who you are - "

As Ichikawa is groaning his protest, Fuutarou doesn't even let him finish - he talks right over the captured hoodlum, calling out without taking his dull black eyes of his prisoner,

"Yo, toss me the bat."

Uesugi Isanari, leaning against the wall in the darkness observing the interrogation under way silently as a bystander at first, reaches next to him and grabs a metal baseball bat that's leaning against the wall near him, tossing it over to his son upon the latter's request. And before Ichikawa realizes what's going on because his sluggish mind doesn't process the word "bat" fast enough, Fuutarou catches the bat, pivots on his left foot, pulls the bat back, and swiftly swings the bat down on Ichikawa's left knee.

The swift **_CRACK_ **of a human kneecap getting split down the middle bounces off the cold, hard walls of the interrogation room and continues to ricochet, much like the screams that Ichikawa now releases from the bottom of his gut with the pain.

"What did I say? What did I _**FUCKING**_ say?" Fuutarou hisses intensely, dropping the bat onto the ground and leaning forward to his interrogation victim. He forcefully seizes Ichikawa by the scruff, forcing him to look back at him through strained and narrowed eyes that are contorted with pain. "Did I say you could be the one asking questions around here? What is this, kindergarten at the playground where the fucking teacher's telling everyone to share the goddamn swing set? Or are you so fucking stupid that you never learned how to fucking listen to your teachers when you were in school? Better question, did you even _go _to fucking school with a small-ass brain like that in your fucking head? Little piece of shit, stop fucking screaming already, it's just one knee and you still got the other one."

Kicking aside the bat where he's dropped it and watching it roll off to the other side of the room, Fuutarou turns his attention back to Ichikawa, who's trying his best to comply with Uesugi's demands, now that he's learned the hard way not to go against his interrogator's demands.

"O-Okay...I'll...I'll try to answer whatever...but I don't know anything, I swear...!" he chokes and grunts amidst sharp gasps of pain, which at least have put all of his cognitive senses on full blast so he is now _very _responsive, at least compared to how he was a few minutes ago.

"No, you do, motherfucker." Fuutarou narrows his own eyes down at Ichikawa. "Yesterday night, May 10th, Friday morning. You and two buddies of yours kidnapped a high school girl named Matsui and took her to an alleyway in the southern district of the city, where one of your buddies assaulted her and you stood by watching, taking pictures, and recording the entire incident. You then were instructed by the other buddy of yours to go get some drugs from your vehicle and bring it back to your group in the alley."

As his interrogator rattles off the happenings of that night, Ichikawa finds himself trembling harder the more he listens to Fuutarou.

"Y-You followed us there...?! But there wasn't anyone we saw that night who was following us - "

Without missing a beat, Fuutarou raises his right foot and curb-stomps Ichikawa's right foot. The sheer force that Fuutarou puts into his stomp is not one that should come from someone like him with a somewhat scrawny and lanky build, because the horrendous jolts of pain that fire up from Ichikawa's foot alert him terribly that his foot is now broken.

"You seized a _high school girl _and dragged her off into some random-ass corner somewhere in the city just so that you and your boys could whack off for the night? You couldn't even go downtown and buy a hooker for a night? Drug trafficking's supposed to be a lucrative business right now, isn't it? What, with the fucking police raiding caches all around the city every fucking week!" Fuutarou now pitches his escalating voice into a roar so that he can be heard over Ichikawa's refreshed waves of shrieks from having his right foot broken down the middle too, and finding the screams of his victim to be old news real fast, Fuutarou swiftly pops Ichikawa in the face with his right fist to first cut the screams short, then firmly grips the hoodlum's neck in a chokehold with a single hand so that the most amount of noise he can make are mere gurgles. "Having to listen to your dumb screams is getting on my fucking nerves, bitch. I deal with people screaming at me almost every fucking day; I don't need _your _dumb ass to add to that."

Roughly letting go of Ichikawa, Fuutarou pulls back as a small blue rune remains where his hand has left his neck like a choker. Ichikawa for his part coughs violently, finally getting a chance to breathe properly.

"I - I already - told you that I ain't got shit for cash! If it were - if it were really _that _easy to just go downtown and fuck a whore for the night, ya think we wouldn't'a already done that?!" the interrogated man coughs back hoarsely, but then he panics at the sight of Fuutarou approaching him again with a raised fist, threatening silently to punch him out again. "I-I mean, we didn't have any cash on us! We're not rich, me and my boys are just grunts in our gang, dude! We just do all the dirty work!"

"Yeah, and apparently part of your dirty work involves using a high school girl's tits as a goddamn cocksleeve, is that true?"

"Look, we figured we might as well have some fun with her while we had the chance! For what it's worth, I don't know what you did to him, but Kobayashi wasn't into that, so it's not like we _planned _from the beginning to do that to her!"

Raising an eyebrow, Fuutarou folds his arms slowly and menacingly.

"You said 'while we had the chance'. What do you mean by that? Explain why you needed that girl in the first place if dragging her into an alleyway to 'have some fun with her' wasn't on the agenda at first."

"Look, all we were told to do was find that girl, take her somewhere where no one would be, and then inject her with some needles, with some 'a that Heisei shit. It's - it's all the rage right now in the city, surely you know that!"

"Yeah, I certainly do. Thanks to punk-ass motherfuckers like you, it's a fucking weekly occurrence, soon to be a daily one if this keeps up."

"That ain't my fucking problem, dude, I'm just here to make some goddamn money! Makin' it out here in the big city's fucking tough, bro! I ain't no - no bourgeoisie like you!"

Out of the blue, Fuutarou starts to chuckle, causing his tense and murderous expression to lighten up, even for a little. But the way his chuckle is produced wouldn't convince you that his facial expression is any lighter.

"Bourgeoisie aside...alright, you took that girl so that you could inject her with some shit. But you know what I'm gonna ask you next: why the fuck would you wanna do that? Because right now, from what you're telling me, it really sounds an awful lot like a fucking date rape, doesn't it? One of you asks out this high school girl late at night, drags her off somewhere, shoots up some Heisei into her, and then brings his other boys over to have your way with her."

As he speaks, Fuutarou seamlessly transitions his right hand behind his back, where a small blue storage rune appears out of Ichikawa's line of sight so that he can fluidly draw Kobayashi's dropped Glock 26 subcompact, disengage the safety with a small but no less ominous _click_, and aim it straight down at Ichikawa's crotch.

"Tell me why I shouldn't just bust a cap in your nuts right fucking now, you little shit," Fuutarou growls seethingly, his voice so packed with vile contempt and disgust that even the hairs on the back of Isanari's neck rise to attention, despite not even being the one that Fuutarou is interrogating. Ichikawa, on the other hand, is flung into full panic mode at the sight of his interrogator pulling a piece on him, especially down at his balls.

"I-I-I ain't t-tryin'a lie, bro, you gotta believe me!" he shrieks, but this time not in pain, though of course there's still a hefty amount of it lingering from his broken left kneecap and his broken right foot. "Our j-job for that night was just to give her those Heisei needles! Yeah, okay, we - we probably shouldn't have - "

_**"PROBABLY?"**_

_"W-W-We SHOULDN'T have - !" _the hoodlum begins to break, screaming out his correction upon kneejerk reaction. "We sh-shouldn't have done anything to her, but we did, okay?! There!"

"And _why? _You're not telling me _why_, motherfucker! Any fucking idiot can just go to you dipshits, grab a few needles, and shoot themselves up into a fucking coma whenever they goddamn want, so that Matsui girl sure as hell didn't need _you _bastards to come over and shoot her up _for _her!"

"I don't know! I seriously don't know, dude! All I know was that Kasai got those needles saying that our boss wanted us to go use them on one of our customers! He didn't care who, just anyone that we felt like! So we just went with whoever was supposed to be our next customer and she happened to be it! But I can't tell you anything beyond that because I literally don't know! I don't know if those needles got some kinda different kind 'a Heisei or what!"

A small, evil smile comes over Fuutarou's lips as he lowers his captured handgun.

"Oh, then if that's the case...it's a good time to find out what it does, don't you think?"

Blinking a few times up at his captor, Ichikawa feels his breathing stifle on its own as dread replaces the panic in his body, which then evolves into terror. Fuutarou nods over at his father, who then pushes off the wall against which he's leaning to drag another heavy-sounding chair across the room, into view of the dim light of the incandescent light bulb hanging over Ichikawa that has seen countless scenes like this one, far too many for such an ordinary, dingy light bulb like itself. Ichikawa's terror goes nuclear as soon as Isanari moves out of the way to reveal why the chair sounded far heavier than it should: his buddy Kasai is also strapped to the chair like himself, but his open eyes are unfocused and glazed, like the eyes of a corpse even though he is still breathing. There are no signs of torture or physical abuse on him like what Ichikawa has gone through so far...which terrifies the restrained hoodlum even more as he can't help but stare with eyes wide and screaming internally with abject horror at what will come next.

Without saying another word to sugarcoat what he's about to do, Fuutarou, after slipping the gun into his left pocket after re-engaging the safety, produces the ziplock baggie of the Heisei needles Ichikawa had been tasked to bring back on that night, withdraws one needle, and injects it. He doesn't inject it into a muscle, though - he injects the drug directly into Kasai's jugular vein.

With the second captured hoodlum's already vegetative state, nothing happens immediately, but judging by Fuutarou's reaction of standing by and waiting intently, it would seem that something should soon happen - and it does. Slowly but surely, the veins, arteries, and capillaries, beginning from the area of the injection point at the jugular vein, fade to black, a deep black that, even in these suboptimal lighting conditions, throbs visibly to the three other men in the room who behold it. The blackness spreads like diseased molasses, inching its way throughout the rest of the body, and during its slow and silently horrifying progress, the blood vessels in Kasai's limp eyeballs also blacken, marring the white albumens. Soon after, without warning, the blood vessels inside the eyes burst, causing a leakage of black blood to leak out of the sockets and drip down onto the drugged man's lap.

But it doesn't stop there. While the drug continues to circulate painfully slowly to reach every corner of the body, many of the blood vessels in the earlier afflicted areas, just like the ones in the eyes, also begin to burst, producing nasty black bruises that begin to cover Kasai's body, and nearby those bruises, the sweat pores become clogged with black blood. Such blood also begins to leak out of the nostrils, then the corners of the mouth - about five minutes after the initial injection, the eyes of the man are completely black, with the boundary between the pupil and sclera barely even noticeable by this point.

Needless to say, Kasai is no longer breathing.

"Fascinating," Fuutarou smirks sarcastically before turning to his absolutely terrified prisoner whose fear has finally numbed the pain in his broken kneecap and foot. "Looks like you weren't lying when you said you didn't know what this did."

Tears are already gushing out of Ichikawa's own eye sockets as he finally manages to tear his gaze off the internally disintegrated body of his fellow gangbanger back up at the young mage.

"...d...don't...don't to that...to me..." he finally manages to whisper. "...I've...I've told you everything, man...I don't know anything besides that, I swear..."

"No, you know something that I still want to know," Fuutarou replies coolly, now fully turning to Ichikawa and ignoring the decomposing corpse behind him. "Who do you work for? Who's your boss?"

The fear, ironically, puts Ichikawa in a more rational mindset now that he's not trying to resist interrogation or deal with the pain from his own afflicted areas, and he lowers his head in an effort to recollect.

"He's...he goes by...Shirazumi...Rio, I think..."

"Shirazumi Rio," Fuutarou repeats quietly, matching his victim's tone. "What does he look like?"

"I...I don't know...we...we never really met him much...we've probably only met him like...once or twice..." he mumbles feebly. "I can't...I can't remember..."

"You don't need to remember what he looks like."

"...huh?"

As Ichikawa looks up in slight confusion, he finds Fuutarou's right hand right in front of his face. And before he can react, the hand presses firmly against his cranium, eliciting a cry of shock at first that quickly mutates into a gargled choking, which in turn fades into silence.

A few moments is all it takes to render the tortured hoodlum braindead, and Fuutarou pulls his hand away. Ichikawa's eyes, still open and listless, remain staring and glazed in their sockets, much like Kasai's eyes before the injection.

"So, kid? What'd you find?" the young mage's father asks with a wry smirk of his own.

"Kasai didn't know what Rio looks like, but Ichikawa did. He met him before, back when he initially got recruited into Rio's gang." Fuutarou looks up from Ichikawa's corpse and stares into the opposite wall intently, as if in deep thought. "I know what he looks like, at least. But Ichikawa wasn't lying when he said he and his boys were just low-tier grunts in Rio's network; they didn't know anything else. Nothing on Rio's gang's HQ, if they even have one at all, or where his last known whereabouts are."

Isanari steps back into the dim incandescent light as his son is talking.

"So what's the plan now?" the father asks.

"I need to update Dragon with the profile of Shirazumi Rio; I'll do that once we're done cleaning up here. Once Dragon's got his profile, we can set the network to history scan; if he's a decent mage, he'll know about it and make sure to keep himself off the radar, but it's worth at least checking to see if he's a competent enough mage or not to remember to do that. If we're lucky, he'll be an idiot and let himself get tracked wherever he goes throughout the city, but that probably won't happen. And in the meantime, I need to meet with Mr. Nakano."

Isanari nods sagely, pointing at the video camera that's been clandestinely installed on a tall bipod in the shadows, recording the entire interrogation scene, including the drugging of Kasai. "Make sure to take the footage with you."

Nodding back, Fuutarou slips the baggie that he's been holding that still holds two more Heisei needles into his small blue storage rune before getting started with his dad on cleanup and body disposal.

* * *

_"I don't gotta have a secret lie, or an alibi, everybody knows why I'm here - "_

Humming some more nondescript English lyrics to himself, with his own pair of Audio Technica headphones on, Uesugi Fuutarou carefully browses the ready-made food section of the local Izumi supermarket that is on the way to the Pentagon, the high-rise where the Nakano family's penthouse is located. Equipped with his messenger bag and dressed in his usual street clothes of his own high school uniform, the young tutor and mage scans each product with bloodshot but stubbornly vigilant eyes, as though exerting a Herculean effort to pick out the very best of the foods the supermarket has on offer.

"You seem to be looking for something in particular, boy!" a jovial middle-aged woman in an Izumi supermarket apron, having noticed Fuutarou browse through the shelves and deciding to attend to him as he's the only customer at the ready-made food section at this time of the day, calls out heartily to get his attention. "If we don't have what you're looking for, tell me what you want and I can tell you if we can't make it for you here! We've got some time on our hands."

"Do you, ma'am? I see, thank you very much," Fuutarou nods with a professional smile in thanks as he pulls off his headphones and pauses his music to give her his full attention and, of course, to demonstrate proper manners. "Actually, I'm not looking for anything in particular...mainly because I don't really know _what _I'm looking for..."

"Mhm, and that'd be a bit of a problem, huh? But I totally get you, sometimes you're just so hungry that you don't know what to eat, right? This ol' girl was your age once; some things never change no matter what generation it is," the clerk nods sagely, mainly at herself, though.

"Well, it's not meant for me. I just wanted to pick something up for a few friends."

"Ah, grabbing something for your friends now? You're quite the thoughtful boy. Kids these days on their phones and talking about whatever the heck, always only buying things for themselves - I've seen it all!" the woman scoffs scornfully. "But I digress! In that case, I recommend something that you can share easily. And among that, we have..."

Looking around quickly across the supermarket wares, the clerk spies the food she's thinking of and gestures over to it as she and Fuutarou follow her lead.

"Dango!" she announces proudly. "Can't beat dango as a snack, especially in your case when you want to share it with friends also. And you're in luck - we made these fresh early this morning!"

Picking up a pack of Mitarashi dango, Fuutarou scans it for himself, slowly growing thankful that he's decided to talk with the lady behind the counter.

"We had concerns given to us by customers that the dango that used to be made here before I got hired was too sweet. My aunt used to run a dango shop in this city and she had me work there during vacation time. Those were the good ol' days, yes they were ~ " the lady sighs nostalgically. "Sadly the shop closed down while the city first began rapidly expanding; they needed the space for development and so it had to be demolished. My aunt and uncle were properly compensated, of course, but sometimes I miss working there, you see? So when I heard management talking about their dango problem, guess what happened next?"

"You requested to switch positions to make dango?"

"That's right! Make 'em how my aunt used to, how dango was _supposed _to be made! And I'll agree with the customers, the ones they sell at convenience stores and other supermarkets are far too sweet. But _these_ \- " the lady taps the small plastic dango packs on her side of the counter. "These are the real deal. Five dango, three in a pack, with just the right amount of soy sauce glaze - not too much so that all you can taste is the glaze, but not so little that you can only taste the dango. Just right texture and firmness - not too firm that you have to work to eat it, but not too soft that it melts too fast in your mouth. _This _is the quintessential Japanese snack, perfect for palettes of Japanese generations then, now, and henceforth!"

"I'll take two, please," Fuutarou announces abruptly, picking up another pack of three quintuplet Mitarashi dango.

"Thank you, thank you, you're far too kind beyond your years. Plus, you've let this old girl reminisce a little about her glory days, so here!"

The lady grabs a third pack of dango, rummages behind the counter for a moment before standing back up to slap a little "PAID" sticker over it, and hands it over the counter to Fuutarou.

"That's on the house; all I ask is for you to enjoy it!" the lady laughs heartily. "Oh, and of course, make sure to tell your friends about us, too!"

"I will, thank you."

Bidding goodbye to the clerk, Fuutarou takes his leave so that he can go pay for two of the dango packs. That lady reminded him of his boss over at Revival an awful lot...

"F-Fuutarou?"

About to pull his headphones back on, the young mage lets them rest again around his neck as he turns around in the aisle that he's walking through to reach the cashiers on the other side of the supermarket to turn towards yet another familiar voice that's called out his name.

"...we seem to be running into each other quite a bit these days, Miku," the young mage replies, raising a hand briefly to greet one of his students. "What're you doing here?"

The third quintuplet, holding a shopping basket by her left elbow, also lowers her own Audio Technicas upon calling out to him and happily smiles after successfully getting his attention.

"I came by to pick up some groceries for Nino. I also drank one of the drinks she was keeping in the fridge on accident the other night, so she wants me to pick up another drink for her. What about you? I didn't expect to run into you in the supermarket, of all places..."

"Yeah, this isn't usually a place where we'd meet, huh," Fuutarou nods in agreement. "But I was just grabbing a snack for you girls for today's auxiliary tutoring. You weren't going grocery shopping to skip out on today's tutoring, were you?"

"Mmmmuuu! I haven't skipped a single tutoring session yet, and _that's _the first thing you say?" Pouting like always every time they interact, Miku raises her fists to her chest to display her indignance at her tutor.

"I mean, I can never be sure, right? Yotsuba even missed a tutoring session earlier this week for the first time because apparently someone in the basketball team had to miss practice for one reason or another and she couldn't just leave them alone. And with Ichika going off on her own for her work, you're the next to go, if we follow the patterns."

"I won't miss a tutoring session like the others! I have to set an example."

"Why, because you're the one who scores the highest?"

Miku nods assertively.

"That so. Well, just know that if in case you _do _have to miss a day for whatever reason, you have my word that I won't get _as _mad at you for it."

"But you'd still get mad at me for it, huh?"

"Of course! That's a day that I'm _not _getting paid to do my work. You think I'll let you off the hook for something like missing a full day?"

"Then I can only imagine how you'll treat Nino and Itsuki for _never _showing up."

"Oh, don't worry, I've got my own special little treatment for them when they do finally decide to show up..."

"I get the feeling that whatever you've got planned for them's only going to chase them away again."

_"Perhaps..."_

The two of them walk towards the cashiers as they talk, and Miku makes a detour for the refrigerated drink section so that she can grab a drink for Nino, with Fuutarou close behind in tow.

"Hm...I forget which one she wanted," Miku murmurs to herself before shrugging quickly. "I'll just get her this..."

"...matcha soda?" Fuutarou asks incredulously, narrowing his left eye in hesitation. "I've seen those around for a while, but..."

"We're quintuplets, Fuutarou, so don't worry. She'll like it."

"Wait just a goddamn minute, weren't _you _the one who told _me _not to have so much faith in your whole quintuplets gimmick?"

Remembering her own words that she's spoken to the boy in front of her back at Honolulu the past week, Miku quickly turns around to hide her blushing face, causing Fuutarou to chortle in amusement.

"Miku, for as much as I'd love to think that the five of you are all one and the same, asking your sisters to drink _matcha-flavored soda _is, uh...how should I say...a bit out of the realm of possibility for them."

"B-But you were the one who said you had faith in us! That all five of us would be able to study enough to pass our exams at the end of the year!" Miku swings around quickly, again her lips puckered up in yet, surprise surprise, another pout.

"But exams and matcha soda are two way different things. How the hell can you compare them? And also, I didn't know you liked matcha soda. Are you one of those people who loves weird drink flavors?"

"N-No! I just - I love matcha," Miku stammers, but she shrinks a little and averts her eyes, trying to hide her vivid blue eyes behind her peachy red bangs. "...I guess...that makes me pretty weird, huh..."

"I'd like to reiterate that I said the drink flavor _itself _was weird, not you," Fuutarou clarifies. "As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with liking weird drink flavors, I was just asking you if that were the case."

Miku nods in response to this, regaining a bit of her self-confidence. "I've...always liked matcha. I just never really liked sweet stuff...I don't get its appeal. Matcha just...suits me a lot better."

"Fair enough. But still, you should maybe get something other than matcha soda for Nino."

"It's fine. And besides, she didn't ask me to specify _what _to buy her, she only told me to go replace the drink that I took from her."

"Oh, it's like _that_, huh..."

"This is between me and Nino. Don't interfere, Fuutarou," Miku declares, folding her arms and turning to walk away, as if having the final say on the topic. As Miku heads for one of the cashiers, having already done all her grocery shopping before she ran into her tutor, Fuutarou turns, quickly grabs a grape-flavored Ramune bottle from one of the refrigerated shelves before joining his student at the register line.

* * *

"By the way, I've never seen you with headphones on before," Miku wonders aloud at her tutor as the two walk in tandem towards the Pentagon along the sidewalk, the high-rise now looming over them to indicate their close proximity to their destination. "I didn't think you'd be the type."

"After seeing me play the guitar back in Hawaii?"

"But...even still, how could I have known?"

"True. But I like listening to music. I'll have some nights when it turns out I don't really need to do much. So listening to music helps pass the time, but it doesn't distract me so much that I can't keep paying attention to my surroundings. It's a nice middle ground between me still being able to do my job and having something to keep me entertained," Fuutarou answers adequately.

"And what kind of music do you like?"

"I...actually don't have, like, a favorite genre. I just listen to whatever sounds good," Fuutarou admits, scratching the back of his head again. "EDM, artcore, melodic dubstep, progressive house, even classical music if I feel like it...since I'm fluent in English, I've also taken a liking to some American rap, believe it or not...not too much, though."

"American rap..."

Suddenly, Miku bursts out in a fit of giggling, unable to contain it. Fuutarou scowls down at her, wondering what's come over her this time.

"You _sure _you're not one of those people who just laughs at anything? What the hell's wrong with you?" the young tutor sighs heavily.

"N-No, Fuut...arou..." Miku manages to quickly get a hold of herself, gripping one of her grocery bags tightly while Fuutarou holds the second one for her for their walk back home. "I just...I just...imagined you as a, as like a...an actual rapper...well, I _tried _to..."

"Oh, and you think I can't pull it off, huh?"

"I-I just can't imagine you like one! That's why I laughed!"

"I can't imagine you and your sisters passing your exams at the end of the year at the rate you all are headed either, so there's that."

"Ack! Fuutarou actually went there! You meanie!" Miku lightly whaps her long cardigan sleeve against Fuutarou's right arm.

"Then it appears that we're even."

While slapping Fuutarou's arm, Miku looks up and gets a better look at Fuutarou's headphones, which, much like her own, have been resting around its owner's neck for all the time that they've been together since the two of them met at the supermarket.

"Hey, Fuutarou, are those...are those headphones also Audio Technicas?" she asks curiously.

"Yeah, they are," her tutor nods quickly, pulling off his headphones to get a better look at them. "It was a gift from one of my clients who didn't have the money on hand to pay me for a contract I completed for them, but they happened to have these headphones that were still in their box, brand new, so they asked if I could take this as a sort of alternate payment until they could get me my actual payment at a later date. I figured I'd give them a try, and here they are now. They're really nice, I like them a lot. Though by no means am I an expert on headphone equipment..."

Listening to Fuutarou recount this small little memory about his headphones, Miku feels another small but warm and therapeutic smile bubble up to her lips, and she hides them discretely with her sideburns so that Fuutarou can't see her facial expression easily. She's not quite sure why, but just the fact that they have similar headphones made by the same company, even if they aren't the exact same models, is enough to make her heart beat just a bit faster. It's probably because she finally has something tangible in common with him that she is feeling this way, but even if it's just a silly little thing that they share, Miku finds herself deriving much comfort out of it.

"Is that why you're okay with me wearing headphones during our tutoring?" she asks.

"Well, I don't really care if you have headphones around your neck like that, it doesn't bother me much. I know some people like wearing headphones as part of their fashion, so maybe you're doing the same thing, who knows. That certainly isn't my business, and that's no place of mine to comment on either since I'm your tutor, not your parent. Just so long as you don't actually have them on, then obviously we'll have a bit of a problem."

"Right, right."

The two of them reach the Pentagon square that leads to the front entrance into the ground floor, and riding off the small little joy that she's felt talking and walking with her tutor, Nakano Miku quickens her gait into a brisk little jog, hurrying ahead of Fuutarou and turning with a cute little spin to wait for him in front of the automatic glass doors into the elevator lobby.

"You seem awfully energetic today," Fuutarou remarks with a little smirk, but a rare one that is absent of his usual snarkiness and sarcasm. "What's the occasion?"

"Oh, nothing much." Miku brushes her long bangs out of her face and presents the young mage with the very same small smile that she first got earlier in their walk that has since fueled her normally secluded heart and her usually inactive body. "Besides, aren't you here to tutor us?"

"That I am. Let's get to it."

Joining Miku at the door, Fuutarou escorts her up to the thirtieth floor penthouse, where they enter and find the rest of the Nakano family already on the first floor, awaiting their arrival.

"Ah, good mooooorning, Uesugi-saaaaaan!" the ever exuberant Yotsuba cries out, having leapt out of the couch to see if they've finally arrived and trotting up to Fuutarou as he takes off his shoes to enter the house. "Miku texted us saying that she ran into you at the supermarket."

"That we did. And I picked up a little something for you all..."

He pulls out the dango packs from his messenger bag as he, Miku, and Yotsuba enter the living room with the adjacent kitchen.

"Oooh, dango? We haven't had that in a while, have we?" Ichika beams, gazing at the dango packs that the girls' tutor sets down on the glass table first. "Sure reminds me of our younger days, Mom used to buy us dango every so often from this one dango store back in the day; I don't think it's there anymore, though. Where did you buy this? Was Izumi selling this?"

"Yeah. I don't think I've seen them sell it there before, so it came as a bit of a surprise to me," Fuutarou nods.

Suddenly, a gasp is heard behind Ichika, and the girls and the lone boy look up to find Itsuki, having climbed down the stairs to head for the dinner table with several study books and a notebook in her arms, standing over her eldest sister behind the couch with her eyes locked down at the dango packs on the glass table.

Instantly reacting, and with impressive dexterity, Fuutarou swoops down and scoops the two dango packs, one in each hand, to safeguard them from the malicious jaws off Nakano Itsuki. Itsuki, for her part, looks positively heartbroken.

"Dango is for diligent students who attend tutoring lessons and study groups when they're supposed to," Fuutarou sternly declares, much to Itsuki's sinking dismay.

"H-Hmph! It's not as if I wanted any anyway!" she retaliates, turning away quickly to head back to the dinner table that was her original destination to set down her books, notebook, and writing utensils.

"Then why were you looking over this way? You only have that kind of a look on whenever you're looking at food."

Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba are starting to giggle at the antics between Fuutarou and Itsuki, the latter of whom spins around a second time to stomp over to Fuutarou after setting her books down, her lips pursed together in full-impact pouting.

"Fuutarou-kun sure knows by now what Itsuki looks like whenever she's got food on her mind, huh?" Ichika chuckles, watching Itsuki confront Fuutarou and reach for the dango helplessly.

"And just what are you doing right now, Itsuki?" the young mage asks, holding the two dango packs high up over the youngest quintuplet's head and safely out of her own arms' reach. With Fuutarou markedly taller than all of the quintuplets and with a notably bigger wingspan, there is nothing Itsuki can do to physically reach the dango that remain high in the sky out of her reach; not even her tall peachy-red ahoge that Itsuki uses as leverage against her sisters at times whenever they're comparing heights to each others' cannot be of any assistance to her here.

"I changed my mind, I changed my miiiind! Please, Uesugi-kun, give me some dango! It's been so long since I had some!" the fifth quintuplet cries, finally breaking down and pleading with her would-be tutor.

"Really now? Because you said the same thing when Nino stopped by to give us Choco Pies the other day."

"I-I hadn't had Choco Pies in quite a while, either! You cannot blame me for that!" Resuming her irritated but nonetheless cute pouting, Itsuki glares back up at Fuutarou in a futile attempt to establish dominance in the conversation.

"But I _can _blame you for not studying with us," Fuutarou returns.

_"YOU _were the one who refused my offer last week! That is none of _my _business!"

"Maybe not, but it's none of my business what you feel if I decide to keep all these dango to myself."

"Aaaaah, aaaaaaaaaaaaah!" Itsuki lets out a small shriek of terror at what will become of her beloved dango as her sisters looking on watching the spectacle between them turn their giggling into stronger laughter. "Just - just one, please! And I will stop bothering you! I promise!"

"That's the weakest promise I've ever heard in my goddamn life, and I've heard some really bad ones in my short lifetime." Fuutarou gives Itsuki's books on the dinner table a quick glance. "And you're planning to study down here today? Don't you normally go study in your room?"

"T-T-Today I wanted a bit of a change of pace! Studying alone in your room all the time does get a little boring, after all!"

"Oh ho, that so, huh? You sure it's not because you wanna know what studying together with your beloved sisters feels like?" Fuutarou begins to gesticulate some fake lines that he pretends the other quintuplets he's currently tutoring would say, all the while keeping a firm hold on the dango packs that he pulls out of Itsuki's reach every time she tries jumping for one to snatch one away. "'Wouldn't it be nice if Itsuki came down to study with us?' 'I hope Itsuki's studying by herself okay!' 'If only Itsuki would come down and study with us, then we'd all make such good progress together!' Stuff like that, you know?"

Huffing and puffing but showing more endurance than Fuutarou honestly expected out of someone like Itsuki, the youngest quintuplet then resorts to her secret weapon: her eldest sister.

"Ichikaaaaaa, Uesugi-kun's being mean to meeeee!" she cries, heading for her sister and plopping down on the couch next to her to bury her face into Ichika's chest as Ichika herself accepts her with open arms and a motherly smile, befitting of the eldest quintuplet.

"Fuutarou-kun, even if she isn't going to study with us, she's still our sister. It wouldn't hurt to give her one, right?" Ichika smiles gently up at Fuutarou, who lowers the dango packs to listen to her. "Besides, you've got two there, so that's six total. We can all have one each and enjoy it together."

"That's certainly true," the tutor agrees, causing Itsuki to pull her face out of Ichika's bosom in excited anticipation to turn to Fuutarou. "But I also have to take into consideration that you've been missing a lot of study sessions as of late, and I can't just overlook that either if I was judging Itsuki on the grounds that she hasn't joined us yet, you know?"

"I know. But even in the face of that, I still want you to let Itsuki have one. Our whole study group thing is irrelevant here, why don't we just enjoy the dango all together as friends?"

"Sure. But even on that note, I don't think you can consider me and Itsuki to be friends."

"W-We are! Are we not? We have known each other for a full month now!" Itsuki interjects.

"That's right, that's right! We're all friends here ~ !" Yotsuba nods strongly.

"She's only saying that so that she can get some dango, though," Miku comments from the side in a deadpan tone. "Itsuki just wants a truce for now. But once she gets her dango, she'll break the truce, and she'll go back to war against Fuutarou...!"

"Uwaaaa, that's bad, that's bad! We can't have a war here! Then it'll be food fights every day and night!" Yotsuba cries out in shock.

"W-We will not be having any food fights! That would be an incredible waste of food! Not to mention incredibly bad manners!" Itsuki yelps back.

As the banter continues among Fuutarou and the quintuplets, Nino's room door opens and shuts behind her as the second quintuplet in question scales down the stairs.

"You all sure are noisy this morning, huh?" Nino remarks sarcastically, reaching the bottom of the stairs and heading over to join the rest of her sisters in the living room. "Is studying really _that _fun to you? Wait a minute, you're not even studying right now; what the hell's the point of _you _being here again?"

"The plan _was _to get started, but as you can see, Itsuki was attempting to perform a grand heist involving Izumi supermarket dango," Fuutarou explains with a straight face while simultaneously swinging the packs of dango in his hands this way and that, and that's what sells the exaggerated joke to the other quintuplets, save for those part of the anti-Uesugi Fuutarou coalition. Itsuki, unable to scrounge up the willpower to defend herself, so laden is she with embarrassment, can do little more than sit next to her eldest quintuplet sister, trembling and pouting down at the carpeted floor at her feet while Ichika pats her gently on the head reassuringly. "Why don't you join us, Nino? Just like how Itsuki seems like she wants to."

"I-I do _NOT_ wish to join you! Not after all this embarrassment you have put me through!" Itsuki flicks her chin sideways angrily, her body language now blocking all future attempts from Fuutarou to communicate effectively.

"And God no, leave me out of your dumb little study group too. But in any case, if your plan was to share those dango with us, you better do it quick," Nino sighs with a slight groan towards the end of it as she turns to Yotsuba, pulling out her phone in the process. "Yotsuba, someone I know on the basketball team at school's looking for a few ringers for their tournament coming up. You've been looking around at clubs lately, right? Why don't you go give them a hand?"

"E-Eh?! But - " Yotsuba hesitates, flustered at suddenly being put on the spot by Nino out of the blue. "But - we're about to get to work, and Uesugi-san took a day out of his weekend come teach us - "

"Oh c'mon, it's a damn Saturday and you're _still _thinking about _studying? _Laaaame," the second quintuplet groans tauntingly.

"Excuse me, today's a special lesson that all the regulars here agreed to come to because I feel like they need it?" Fuutarou interjects, sensing some malignant intent coming from Nino right now in her actions and ceasing his silly dance with the dango packs.

"And you think I give a shit? Bite me, Uesugi," Nino spits back briefly at her would-be tutor before turning to her younger sister again, this time adopting a more mellow, pitying tone. "The basketball team only has five members, and apparently one of them sprained their ankles during practice recently, so unless they get their roster filled out, they can't attend the tournament that I'm sure all of them've been practicing so hard for. You've always been really good at sports, haven't you? We all know you're the most athletic out of us, and all the sports clubs back at our old school used to fight over you back then. You're not going to just let the basketball team forfeit out just because they don't have enough members, will you? No one deserves to go out of a tournament like that."

Inhaling and exhaling deeply, Fuutarou sets down one pack of dango and opens up another, which, to no one's surprise, immediately gets Itsuki's attention, who opens a single eye to glance in the direction of the sound of one of the dango packs being pried open.

After a moment of brief but intense self-deliberation, Yotsuba, feeling terribly torn between her tutor and the basketball team in need, finally goes with her mind over her heart and turns to bow in apology at her home tutor.

"I-I'm so sorry, Uesugi-san! But I just can't - I can't just sit here when I know there are people out there who need my help!" the fourth quintuplet announces in a loud voice.

Keeping her head bowed because she expects Fuutarou to scold her like he usually does whenever she gives a silly answer to a question, Yotsuba slowly realizes that no such reprimands are apparently headed her way, so she just as slowly raises her head back up, only to find Uesugi standing in front of her, holding out the opened pack of Mitarashi dango to offer her one of the small skewers of five glazed dango.

"If you must go, at least take one of these with you," he says quietly, his voice carrying zero hints of disappointment or discouragement. "And...have fun out there. It's the weekend, after all."

Watching this particular exchange between the two, Miku subconsciously lifts a hand up to her own chest - maybe she's just imagining things, but...just now...it felt as though her heart just skipped a beat...

Yotsuba simply stands where she's raised her head back up, staring back at her tutor as though she didn't quite catch the words she's received from him, but as the words sink in, she lets out one of her trademark radiant smiles as she cheerfully accepts one of Fuutarou's dango.

"Thank you, Uesugi-san! And yeah, I'll do my best!" she pumps her arms confidently.

Setting down the pack of dango on the corner of the glass table beside him, Fuutarou claps his hands once in front of Yotsuba to pump her up while Itsuki sneakily eyes the opened dango pack that he's just put down.

"Breathe in! Breathe out! Back straight! Eyes open!" the tutor yells at Yotsuba, much like a football coach getting his team pumped up for their game. "What time is it, #428?!"

_**"IT'S YOTSUBA TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME!" **_the fourth quintuplet roars, almost blasting out poor Miku's ears who's standing close by, who luckily manages to slap her hands over her ears to protect them just in time. "I'll be off, everyone!"_  
_

The other sisters bid her farewell as Yotsuba practically zooms like the Roadrunner out of their penthouse; she's probably already in the elevator before the front door even has a chance to close properly.

"That was...one heck of a way to send her off," Ichika chuckles, always one to enjoy Yotsuba's energetic outbursts. "You've been picking up after me, haven't you, Fuutarou-kun?"

"Kinda hard _not _to, when you do that every other day with her. Of course it was gonna bleed off onto me at some point," the tutor shrugs nonchalantly, picking his dango pack back up, much to Itsuki's silent dismay, before offering a dango to Miku. "You okay with dango? You don't like sweet stuff, right?"

"No, but...I'll still...take one," Miku stammers a little bit, doing her best to keep herself calm in the aftermath of her skipped heartbeat moment as she takes a stick of dango for herself.

Frowning deeply at this course of events that isn't turning out quite how she wanted it to, Nino then turns her attention to Ichika.

"By the way, Ichika, you too - didn't you say you had work at two today? It's already almost noon, don't you need to head out a bit early?" the second quintuplet points out to her sole older sister, who suddenly gasps lightly upon receiving this reminder.

"Oh my goodness, I totally forgot..." she murmurs to herself, holding her cheek as she checks her phone to double-check her texts. "Yeah, my ride should be here really soon, actually..."

"And you too, Itsuki. If you came down here to study at the dinner table because studying in your room all the time's getting a bit boring, why not go to the library and study there?" Nino suggests.

"That's...that is certainly a good point you make," Itsuki agrees slowly. "Very well, I shall take your suggestion. Thank you, Nino."

"No problem, my pleasure ~ " Nino giggles, nefariously winking over at Fuutarou, who has helped himself to a stick of dango as well and is chewing on the first one while setting the empty dango pack on the glass table to open the second one.

Having gotten up to go to her room to fetch her things for work, Ichika raises an apologetic hand at her tutor.

"So sorry about this short notice, I totally forgot to text you saying that I wouldn't be able to make this session," the eldest quint apologizes like Yotsuba before her. "I'll be sure to make it to next week's, I promise!"

Without a word, Fuutarou simply extends his hand holding the second fresh dango pack, and Ichika smiles thankfully, taking the last one for herself to accept her tutor's small token of generosity before quickly heading back up to her room.

Again, staying silent as he chews on his own dango, the young mage-tutor offers a dango to a surprised Itsuki as she stands up from the couch, having given up on her hope that she'd get some dango for herself to enjoy.

"I...I thought you did not want to share any with me," Itsuki pouts, though considerably more lightly than before.

"I didn't. And I still don't. But the fact of the matter is that Ichika is right; being able to share a snack shouldn't have anything to do with how we're studying. So for now, all I can do is wish you luck with your own studies at the library today."

Itsuki averts her gaze midway through Fuutarou's words.

"...please do not think that I will be swayed by this bribe," she tries to speak in as aloof of a tone as possible, but she merely makes herself sound a bit cranky instead. She snatches up a stick of dango for herself and removes herself swiftly from the living room premises, gathering up her books and notes and writing utensils to take back to her room so that she can pack them into her bag and head off for the library.

Once the remaining members of the household also bid farewell to their departing sisters Ichika and Itsuki, who head out together, only Fuutarou, Nino, and Miku are left in the living room.

Sighing through lightly pressed teeth that hold the now naked wooden dango skewer between them, Fuutarou closes his eyes tiredly, letting his exhaustion seep into them briefly as he arches his neck back where he stands.

"...so much for today's lesson, though, huh..." he murmurs calmly.

Having successfully sabotaged Fuutarou's weekend class for her sisters, Nino no longer feels the devious satisfaction she felt when she first convinced Yotsuba to leave to give the Asahiyama High basketball team a hand. She expected Fuutarou to get angry, to get upset that he'd lost almost all his students, to show some kind of despair at his dismantled situation. Instead, all she gets is a Fuutarou who seems to be none of these things, but instead just...tired.

He's not dumb, either. He _must _know that Nino must have instigated this on purpose; for Ichika, it couldn't be helped since it's her work that's in question, but Yotsuba would have never known about the basketball team's plight if Nino herself never told her about it. Yet Fuutarou isn't getting angry at her or anything or questioning her why she's gone off like this.

And to top it all off, once he rubs the bridge of his nose to get at least some of the exhaustion out of his eyes and after he reassures a concerned Miku that he's alright, Uesugi Fuutarou picks back up the second dango pack with one last dango skewer in it, walks around the couch, and quietly offers it to Nino.

"...why are you trying to give _me _one?" Nino tries to scowl as hard as she can to hide her growing discomfort at this current situation that she's at least partly responsible for.

"Same reason why I let Itsuki take one," Fuutarou says simply. "Besides, you're the one in the family who likes sweet stuff like this the most, right?"

"What if I don't want one?"

Fuutarou gives her the tiniest shrug Nino has ever seen a human being make. "Doesn't matter to me. All I know is that I won't be taking this last one for myself; if you don't want it, give it to one of your sisters."

Closing the dango pack with the one last dango skewer still inside, Fuutarou walks past Nino and sets it on the edge of the dinner table so that one of the quintuplets, probably Itsuki at some point when she returns from the library, will find and eat it.

Even though Fuutarou hasn't said anything wrong, Nino still finds herself getting ticked off anyway, and this is on top of the complicated feelings she was harboring in the aftermath of the sabotaged study session; her would-be tutor's words of "doesn't matter to me" have managed to get under her skin and embed themselves there like sizzling shrapnel from a detonated grenade. So when Fuutarou goes back to Miku to discuss with her what their study plans should be for today, now that they're missing both Ichika and Yotsuba, Nino turns towards them once more.

"Miku, you probably forgot about how I wanted you to buy me a replacement for that drink you took from the fridge that was supposed to be mine the other night? Go out and grab one right now," she demands.

"Already did. You think I'd forget about something like that when you'll yell at me if I did?" Miku scoffs back, reaching into her own grocery bag and tossing the can of matcha soda that she's bought for her, which Nino catches by reflex.

"M-Matcha soda...?" Nino balks at this strange drink that Miku has thought to be an appropriate replacement, having just about the same look that Fuutarou had back at the supermarket. "Wait, wait just a damn minute, you just bought something _you _like, didn't you?!"

"You didn't say exactly _what _drink you wanted; all you said was to get a replacement," Miku shrugs back at her older sister, taking a leaf out of Fuutarou's book on how to shrug as nonchalantly as humanly possible.

"Oh for fuck's sake, Miku - "

But before Nino can go on, Fuutarou reaches over into his plastic bag that's on the carpet next to the base of the glass table in the living room, pulls out the grape Ramune, and holds it up to Nino.

"Here, catch," he says, waiting for Nino to realize what's going on and quickly set the matcha soda can on the dinner table with the last dango skewer so that she can catch Fuutarou's Ramune bottle instead. "I figured you'd complain, so have that instead."

Not even bothering to observe Nino's reaction to his fortuitous offering, Fuutarou turns back to Miku, who gestures at him so that they can continue discussing their revised study schedule for the day.

"Since the others aren't here now, we can make this sort of like a personal lesson just between the two of us," Fuutarou suggests to the third quint, who nods in approval.

"Sure thing. I ran into some trouble with my science homework, and I want you to help me review for Japanese history."

"Japanese history? I thought you're confident in that subject."

"I've been reviewing on my own, but it turns out there're still things that I need to study again, so I want you to help me with that."

"Alright, got it..."

Listening to the two of them talk together like this, Nino's irritation begins to boil over.

"So, like...when the hell did the two of you get so friendly to each other?" the second quint asks aggressively, interrupting the conversation between the two, who turn around to look back at her.

"What, I can't get along with Miku for the sake of helping her out with her studies?" Uesugi challenges Nino back.

"And what's it to you? You don't even come to study with us, let alone study at all, so why should you care?" Miku also stands her ground, feeling bolstered by the presence of her tutor.

Crossing her arms, unwilling to let herself be talked out of relevance, Nino rounds the couch to approach the two of them herself.

"Oh, I get it, I get it," she coos tauntingly again, first heading for her own sister, who eyes her keenly back. "So plain as hell guys like this loser are your type after all, huh, Miku? That'd explain why you're letting him wrap you all around his finger."

"And _you _only care about looks," Miku fires back.

"And so what if I do? You're not trying to convince me right now with this whole 'it's what's on the inside that matters' bullcrap, are you?" Nino steps right up to Miku as if to bully her, but Miku holds position like usual and watches as her older sister point her long and slender fingers down at her chest, her fingernails poking the top of her right breast through her cardigan. "It makes sense, though, if I think about it - because there's no way you can step outside this house in such shitty clothes like this if you actually cared for looks at all."

"And you're telling me those disgusting pointy nails are supposed to be the trend right now?" Miku once more returns fire with a different but no less effective style of verbal savagery.

"I doubt you'd even understand 'trends' and whatnot in the first place, though."

"You're right, and I don't even _want _to get it, either."

Observing the argument between the quintuplet sisters for a minute, Fuutarou chooses to butt in once it seems like the two of them have arrived at an impasse.

"As much as I'd like to stay out of something like this, the fact of the matter is that I still need to tutor Miku since she's still here," he explains calmly to the two girls.

"Yeah. Nino, just stay out of our way; I don't get why you're trying so hard to butt in on us when you aren't even going to study with us at all," Miku frowns back at her older sister disapprovingly.

So Nino plays one last card that she's got up her sleeves: she turns to her would-be tutor.

"Let me guess: you haven't eaten lunch yet, have you?"

Sighing now that the topic of food is brought up once more, Fuutarou experiences a slight case of deja vu from the other day when Miku bought him McDonald's.

"No, I haven't, but - " he tries to say, but Nino talks right over him once she gets the answer that she's looking for and heads off to the kitchen.

"Then that settles it - let's have a little duel between me and Miku with, like I said before, 'what's on the inside'," Nino challenges. "We'll see who can cook better, me or my sister here. And if I win, you won't be teaching her, and you have to leave this house for today!"

Not quite following Nino's particular train of thought here, the young mage lets out a small groan.

"Miku, are you gonna play along with this?" he asks his sole remaining student, who doesn't answer at first. "Miku?"

"I'll finish this quickly."

Fuutarou glances over at the third quint, who, having silently accepted this grudge match against her older sister, is rolling up her sleeves as she, too, follows Nino menacingly into the kitchen.

"Just wait for me, Fuutarou. This'll be over soon..."

Saying nothing, the young tutor takes a seat at the dinner table, figuring he'd take the time while the two sisters are duking it out in the kitchen to check his texts and emails. For the next roughly half-hour, Fuutarou waits patiently at the dinner table while browsing through and responding to his work emails until Nino and Miku are done and bring him their work to present to him.

_"Ja-jaaaan ~ !" _Nino announces with a bit of cutesy flair as the cherry on top. "A dutch baby with seasonal veggies and uncured ham!"

Before her sits a small frying pan with exactly what Nino has described: a puffed pancake lined with scrambled eggs and containing fresh leafy greens and slices of fresh ham around the center, and with a layer of green onions to top everything off. The presentation, the texture, and the aroma of the dish - everything is top-notch quality, as expected of the cook of the household, and Fuutarou can't stop himself from salivating a little bit just looking at the dish that Nino's prepared.

But on the other hand...

"...o...omu...rice..." Miku can barely eek the name of her own dish out from off her tongue, markedly missing all of the dueling conviction that she had going into this food fight of sorts.

Looking down at what Miku has to offer, Fuutarou can easily see why she is now devoid of all that confidence she once had: a plate sits in front of her holding a pile of...something. That's _supposed _to be some kind of egg, right? Why is half of it burned to a crisp? Why is half the rice underneath the egg also burned to a crisp? And why did she even bother putting ketchup over everything like it's somehow going to help with how bad it already looks?

After a few moments of silence as Fuutarou takes the time to survey both of their foods, Miku finally swallows her pride and blurts out, "O-On second thought, actually...I think I'll just...eat this myself," as she gazes down in complete shame at her own clear failure of an omurice dish.

"Awww, but you put so much _effort _into that, Miku ~ !" Nino coos at her younger sister, managing to keep down a snort that almost bubbles up to the surface when she says the word "effort". "You should at least let him _try _it, what's the worst that can happen?"

Nervously looking back up at her tutor, the third quintuplet can't hold her gaze with him for longer than three seconds before she silently clasps her hands over her eyes, dreading what Fuutarou is thinking about her dish right now. This doesn't prepare her, however, for what Fuutarou says next:

"You're right, Nino. Both of you did go through the trouble of fixing me some food, and I didn't eat anything today yet other than the dango just now, so I'll be digging in."

Pulling in the two dishes towards himself to eat both before Miku can stop him, Fuutarou, having been given utensils by the sisters when they first arrived with the food, picks up the appropriate spoon to equip himself.

"Thank you for the food," the tutor recites as he begins to dig in. Nino looks on with supreme smugness while the polar opposite of abject worry can be seen on Miku next to her, creating quite the juxtaposition for Fuutarou who sits across from them at the dinner table.

Nino's dutch baby is even better than it looks, probably because his hunger is his own biggest spice: the eggs are scrambled just right, the veggies are fresh and still a little moist from the water that Nino used to rinse them, on top of providing a little crunch to the meal, and the slices of ham, one side heated by the surrounding eggs and the other side crisp and cold, help complete the duality of the dish's homely warmth and exciting cold freshness, with the green onions topping it all off.

Miku's smoldering omurice is even worse than it looks, and having tasted Nino's dutch baby first, Fuutarou's palette is given a nasty shock as soon as he takes the first spoonful of burnt omurice. All he can really taste is burnt rice and eggs; he can't even really taste the other toppings that Miku added to the rice itself underneath the egg, so badly did she burn it all wholesale. Her dish looks like the remains of a campfire, and if that were to be given a taste of some sort, this would probably be what it tastes like.

Even still, Fuutarou's face remains unchanged the entire time that he works his way through both dishes indiscriminately, consuming both Nino's dutch baby and Miku's omurice in totality and leaving not one speck of food remaining on either plate or frying pan. The spectating quintuplets Nino and Miku, watching their classmate work his way through both of their foods, slowly but surely swap expressions of their own: Nino's self-assured smugness gives way to muted confusion and horror, while Miku's heightened concern transitions to quiet but enormous relief.

Being a naturally fast eater, Uesugi completes both dishes within eight minutes, taking a swig from his glass of water that Miku, not Nino, has brought him to help wash the food down.

"Thanks for the food again," he nods with satisfaction at a meal well eaten, holding his hands together in post-meal ceremony.

"Wait, wait - so - !" Nino can hold in her anger no longer and starts to blurt out her protests, but Fuutarou clearing his throat forces her to keep her peace for just a bit longer.

"Obviously Nino's dish is better; I think we can all agree on that even before I started eating," the young mage professes. "The dutch baby is good enough for a restaurant or cafe somewhere, I'd bet, that's how good it is."

Hearing these earnest words of praise, Nino lets go of some of the heightened irritation she's been feeling.

"And, Miku, either your sister's a terrible teacher or you just plain suck at cooking, or maybe it's both, but you need to learn to _not _burn stuff on the frying pan this badly if you want to make anything decent," Fuutarou critiques Miku's own cooking with the force of a thousand needles that stab Miku right through the heart, causing her to hang her head in total shame. "And given how well Nino cooks, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt that she's been doing her best teaching you and that it's not _her _fault that your omurice turned out like this."

"...I'm...sorry..." is all Miku can whimper dejectedly.

"So that settles it! That means I wi - " Nino begins to proclaim herself the victor, but Fuutarou raises a hand in objection.

"However, while the quality of the foods contrast quite a bit compared to each other, the fact of the matter is that they were still good enough where I was able to eat both without problems," Fuutarou clarifies, gesturing down at both the empty plate and empty pan.

Nino gawks in disbelief at her would-be tutor.

"Th-That's such a load of crap!" she cries out, becoming so filled with such disbelief that it causes her to stutter uncharacteristically for a moment. "'They were still good enough for you to eat' my goddamn _ass_, Uesugi! How the fuck was Miku's dish supposed to be at _all _edible?! It was literally all burnt!"

"It was, yeah. I still ate it, though."

"And I bet that's because you're so poor that you're _used _to eating shitty food like that! Not to mention you're obviously biased towards Miku right now!"

"I don't deny either of that. But eating shitty food most of the time I suppose worked out in my favor here - and with how you treat me most of the time, you wonder to yourself why I let myself be biased towards Miku a little bit?"

"Then won't your stomach be upset after eating all that?! You work at the hospital with Papa, even _you _said so! Surely you know how bad it's gotta be for your digestive system to eat all that burned crap!"

"I wasn't aware that you were looking out for me too. First you cook for me, now you worry about my health? Is there something else you'd like to tell me?"

"I-I'm just saying that because I don't want _you _to mess up _our _bathroom!"

"Don't worry, I don't plan on doing that since I'll be fine."

Again, another standoff.

"But - but shouldn't the quality matter? That's how we know who's better at cooking, isn't it?" Nino blurts out, struggling to find a new avenue of debate.

"Normally, yes, it does. But this isn't a proper cooking competition, because you baited Miku into a cook-off, which is something you know you're far superior than her in, so it was pretty much rigged from the start. So if all you care about was being better than your sister here in cooking, then you should've had the answer from the start, which means you certainly didn't need _me_ to tell you that for validation. Therefore, for the sake of this little duel that the two of you had, I went into this to see if the two of you together could feed me enough for my lunch today, and as it turns out, the two of you combined were able to do just that."

Surveying the two remaining quintuplets, Fuutarou waits for either of them to say something, but when neither of them do for now, he takes the lead to continue his thoughts.

"To add to that, Miku accepted your little cooking duel here knowing that she was heavily disadvantaged going up against you, yet she still went in with the confidence that she could win, even if it was only at first. So if I look at this in terms of the amount of effort that went into these, you didn't need to lift a damn finger to make this dutch baby, Nino, because you can make a dish like this in your freaking sleep, while on the other hand, Miku had to put all the concentration and focus she had remembering what she'd learned from you just to be able to put something together to show for her efforts. So your dish might be tastier and much better quality, but I could taste the effort Miku put into hers much more. As it should, because Miku put her heart and soul into making this omurice, even if it turned out looking shit and tasted like shit. I can't say the same about your dutch baby, Nino."

Fuutarou's surprisingly in-depth and subtly scathing review renders both girls speechless, and both of them emptily stare back at the young tutor, who drinks the rest of the water in his glass to help cleanse his system.

Slowly, quietly, the hands of the third quintuplet rise up together and rest in front of her face as Miku is finally able to once again reveal her small smile of touched relief.

"That, and as soon as you came down to tell Yotsuba to go help out the basketball team, I knew that you wanted to sabotage the lesson I had planned for your sisters today," Fuutarou says quietly, though to the two quintuplets who are his audience, it comes out as a slight snarl. "So consider this payback. Thanks for the free food, it was great."

As Fuutarou is talking, Nino, spying this reaction from her younger sister out of the corner of her eye, glares absolute daggers down at Miku, then back at Fuutarou, who calmly stares back, having said his piece and waiting on Nino to speak hers.

"This is such **bullshit."**

Tearing herself away from the table, too pissed off to bother clearing the table like she normally does, the second quintuplet, irate and beside herself with smoldering fury, stomps up the stairs to her room, causing the house to echo with the giant _SLAM _of her door.

Having casually watched Nino remove herself from the first floor, Fuutarou sighs a little, running his hand up through his black hair again.

"Welp, looks like I did it again, pissing off your sister like that..." he says quietly. "And you shouldn't really take what I said seriously, Miku. Like I said just now, I only said that to get back at her for her sabotaging the lesson I had planned for us today. Clearly, though, I went overboard with that and hit a nerve with her, so I doubt she'll want to talk to me again for the rest of the weekend. If you can, tell her that I didn't mean to go that far with this..."

Miku nods, the afterglow of her relief having faded enough for her to respond. "Sure thing. But...even if what you said about my omurice wasn't serious...I'm...I'm still...really happy that you said that, Fuutarou."

"Like I said, you shouldn't be...I called your cooking shitty."

"But you're only talking facts. My cooking _is _terrible. I know I have to improve."

"Even still, though..." Fuutarou then gets up from the chair, stretching a little to get the blood flowing. "Let's get these washed, I'm sure Nino will at least appreciate us cleaning up after ourselves here, if nothing else."

"Oh, I'll...I'll help you wash them, then. If you don't mind..."

"Thanks..."


	24. Stand and Deliver

**A/N**

**Slightly revised & expanded the post-meal conversation between Fuutarou and Nino chapter 23.**

* * *

After washing the dishes and conducting his group lesson-turned private lesson, Uesugi Fuutarou finally emerges from the ground floor lobby of the Pentagon high-rise. It was a long but productive lesson today, a whole five hours of it, in fact, just as the sun is on its descent beneath the horizon over the city.

This is one of the few times that Fuutarou has had a chance to tutor one of the quintuplets solo. There were a few other instances, like Miku asking for lessons from him at the school library during lunch, but naturally lunchtime can only last so long, so not a whole lot has been done during those such solo study sessions. So today is the first solo lesson that Fuutarou feels was actually productive - and it also somewhat painfully reminds him of how much easier his job would be if the quintuplets were all just a single person. Teaching just the three of the usual suspects Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba together was going to be tough, but Fuutarou took it in stride since that's what the job called for, but after having taught Miku for the last five hours and being able to focus all his attention on just her the entire time and not have to worry about Yotsuba's antics or Ichika's chronic narcolepsy, Fuutarou now fully understands just how difficult his job has been. A midway epiphany five weeks too late, perhaps, but what can he do about it by this point...

At the very least, teaching Miku has been a pleasant experience so far, and she is without a doubt the best student among her sisters. Like her siblings, she was hesitant towards him at first, and Fuutarou was concerned in the aftermath of that particular weekend incident that she would distance herself even further away from him once the quintuplets found out who he really was, but that turned out not to be the case. And to add to that, the night they spent together on that outdoor patio back in Honolulu overlooking the night beach certainly helped warm up their relationship even further, to the point where now, for the past week ever since they came back from their Golden Week vacation, Miku has been actively studying on her own, both at school and at home; several days this week Fuutarou even found her studying already in their living room when he'd show up for their tutoring sessions. With his own painful lack of social skills, Fuutarou didn't think he'd hit a home run with the third quintuplet, but perhaps he has no need to worry about it now.

And today has only served to exemplify Miku's metamorphosis, both socially and academically - five hours of all five school subjects of English, Japanese history, Japanese language, science, and mathematics, one hour of each, and Miku is finally beginning to show slight improvements to her scores. While normally such tiny improvements shouldn't be able to incite such strong feelings of encouragement, any amount of improvement is good news for a girl whose test scores either border on or fall short of the passing line, especially when it means that she can at least _pass _her tests without being in immediate risk of failing.

Fuutarou can only hope that the others are doing the same or will eventually do the same, as he stops beside a utility pole midway through the asphalt path leading to the street from the base of the tower to reach for his phone. But upon reaching into his pocket, he realizes that it is not there, and jogging his memory, he quickly remembers that he left it back in the quintuplets' penthouse - he took both his phone and wallet out to make sitting on the floor a bit more comfortable and set it down on the carpet next to one of the table corners.

How uncharacteristic of himself, the young tutor can't help but think to himself as he feels a bit embarrassed at his own forgetfulness. Normally he always makes sure to leave prepared, no matter what the situation - perhaps the rare experience of being able to do his job properly as a tutor came as such a pleasant surprise that it's thrown him off his usual game. Then again, that would beg the question of what exactly he considers "doing his job properly" if this is really the case...

Now that he's left his wallet behind, Fuutarou has no way of allowing himself back into the high-rise, so he's forced to use the intercom sitting outside the automated glass doors to call the quintuplets' house number.

_"Hello?" _Miku picks up the phone, to the boy's quiet relief, since it would be rather awkward if Nino were the one to pick up. It wouldn't have been likely to happen, seeing that Nino had gone to the bathroom to take a bath towards the end of his lesson with Miku, but obviously he doesn't know how fast or slowly Nino bathes.

"Hey Miku, it's me Fuutarou. I left my phone and wallet in your living room on accident, I need to get them back," he explains himself.

_"Okay, I'll let you in. I'm about to take a bath right now too, so just come in and get them."_

The thick glass doors pull open, allowing Fuutarou back inside to take the elevator back up to the thirtieth floor of the Nakano penthouse. As the elevator takes him higher, it dawns on Fuutarou that if Miku said that she's about to take a bath as well, that means Nino is done with hers or is about to be. Plus, while he's not worried about his phone, his wallet is extremely vulnerable to prying eyes - especially if they're from someone like Nino. Then again, the girls probably did take a look through his wallet that one time when Nino "drugged" him and Itsuki had to chaperone him back home, and nothing really came of that, so maybe there's nothing to worry about.

Even still...now that the animosity between him and Nino has once again intensified, who knows - maybe Nino will find his wallet first before he can get to it himself and peruse its contents more carefully. It really shouldn't matter if she does, but...it still doesn't really sit well with him that she would.

Reaching the girls' penthouse, Fuutarou tries the door, which he finds already unlocked for him courtesy of the third quintuplet, and he calls out his arrival so as not to give anyone inside a shock, a valuable lesson he's learned from his disastrous first appearance to the quintuplets over a month ago. He takes off his shoes and makes his way into the living room, where, sitting on the shorter couch on the side of the glass table, is a peachy red-haired quintuplet, fresh out of the bath, moist, and wearing nothing but a bath towel.

Clearly there's no way that Miku could have taken a bath like that in the four minutes that it's taken Fuutarou to ride the elevator up to the thirtieth floor to retrieve his belongings. There weren't any of the pairs of shoes that belong to the other quintuplets either, meaning that the others aren't back home yet. So by process of elimination, the only quintuplet this could be, as if he couldn't recognize her by the staunchly irritated air that she's got about her most of the time, is Nino.

Nino is blow-drying her very long hair right on the couch. At first, Fuutarou can't help but wonder why she'd dry her hair here in the living room when she should do that in the bathroom itself, but then he remembers that Miku must be taking a bath right now, and things are probably still a bit tense between them too, after their little cook-off during lunch. And she seems like the type who'd complain about having to blow-dry her hair in her own room because she doesn't want her own room to get wet from doing so, so the living room certainly seems like the most logical place for her to blow-dry her hair.

But because of all that, Nino clearly hasn't heard him enter the house again with the blow dryer right next to her ears, and only now when he is stepping by to pick up his phone and wallet does she turn it off to dry her hair manually with a smaller towel. She does notice someone walk by as she is doing so, however, and as Fuutarou stoops down to collect his pocket dwellers, she calls out,

"Miku, is that you? Didn't you say you were gonna take a bath after I was done?"

Fuutarou freezes where he stoops, his right hand having barely clutched his phone and wallet from the carpet next to the glass table. He opens his mouth to immediately reveal his identity - but then stops himself for two reasons: Nino will more than likely freak the hell out as soon as she realizes he's back and sees her dressed in nothing but a bath towel, but more importantly, her voice isn't as antagonistic as he last heard it, and because she currently thinks that he's Miku due to her terribly bad eyesight, she may have something to say to "Miku" that Fuutarou would like to know about.

So he keeps his mouth shut to play the riskier long game, standing up after grabbing his phone and wallet, and he also steals a quick glance over his shoulder at Nino, who peeks out at him from beneath the towel that she's using to squeeze the last of the bathwater out of her long locks of peachy red hair.

Two mesmerizing purple jewels, draped with fabric and hair, meet Fuutarou's black pebbles. Though they are but pebbles, Fuutarou can still feel his own eyes grow warm momentarily.

"Well, I guess since you're here, while I'm finishing drying my hair, can you get me my contacts? I haven't changed where I put them, so they should still be in the same spot," Nino gestures over to the shelves to her right, closing her eyes so that she can dry her bangs. Fuutarou's eyes immediately cool off once eye contact is disconnected between them.

Complying with Nino for the time being, Fuutarou wordlessly shuffles over to the shelves that sit over the aquarium to locate Nino's contacts. While he isn't proud of this, Fuutarou has gone through the Nakano penthouse several times during the middle of the night on multiple occasions following the incident with Nino and her drug dealer to make sure that there aren't any other drugs that Nino might be hiding that Fuutarou would want to know about, and in doing so, he's found where the girls keep a lot of their things, Nino's contact lenses and kit being two of them.

"...are you still mad at me for what happened during lunch?" Nino asks as the young mage identifies the correct shelf and recovers her contacts. "Now that I've had some time to cool off, I, uh...I do feel a bit bad about it myself. I just wanted to use that as a way to make Uesugi leave, so all I cared about was winning. I didn't mean to rub it in that I was better at cooking than you, especially when I was the one who's been teaching you how to cook."

Returning to Nino, Fuutarou keeps his peace still as he hands the contacts to their owner, who takes them from him, still unaware of who this "Miku" really is and interpreting "her" silence in a different way.

"So you still _are _angry..." the second quintuplet frowns a little, giving Fuutarou a glancing look as she sets the contacts down on the edge of the glass table in front of her, still working on drying out her long hair that, understandably, takes a long time to dry. "Honestly, it's...it's all _his _fault."

Heaving a heavy sigh, Nino grumpily tosses her smaller towel down on the couch beside her as she begins to tie her butterfly hair ribbons back on.

"Just because Papa hired him to be our tutor...he feels like he can just casually walk into _our _house every weekday like it's no big fucking deal? And that's not even including the fact that he tried scaring us on that first day of his, and that he even has a fucking spare keycard _into_ _our house! _Like, even if I don't want him to be, I get that he's _supposed _to be our tutor and all, and we don't know just how well he knows Papa, but still, don't you think that doing all that's just too much? It's like he's known us all his life or something, like he knows this place as much as we do!"

As much as Fuutarou would like to point out that there have already been times when Nino has given him and her sisters snacks and drinks during their lessons, and that even today she's fed him lunch, he decides against it in favor of listening to what the second quintuplet has to say.

"I'm telling you, he's getting too involved with us; we have to cut him off like the absolute _cancer _that he is before it's too late," she hisses venomously, and Fuutarou feels such venom resonate within himself. "This house belongs to the five of us. He's got no place here."

As she's talking, the young mage notices some slight movements near Nino's bosom; the fact that it's a nice sight for sore eyes is serendipity, for it would appear that the bath towel that clothes Nino's glamorous figure is losing its structural integrity with the pressure from Nino's own voluptuous chest.

"Alright, you know what? From now on, Uesugi's banned from our house!" the second quintuplet declares vehemently, suddenly jumping up to her feet off the couch. "If you want him to keep tutoring you, he can do that from now on at school or at the library! That's what he _should've _been doing in the _first _place!"

And just as Fuutarou figured, the bath towel finally slips and begins to fall, the sudden movement on Nino's part being the last straw to break the towel's back. And with Nino being _this _close to him, _and _now that she's standing, she'll soon realize that the person standing next to her, no matter how bad her eyesight may be, is simply far too tall to be her own sister.

With practiced reflexes, Uesugi darts out a hand to press his left palm against the bath towel where it is becoming undone before disaster can strike, and he pins the towel against Nino's chest successfully with just enough force to hold it in place while refraining from pushing Nino back down onto the couch. The fact that his left hand now grabs hold of a sizeable portion of Nino's left breast in order to do so, too, is mere serendipity.

"H-Huh...? Miku, what are you - " Nino begins to ask in confusion, but the roughness of the skin on the hand that now presses against her breast, a natural side effect of someone like Fuutarou who does not wear gloves and is too busy to give much attention to the condition of his skin, is the dead giveaway that finally gives her the rude awakening that she completely did not expect. The contortion of the look on her face, shifting coarsely from confused to horrified, is all Fuutarou needs to see to reveal his identity.

"Your towel was falling off," he says calmly, his black eyes locked onto Nino's blue ones for a moment before dropping down to his hand and then returning. "Sorry for catching a bit extra."

Nino opens her mouth to scream at the top of her lungs, so Fuutarou mentally prepares himself to sacrifice part of his hearing for tonight.

But what follows isn't a scream - it's a click of a phone camera. Both Nino and Fuutarou turn towards the direction of the digital click, Nino much faster in her reactions due to her heightened senses, while Fuutarou merely glances over like he usually would.

Standing from the short hall into the living room from the front door, having freshly returned from studying in the library and taken off her high heels, Nakano Itsuki lowers her phone somewhat as she gives the two of them, but more so the young tutor, a heavily disappointed scowl.

"...you absolute degenerate," she denounces assertively.

* * *

About half an hour later -

"Your honor, please take a look at this photo taken at the scene and time of the crime..."

The entire quintuplet gang is all here and back home, gathered around the glass table with an extra man sitting at the other end of it. Ichika and Yotsuba, having returned home at roughly the same time from their respective duties, now join Fuutarou, Nino, Miku, and Itsuki in the living room in a pseudo-court case environment, with Nino as the plaintiff, Uesugi Fuutarou as the defendant, Ichika as the judge, Itsuki as the prosecutor, and Miku and Yotsuba as the jury.

Itsuki is now parading slowly around the table, the only one who's not seated, showing both the judge and everyone else the photo that she snapped of Nino and Fuutarou, and once she's confident that everyone's gotten a good look at it, she continues her prosecution.

"The defendant, though he was allowed into our home as a trusted private tutor by our father, could not contain his lust in the presence of such a healthy young high school girl and began to touch her inappropriately," she delivers sternly. "This photo in fact depicts Uesugi Fuutarou-kun, the defendant, does it not?"

Itsuki turns sharply down at Fuutarou, who gives her a bored look back as if he's waiting for her to be done with her prosecution. Ichika, the de facto judge, is smiling as always, Nino is slumped against the base of the long couch, still somewhat shell-shocked that the boy she hates got a handful of her own chest, Miku is looking on dully as usual, and Yotsuba is glancing around at everyone else around her nervously, excited to see how the situation will unfold.

"Th-This is just like those Korean dramas that we watch together sometimes...!" she can't help but remark in bubbly anticipation.

"Except unlike the ones we watch, this one is pointless," Miku murmurs dryly. While she's giving her dry comment, Nino raises her hand in the meantime, and Ichika answers her.

"Your honor!"

"Yes, Nino-kun, the plaintiff?"

Having the floor now, Nino jabs a thumb over to the side in the silent Fuutarou's direction.

"This man only _pretended _to leave the premises following his private lesson for the bystander Miku, but was merely waiting for me to come out of the bath to attack," she testifies. Hearing herself be addressed as a "bystander" somewhat irks Miku, probably because Nino's the one saying it, but she doesn't let that show. "Because of the absolutely heinous nature of the crime that he has committed, I hereby motion to ban him from the grounds of the entire Pentagon complex."

Giggling at the extremity of Nino's proposal, Ichika nods sagely, enjoying her temporary title and prestige as the judge presiding over this makeshift court case. "Your motion is well noted, Miss Plaintiff. And yes, oh yes, this crime is very naughty indeed ~ in the meantime, does the defendant wish to speak on his own behalf?"

"I just came back to come grab my phone and wallet, which I left by this table here and forgot about when I left earlier," Fuutarou says simply, laying out the truth and nothing but the truth. But finding that Ichika has turned her face away with a small pout, Fuutarou groans a little and adds, "...your Honor," which returns Ichika's smile back to its rightful place.

"Objection."

The floor moves to the third quintuplet Miku, who, like her older sister before her, raises her hand to speak.

"It was I who let him into the high-rise when he asked to come back in to get his stuff," she announces in Fuutarou's defense. "And so I let him in over the intercom. The intercom also records everything that goes through it both ways as per the Pentagon's security measures, so you'll be able to find our conversation from an hour ago there. All of this is just an unfortunate accident."

"How's this 'just an unfortunate accident?' You saw the picture yourself, Miku! He _intentionally _and _deliberately_ reached out and grabbed one of my tits!" Lurching forward from her seat at the base of the couch, Nino gets up on her knees so that she can press her hands down on the glass table for emphasis towards Miku. "No matter how you try to twist it, there's no way this can just be 'an unfortunate accident'!"

"But it is, Nino. Just get over it already, you're just still salty over what happened at lunch earlier today."

Recoiling a little and clenching her teeth, Nino feels angry words clump up in her throat, but begrudgingly she knows that Miku doesn't know about what she said to Fuutarou just earlier, so she's forced to let those words rot.

"I'm _NOT_ salty, okay? Besides, this fucking pervert saw me naked! Wouldn't _you _freak out too?!"

"Not really, no."

"I mean, Miku's the one who cares the least about walking around the house in nothing but a towel after a bath," Yotsuba points out, nodding her own head like she's some sort of female Sherlock Holmes.

"You do that too, might I add," Nino retorts quickly at Yotsuba before refocusing her attention back on Miku. "Your honor! Miku is protecting the defendant for what must be personal reasons!"

This accusation lands a critical hit on Miku, whose eyes widen suddenly as her face's usual icy demeanor swiftly breaks to reveal a warmer, more flustered expression as Nino's words ring through her ears.

"N...No, that's...that's not...tr..." the third quintuplet stammers while her cheeks betray her words with their luminscent blushes. She steals a glance quickly at Fuutarou, who also gives her another bored look of his own, before dropping her eyes down at her lap.

Seeing this kind of reaction come from her sister, the kind of reaction that she's always imagined her having, Nino pounces on her long-awaited chance to press the issue.

"Hmmmmm...? What do we have here, Miku? Looks like you're acting more cautious around him now all of a sudden," she wonders aloud to incite suspicion among her other sisters as well.

Miku quickly rebounds from her embarrassment, sensing that Nino will relentlessly attack her in this weak point of hers if she does not stand up for herself right now.

"You're just imagining things, Nino. That, and you're just looking for any excuse to kick Fuutarou out of our house," Miku rebuts swiftly. "That's why you got everyone but me to leave the house, that's why you baited me into that cook-off earlier for lunch, and that's why you're making a big deal out of this when it really shouldn't be."

"Oh, you don't think having my chest groped and being seen naked against my will isn't a big deal?"

"Why should it be? There's nothing to see there."

"Maybe not for someone like _you _who doesn't care about how she looks, but it does for _me _since I'm different!"

"That makes no sense, we all have the exact same body, pretty much."

The fierce, rapid-fire back-and-forth between Nino and Miku begins to intimidate Itsuki, while Yotsuba continues to look on with Ichika with a heightened mixture of nervousness and anticipation for the climax of this drama-like scene.

Itsuki, not wanting to see her own sisters fight between themselves, tries to step in verbally, saying quickly once she finds a break in Nino's and Miku's arguments, "Y-You two, please, this is not the time to be fighting each other! The one at fault is - "

But neither of her older sisters are having any of it, not even from their own sister, and both of them snap over to her on a dime, glaring with such intensity that even Yotsuba yelps a little and ducks behind Ichika's seat on the shorter couch, despite not even being in the crossfire.

_"Be quiet, Itsuki," _Miku snarls.

_"And delete that damn photo already!" _Nino demands.

Now bearing the full brunt of Nino's and Miku's combined killing intent, Itsuki is sent off with her figurative tail between her legs and quickly turns to dive into her oldest sister's arms, whimpering, "Waaaaaaaaah, your Honooooorrrrr!"

"There, there, you did your best, don't worry," Ichika chuckles soothingly, accepting her youngest sister and patting her between her shoulderblades. Reaching over to the glass table where Itsuki's set down her phone, the eldest quint picks it back up to take another look at the photo of Uesugi with his hand on Nino's chest. "But even if you _are _right that Fuutarou-kun's innocent here, that naturally begs the question of how exactly they ended up in this position in the first place."

Jumping at her chance to seal her would-be tutor's fate, Nino pulls away from her argument with Miku to face the judge. "That's right, Ichika, I _knew _I could count on you!" She then turns and stomps behind the seated Fuutarou, who still has a somewhat bored, somewhat amused look on his face as he is busy texting someone on his own phone. "This bastard absolutely had his hands all over me!"

"Slight correction: I only had _one _hand on you," Fuutarou raises a finger matter-of-factly while still staring down at his phone screen.

_"That's besides the freaking point, Uesugi! _Don't make light of this, you were about to jump all over me if Itsuki hadn't walked in on us at that exact moment!"

"Fuutarou...is that true...?"

Uesugi and Nino both look up at the third quint, who has a crestfallen, almost betrayed look in her eyes.

"What's true? What Nino said?" Fuutarou asks for clarification, pointing his thumb over his shoulder back at the quint standing behind him. But Miku doesn't even give him a chance to respond and turns her chin away with the biggest pout Uesugi's seen to date.

"You're guilty," she declares quietly. "Seppuku."

Rolling his eyes and turning off his phone screen to pocket it, Fuutarou gets up to his feet to wrap up his case.

"If I may, your Honor, I'd like to turn your attention back to the photo," he asks, adopting a more polite form of speech in contrast to his usual casual style of talking. "I laid my hand on the defendant because her bath towel was about to fall; in the heat of the moment, I decided that risking a punch to the face from the defendant in order to preserve her pride was the correct judgment call, because the alternative would have been much worse. I believe the angle of the photo that Itsuki took of us should depict my intention adequately."

The combination of Fuutarou's calm, rationalized thought process and his unusual polite speech are enough to compel both Ichika and Itsuki, and Yotsuba as well who pops up like a groundhog from behind the couch, to take another look at Itsuki's photo.

"Y...You could certainly...interpret it that way..." Itsuki mumbles hesitantly, realizing the truth behind her would-be tutor's words upon a more careful examination of her own evidence.

"Yeah, now that I look at it again, you can see where she tied her towel, which happened to be right over her chest," Ichika nods understandingly. "And it looks like it was about to fall off, too...look how loose it is in some parts..."

"Just how _did _this happen, Uesugi-san?" Yotsuba asks curiously. "You said you only came back to grab your wallet and phone, so how the heck did you end up like this with Nino?"

"Let me start from the beginning. After I finished tutoring Miku for the day, I left your house, but I realized I'd accidentally left my stuff back here because I'd taken them out of my pockets. Miku let me back in right before she went to go take a bath, but Nino had gone to take a bath right before we were done tutoring. So by the time I got back to the house, Nino was done and was drying her hair in the living room. I don't know just how bad her eyesight is, but it's bad enough to the point where she didn't recognize me walking around in the living room with her, and so - "

"Y-You don't need to make fun of me for my bad eyesight, thank you very much!" Nino gripes at Uesugi from behind.

"I wasn't trying to roast you for it, I'm just saying what happened. Anyways, she mistook me for Miku and asked me to go get her contacts. So I got them for her, and while I'm doing that, she was going on about how she doesn't want me in the house and wants to ban me from ever setting foot in the high-rise again. So she jumped up from the couch that you're sitting on right now, your Honor, and that was when her towel got undone."

Miku nods at Fuutarou's full explanation, satisfied with what she's heard. "Yeah, that makes sense."

"It certainly does. Besides, Fuutarou-kun's such a busy person that he wouldn't even have the time to do something like this in the first place, would he?" Ichika giggles.

"Implying I would even _want _to do something like that to someone like Nino," Fuutarou clicks his tongue in irritation, folding his own arms in the process. "She's more hassle than it's worth; just look at what's happened tonight."

"Aw, don't be like that, Fuutarou-kun. Besides, surely you can't deny that you felt something _real _nice at the time of the crime?" Ichika offers a sultry smile up at her tutor and throws in an eyebrow wiggle just for good measure.

"My phone feels nicer, thank you very much."

"Ouch! Imagine getting to touch a cute girl's boob and then saying your phone's better - Fuutarou-kun, don't go down that dark path known as being an otaku, you don't want to go there!"

"I think you need to worry about Nino's pride a little more," Miku says bluntly, glancing over at Nino who's beet red with a volatile mixture of embarrassment and boiling anger.

Surveying the quintuplets one last time, Fuutarou checks the smartwatch on his left wrist for the time, which Yotsuba notices and can't help but smile at, internally overjoyed to know that Fuutarou is indeed putting her gift for him to full use.

"Well, it's been fun playing around with you all for this extra bit, but I really have to get going - " Fuutarou says finally with a sigh, picking his messenger bag back up and making sure he's got his phone and wallet this time so he doesn't forget it a second time, but of course Nino won't let him go so easily.

"Hey, hold it right there! Don't just act like all this's settled already or something!" she shouts with a sharp-nailed finger.

"Unfortunately, for tonight, it has to be." Withdrawing his phone and clicking it on, Fuutarou, with his back turned to Nino, lifts the Google Pixel 3 up above his right shoulder to show her what's on screen, which is a text conversation with Dr. Nakano. "Doctor's orders. Maybe bother me sometime next week, Nino."

Reeling a little at the sight of her father's name and number written at the top of the screen, Nino nonetheless doesn't let up. "Y-You're just trying to use Papa as an excuse to leave, but you can't trick m - "

"Nino, just give it a rest already. Did we really even need to make this a big deal in the first place?" Miku talks over her sister to check her.

"You back off, Miku, this is betw - "

"Now, now...both of you, I think that's enough arguing for today, okay?" Setting her own foot down calmly, Ichika, armed with the prestige of being the eldest, interrupts both of them to help resolve the matter. "I let this one slide today because it seemed fun, and it was, but we've got to know when to stop. The five of us used to be so close, remember? We can't let things get too out of hand."

Nino's eye twitches at this.

Scratching the back of his head briefly, Fuutarou also adds, "I guess if I didn't forget my stuff in the first place, none of this would've happened. I will at least assume responsibility for this incident in that sense."

"Used to be...?"

The hair on the back of the young mage's neck sticks up suddenly, and correspondingly, Fuutarou sharply turns his neck to glance at the source behind him just in time to see a blur - Nakano Nino bolts off for the front door faster than he's ever seen her move before, with the kind of speed normally only Yotsuba is capable of demonstrating.

"You sure are quintuplets, all right - thought that was Yotsuba running herself out just now," Fuutarou remarks dryly as the house is momentarily rattled with the loud _SLAM _of the front door in Nino's wake.

"I keep telling that to everyone, but no one listens to me!" Yotsuba also pouts back at her tutor. "Uesugi-san, will you help convince my sisters to go running with me every weekend?"

"Heck no!" Ichika, Miku, and Itsuki all cry out in unison, though Ichika more lightheartedly so.

"She wants us to run 5K's with her every Saturday morning! My body cannot handle that kind of strenuous exercise! I am a _student_, not a triathlete in training!" Itsuki exclaims in self-defense.

"Now imagine me doing a 5K with Yotsuba..." Miku mumbles darkly, the small amount of light in her blue eyes fading away like dust in the wind at the thought of running any distance longer than a fifty-meter dash.

"I mean, I go jogging every weekend, but...that's not quite the same as five kilometers every Saturday..." Ichika also adds with a bit of a defeated chuckle.

"Not to mention, I don't think it's reasonable for you to expect me to give you a hand in that when you just ran out on my ass today to go help out the basketball team." Fuutarou glares sternly over at Yotsuba, who once more lowers herself behind the short couch to avoid most of her tutor's wrathful gaze.

"I-I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I just...I just couldn't leave them hanging like that!" Yotsuba whimpers loudly back like a dog being scolded. "You can teach me longer next week, Uesugi-san, I promise!"

"I'll be the decider of that, but later." The young tutor glances back at the front door, to which he will make his own exit very soon. "It probably doesn't make sense for me to ask this, but was that okay? Letting Nino just run off like that."

"Just leave her be, Fuutarou."

The boy turns to the third quint beside him, who's also gazing in the direction of the front door.

"She does that sometimes when she doesn't get her way. It's best to just leave her alone to cool off - at the very least, she knows how to let go of stuff if you give her enough time."

Pressing his hand on the back of his neck, Fuutarou inhales and exhales deeply.

"I sure hope so."

* * *

Having bid the Nakano quintuplets, the four of them who remain, anyway, good night and a good rest of their weekend, Fuutarou rides the elevator back down for the second time today to the elevator lobby on the ground floor. He's received another text from his sister Raiha, informing him that she's made his favorite food for dinner tonight, curry udon, and that he should stop by to eat with them if he can. The sound of curry udon is especially appetizing, given that he hasn't eaten since the double lunch earlier that afternoon, so he texts back to his sister that he plans to stop by the office after his meeting with Dr. Nakano, and that if his meeting ends up going later than expected even more than it already is, to leave him a portion for him to eat when he does arrive.

Putting his phone away, Fuutarou bows his head tiredly and closes his eyes to rest them, if only for a few minutes as the elevator descends. But try as he might to relax his mind, Nino's words still grip it, along with the sight of her running out of the house like she did. As much as he doesn't like to interfere with the business of others and refrains from doing so as much as possible, he still can't help but dwell on everything that's happened between him and Nino so far today. The sabotage of his lesson, the cook-off, the accidental groping, the subsequent trial, and now this...

Shaking his head a little and squeezing the bridge of his nose to de-stress, even if it's only a tiny bit, the young mage reaches the bottom floor and makes his way out, the glass doors of the entrance parting for his approach, but he stops a few paces beyond the closing automated doors, for directly to his right, sitting slumped against the glass walls by the sliding doors, is Nino.

Their eyes meet once more tonight at the same time, with Fuutarou looking down at her to his right and Nino gazing back up at him to her left. Since their run-in after her bath, Nino has donned their high school's tracksuit and has nothing on her feet but a pair of bathroom sandals with cutesy rabbit prints on the bridges. Her eyes are their normal blue, now that she's put her contacts back in, but not even her contacts can hide the tears that she's been quietly shedding out here, all alone, in the middle of the fresh night and darkened sky.

Realizing far too late that Fuutarou presents her the opportunity that she needs, Nino tries to quickly get back to her feet to dart back into the elevator lobby, but the doors close shut far before she even has a chance to do so. Fuutarou watches on silently, noting that Nino may match Yotsuba's burst speed, but her reflexes may need a bit of work.

"Tsk...you're so fucking useless," she snarls miserably at her would-be tutor, her voice sounding more depressed than angry as she begrudgingly accepts her fate, sealed outside of her own home.

"Forgot your key, huh," Fuutarou says simply, watching one of his would-be students resume her seat against the glass wall.

"You don't need to rub it in. Just get out of my sight, I don't wanna deal with you anymore..."

"Making you angrier isn't my intention right now, but I just want to say, now you know how I feel."

"And yet you're pissing me off even more anyway."

"Yeah, figured..."

But Uesugi refuses to move for the time being, standing where he's found Nino and looking up at the darkened but not totally blackened evening sky while the second quintuplet keeps her face buried into her knees that are tucked in against her chest. She raises her eyes, however, at the sound of someone taking a seat at the glass wall on the other side of the automated doors, only to find Fuutarou mimicking her, pulling out his phone to help pass the time a little.

Unimpressed, Nino glares hatefully at her classmate. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Are you making fun of me?"

Fuutarou shakes his head, quietly and calmly as usual. "Let's just say...there's one more problem that I need to solve before I leave. One of those problems that bothers you if you don't solve it...though I'm not sure if you can relate to that..."

Nino's eye twitches again.

"All you do is work. Work, work, work..." She discretely begins to bite the inside of her lip with her front teeth. "No wonder I hate you so much - you're the exact same as Papa. The two of you only ever think about work...I guess it should've come as no surprise that you two would be working together..."

Fuutarou pauses his texting to Dr. Nakano.

"I can understand you hating me. But why your dad?"

"What's that got anything to do with you? Fuck off, stop nosing in my business."

"As much as I would love to, the fact of the matter is that you're directly denouncing the man who's my boss, and the one who's paying me for teaching you. So I do feel at least a little compelled to stick my nose in." Fuutarou pauses, then adds, "All the more concerning if that man is also your dad."

"That sounds awfully fucking ironic - I specifically remember you having a run-in with him last week at the resort's restaurant."

"So you remember that? Then you should maybe see why I'm being an idiot, meddling into your family's business."

"Then stop. Is it so hard?"

"It is. What's harder is convincing you to come take my lessons, though, so I kinda need to worry about that more."

"Shut up, Uesugi! Just - just fucking shut up already!" Nino cries out exasperatedly, pressing her hands against her temples. "God, everyone's - everyone's so fucking stupid...! I hate you all...!"

Fuutarou wonders what species of poisonous butterfly is Nino's favorite, because the venom's returned in her words.

"'All'?" he asks quietly. "Sorry for butting into your family business even more, but does that by chance include your sisters, too?"

Annoyed by the way Uesugi is asking his questions, Nino angrily overlooks it in favor of answering him. "Yeah. I fucking hate them. So what?"

Fuutarou simply grins lightly.

"That's a big fat lie, isn't it?"

"It's not!" Nino vents back. "Look, they must all be out of their goddamn minds letting someone like you come into our house to tutor them!"

She finally turns to the boy whose face she is sick and tired of today.

"I don't get it - Papa hires you to be our tutor, and then a month later everyone's acting like it's all fine and dandy now? What part of that makes any fucking sense to you?"

"Here's a better question: what part of that _doesn't _make any sense?" Fuutarou deflects Nino's question right back. "A father is concerned about his daughters' failing grades, so he hires a tutor in an effort to help his daughters rectify their grades. After some time, the girls learn to work with their tutor so that they can raise their grades. What part of that _doesn't _make sense to you? I can understand the initial bit of resistance that you girls showed in the beginning; it was to be expected, since it was admittedly on very short notice, and this is gonna have to be a bit of a long-term investment on everybody's part. But did you really expect _all _your sisters to reject me the same way that you are? That you _still _are?"

Once again, Nino is silenced so badly by Fuutarou's overwhelming rationality that hits as bluntly as the bottom of a frying pan to the face that she struggles to find something to say through her simmering anger.

"D...Don't...don't make yourself sound like you're in the right here," she finally manages to hiss back.

"It's not about being right or wrong. I'm a mage - it's rare you come across one in the first place, and it's even rarer that you meet one who actually bothers caring about what's 'right' and 'wrong'. Morality has no place in a line of work like mine - all that matters is how well I can do my work, and how much I get paid for it."

"I don't buy that for a damn second, Uesugi. You clearly care for your own family, with how you treat your little sister. Taking her out for a crepe, giving her your airplane ticket and hotel room spot. Stop spewing bullshit just to make yourself sound cool."

"That wasn't not my intention, but I'm flattered to hear you say that anyway."

"I wasn't trying to _praise_ you!"

Chuckling a little, Fuutarou lowers his phone. "But yeah, maybe in that sense you're right, I do at least care a little bit about stuff like what's 'right' and 'wrong'. I have a family, after all; I'd hope you'd excuse me for wanting to take care of my family, since that's what anyone would normally do." He glances back over at Nino. "And that's a feeling you know very well, don't you?"

Stumped at first, Nino glares back at her classmate. "Bullshit. Stop talking like you know me - "

"_'This house belongs to the five of us. He's got no place here.'_"

Nino's own words, spoken with the voice of somebody else, slap her in the face harder than Uesugi's ever could.

"For as much shit you've given me and put me through, I can deal with you hating me," Fuutarou says softly. "But saying you hate your sisters - that doesn't sit well even with me, because you don't actually hate them - you love them. That's why you can't stand me - because to you, I'm an outsider who appeared out of nowhere for you all and is now a part of your life when you had little to no say in the matter."

Even without having to look over at her, Fuutarou can sense the waves of flaming anger emanating from the quintuplet cool down little by little as the two of them sit together on opposite sides of the glass wall underneath the evening sky.

"...you're so full of shit..."

Finally able to croak out her feelings, Nino also raises her eyes to match her tone, gazing off instead down the pathway towards the street, but she can't keep up this facade for very long before tucking her knees back into her chest and resting her arms over them for her head to rest on.

"Talking all that big talk...just to make yourself sound cool to yourself...and acting like you know me...as fucking if, you braindead creep."

Having said his piece, Fuutarou offers no response, merely blinking off into the distance.

Nino then adds somewhat bitterly, "...and so? Anything wrong with that...?"

"With the one exception that it's preventing me from actually doing part of my job...no, there's nothing wrong with that. I _did _say that it's only natural for someone to want to care for their family. This is your way of looking after your sisters, and I, of all people, cannot judge you for that." Fuutarou glances over at the quintuplet next to him again and gives her a wry grin. "Besides, I've got a little sis of my own. And I know exactly how you feel."

Giving him one last scornful glare, Nino buries her face back into her arms, feeling her own heartbeat begin to race and the heat return to her face. For all the hateful things that she's flung his way, for all the burning wishes in her head that have demanded nothing less than never seeing Uesugi ever again...she cannot bear to let him see her face now.

But the same quiet embarrassment that forces her to hide her face from the boy next to her also fuels her to act in spite of itself, and so she raises her face one more time for the night.

"That's right. I'm not wrong about this - no, not at all, I can't be," she says, mainly to herself. "This is so stupid, I don't have any reason to be sitting here acting all depressed."

She gets back up to her feet and points dramatically down at her classmate still seated against the glass wall.

"Then I've decided, Uesugi - I still won't accept you. Even if all the others hate _me _for it instead. For their sake, I'll be the one who hates you."

Tussling her hair matter-of-factly, she returns the wry smile that Fuutarou gave her first.

"You didn't really expect _all five _of us to just be good girls and do everything you say, did you?" she asks, masking a bit of a snort somewhere in that sentence. "That's just too bad."

Fuutarou grins back up at her. "Big talk coming from a girl who's still locked outside of her own house."

"I-I'm totally fine, thank you very much!" Nino blurts out, her freshly-established charisma getting smashed into oblivion as easily as her pride. "I can just call my sisters to let me back in any time I want!"

"Then by all means, go right on ahead. The intercom's right over here." Fuutarou beckons to the intercom standing a short distance from him.

"Yeah, of course! Just watch! It's so easy, all I have to do is - just - call them - "

But once she reaches the intercom itself, Nino can't quite seem to scrape up the courage to press the number of their room to call the rest of the quintuplets due to the sheer awkwardness of having to ask them to let her back into the high-rise. Watching her struggle with the intercom, Uesugi decides that he's spent enough time here with Nino and gets up, pulling out his wallet in the process so that when Nino turns to him after realizing that he, too, has stood up, Fuutarou has the keycard that the quintuplets' father gave him at the start of his contract, which grants access both into the high-rise through the front doors and into their house proper. He puts it on the intercom dashboard, right in front of the second quintuplet.

"I believe this belongs to you. Have a good night, Nino, and enjoy the rest of your weekend. And thanks for lunch today - it was still really good."

Departing so swiftly that Nino doesn't have a chance to stop him, Fuutarou removes himself from Nino's sight, stepping out of sight onto the sidewalk as he rounds the corner. Nino can only stare after him until he is gone before slowly turning to face the intercom, down at the keycard that Fuutarou has left in her possession. She remains for a few long moments where she stands, in front of the intercom and the keycard.

As she reaches out slowly to pick up her ticket back home, Nino doesn't know what to feel. Too many thoughts, too many emotions, too many things that she wishes she could say but can't for one reason or another. And to top it all off, the burning warmth that she feels in her chest, her cheeks...

...her eyes.

As she takes the keycard and waves it in front of the sensors at the automated doors that now slide open for her, Nino can't stop herself from dwelling on her nighttime conversation with Uesugi Fuutarou while she waits for the elevator to arrive.

The doors part open once the elevator reaches the first floor, and behind it is none other than Miku, who is about to step out and almost walks straight into her older sister, who was about to head inside too.

"N-Nino, you should come back. Are you done sulking now?" Miku asks, a bit taken back, admittedly, to find Nino somehow inside the elevator lobby.

"Yes, yes I am, don't even fucking ask me about it," Nino growls, though with much less intensity behind her voice. "C'mon, let's go back home already."

"How did you even get back inside? I came down here since we figured you locked yourself outside..."

"Don't worry about it, okay! Let's just go home, home!"

But as the elevator doors snap shut after them, Nino hears her own words play back in her ears.

I still won't accept you.

Even if all the others hate _me _for it instead.

But just how much of those words are true...?


	25. Myopia

Checking the time on the clock on the wall in the hospital lobby as he walks in and greets the receptionist on night watch, Uesugi Fuutarou takes long, quick strides to cover ground as efficiently as he can to reach his destination. It's now two hours past the intended time of his meeting with the quintuplets' father, and while he's been texting the doctor updates consistently for the past two hours on his situation, Fuutarou knows better than to hope that Dr. Nakano will give him any such leniency, even if his own daughters are the reasons why Fuutarou is late.

Eh, not that he gives a damn; Maruo practically lives in the hospital with all the workloads he gives himself, and whatever time he doesn't spend in the hospital itself, he spends at a nearby hotel to rest properly or meeting other important figures of the city. If Maruo actually acted like a dad once in a while and went home to see his kids, Fuutarou would in fact feel bad for wasting the man's time. At the quintuplets' expense, however, it appears that he doesn't need to.

Half-past eight in the evening; ordinary visitor hours are concluded for the day, and the night shifts are starting, so the number of staff members, visitors, and regular patients have dwindled substantially. While the lights are on for now, Fuutarou knows that by the time his meeting with Dr. Nakano is done, they'll be off. He readjusts his messenger bag as he walks down the corridor to the flight of stairs leading up to the third floor where Nakano's office is located, his headphones over his ears and filling them with some lofi so that he doesn't have to listen to the lonely, flat clicks of his own footsteps reverberating somewhat off the walls of the hospital corridor.

That, and due to his extreme lateness for his meeting, Fuutarou didn't have the time today to enjoy his walk to the hospital listening to some city lofi like he'd been looking forward to. Normally he wouldn't have his headphones on inside the hospital itself out of respect for the staff and patients, but given the late hours, Fuutarou figures he can afford to be a bit rude tonight. Having to talk to Dr. Nakano will do that to him no matter what happens, so why not get off to an even better start?

The young mage reaches the third floor and heads straight for the head physician's office, which is landmarked only by a nondescript door with a small black metal plate sign hanging on the front that says "The Doctor is In". If you were to flip it over, the back of the metal sign would say "The Doctor is Out". Fuutarou has always wondered if this is meant to be some kind of cruel joke on Maruo's part, because, not surprisingly, for the vast majority of the time, the sign would be flipped the other way.

Regardless, Fuutarou knocks on the front door.

"Come in."

And so he does, closing the door securely behind him and going through the small trouble of applying a small blue rune that bleeds into the door itself, embedding itself within and fading out of sight as Fuutarou greets Dr. Nakano and takes a seat next to him in his somewhat diminutive office. For being the head physician of the best hospital in the city, Dr. Nakano sure seems to not care about flaunting the title much.

"It would appear my daughters kept you; Miku texted me a few moments ago about your work today and what happened afterwards," Maruo says dryly, glancing at Fuutarou as he takes a tired seat at the doctor's desk.

"I mean, I _did _text you as well on the situation."

"That you did. But you'll excuse me for using these texts that one of my own daughters sent me for validation of your alibi."

Fuutarou groans shortly. "So you're calling that an alibi too, huh. I just got out of one court case, and now I have to deal with another? Besides, we've been working together for how long now and you still act like you can't trust a single thing I tell you?"

"Is it so unreasonable for a father to trust the words of his own children as opposed to a stranger? Particularly one who is a self-proclaimed mage?"

"It is when said father is allowing said self-proclaimed mage to actively interact with said children, in this case via a tutoring contract. It seems after all these years, you still underestimate the amount of damage mages can do," Fuutarou grins darkly. "But never mind that, it's already late at night and I'm sure neither of us want to deal with each other at this hour, so I'll make it quick."

Pulling up his messenger bag as he speaks, Fuutarou unclasps it and fishes out a USB 3.0 thumb drive, placing it on the doctor's desk.

"There's the footage, and here's...the samples."

Setting his bag aside once he's also stowed his headphones into them, which can barely fit into his bag and quite awkwardly at that, Fuutarou activates his small storage rune and pulls out the ziplock baggie of the two remaining liquidized Heisei samples he's taken from the gangsters the previous night. This time, he hands the samples directly to Dr. Nakano, who inspects them quickly.

"The research team I'm in contact with in London sent me back their test results this morning; I've forwarded their findings to your email, and now I'm giving you a copy of the footage of my own testing that I did last night. You should have everything that you need to conduct your own tests."

"Excellent," Dr. Nakano says simply. "Then explain to me the situation as you see it now. Spare no details."

Fuutarou nods, taking a bit of a deep breath.

"The samples that I've brought you here contain the same type of Heisei that the syringes I took from Nino's dealer's gang and sent to London for testing. It's a liquid form of Heisei - reports of it first cropped up around the beginning of the year, and I believe it first began circulating throughout the city about two months ago, so it's a very recent addition to the underground market here and just a new drug in general. But these particular needles - rather, the Heisei that these needles carry and the syringes from a month ago had - it's not your average Heisei you can buy off the black market."

"How did you know to analyze the samples you recovered from the gangsters who attacked my daughters?" Dr. Nakano asks with chilling calmness.

"I first got the hunch back when I used the centrifuge to analyze the Heisei samples, because your daughters were the first case that I came across that involved a gang using drugs not for themselves, but to use _on other_ _people."_

Fuutarou folds his arms slowly, inhaling and exhaling slowly to reorganize his thoughts.

"Gangsters aren't the brightest of people a lot of the time, at least not in this city, so if there's a new drug out, I'll eventually come across an idiot or two who's overdosed on a new drug and killed themselves doing it because they had no idea what kinds of effects the drug would have. Of course, it doesn't _have _to be a thug, but most of the time it is, since they're the likeliest people to have access to the newest shit. But to see a gang like that specifically try to go after other people, for the purpose of trying out a drug on _them_ \- now _that's _strange, _especially _when it's Heisei we're talking about, because by this point people should know what it does. Throw in the recent kidnapping cases that the city's been seeing lately, and my own run-in with those gangsters from last night, and it starts to add up: whoever's manufacturing liquid Heisei wants to test it out on people and is hiring gangbangers to run around snatchin' people off the streets to do it for them. Your daughters were very close to being the first ones."

"...and this...'Shirazumi Rio' fellow...may be responsible?"

Fuutarou raises a hand to have the doctor pause.

"Not so fast, Doc, I need to explain the magical side to the story first...which brings us to this."

The young mage taps the baggie of needles on the doctor's desk.

"Ordinary Heisei, in either powder or liquid form, essentially do the same thing - it knocks people out quick, depending on the dosage, but liquid Heisei is a lot more dangerous because you're injecting what's basically a magical substance straight into your body. At least by ingesting it, the stomach acid can mitigate a lot of the potential damage by weakening the magical effect of the blackout - but you don't have that kind of protection with injecting. So it's a near-instant knockout with an even smaller dose - meaning that all these needles, all the syringes you saw in that box that I took off the motherfuckers going after your daughters - they're all lethal doses. You're not waking back up if even only half a needle gets into your bloodstream."

Now, Fuutarou moves his hand over to tap the USB drive that's sitting with the baggie of liquid Heisei needles.

"But as I've been hinting at a few times already, _these _needles have a different kind of liquid Heisei, even though they look exactly the same as your normal liquid Heisei samples at first. I've already mentioned that Heisei is a magically engineered drug - these ones have had their magical compositions strengthened approximately sixfold. Tampering with the original Heisei's magical structure is already bad enough, but with its effects multiplied six times over, it doesn't knock people out - it kills them."

"What are the symptoms?"

Fuutarou snorts sarcastically. "If you can even call them 'symptoms'...upon injection directly into the bloodstream, it appears to cause the blood to coagulate within the vessels themselves; it also either causes the coagulated blood to rot immediately or corrupts them somehow, because the blood vessels on the test subjects turned noticeably black. It doesn't kill you immediately, which is the worst part, because you will feel your blood thicken, clog up your arteries or veins, wherever it started first, before slowly spreading throughout the rest of your body. And as far as I'm concerned, once it's in your system, you can't purge it unless you cut off a limb if it happened to begin spreading there. If it starts in a vital organ, you're basically already dead - and by that point, it's better for you to end yourself to save yourself the pain."

Looking back at the Doctor, who meets his gaze as well, the young mage raises his right knuckles thoughtfully to his chin.

"New drugs show up all the time. And Heisei isn't the first drug we've seen that has a magical manufacturing method or a magical origin. But this is the first time that I've personally seen where people are trying to test a new form of a magically engineered drug on other people, for the _expressed __purpose _of testing. And this is where that Shirazumi Rio guy comes in, and my hypothesis for the time being: I think that Shirazumi is behind the circulation of Heisei in this city, and he's trying to conduct tests to perfect a new form of Heisei for his own personal use."

"For his own personal use? When this new form of Heisei is so dangerous?" Doctor Nakano points out, but Fuutarou shakes his head.

"First the quintuplets, then the kidnappings of random people throughout the city, along with the girl I found yesterday...they're all ordinary people, Doc. The gangster I tested one of these Heisei samples out on last night, too, was a normal person, and the effects that his body showed upon direct exposure to this new Heisei matched the results of the group in London. For now, all signs point to these symptoms only being derived from a sample pool consisting of non-magical subjects."

"I see. Then Shirazumi-kun may be intending to concoct a version of liquid Heisei that is beneficial for mages or those with magical backgrounds but lethal to normal human beings."

"Or he just wants to make a lethal version of Heisei just because he hates anyone who isn't a mage," Fuutarou counters swiftly. "Remember, not everyone is a rational human being who works towards their own gains, and we're talking about a small demographic of people in the world who unfortunately consist of people who very well may be anything _but _rational. Surely you've heard of the incidents that other cities, both in Japan and around the world, have seen that have been caused by mages who acted not out of personal gain but merely for the sake of destruction?"

"And I hope you are not speaking out of experience."

"The only experience I speak of is six years of practicing magecraft for the sake of looking after myself, my dad, and my sister so that we don't fucking starve to death or get our heads caved in by debt collectors, thank you very much. But that's besides the point."

The young mage runs a hand through his black hair again one last time for the night.

"What we know is this, Dr. Nakano: this city's drug problem is worsening at an alarming rate. A new form of liquid Heisei that we know will kill people who get injected with it is out there on the streets, and people are getting kidnapped just for the sake of testing this new Heisei. The police might be able to delay the progress of the drug's circulation with their raids and search warrants, but they don't know the full extent of the situation that they're dealing with, and there's no way for them to understand it on their own."

Perhaps somewhat inappropriately for the topic at hand, Dr. Nakano offers nothing but a dry smile back at his hired mage.

"That sounds like a problem _you _must handle, if you are truly the Resident Guardian of this city that you proclaim yourself to be. I am not a mage like you; I already have my own hands full running this hospital."

"I'm well aware of that. But the good news is that I was able to extract intel from one of the gangsters I captured from last night. I now know what he looks like and can identify him using the surveillance network I've got set up throughout the city. I'll be conducting a citywide manhunt for this mage named Shirazumi Rio - because a part of me suspects that he's also the one who's responsible for the murder of Ebata more than a month ago, even if I don't have any direct evidence as of now."

At this, Dr. Nakano finally shows a different reaction, in the form of a raised eyebrow.

"In the meantime, while I do that, I'll need you to use your influence in the city to get me into contact with the mayor."

"Having me go straight for the mayor, are we? Not the fire marshal or the police commissioner?"

"The fire marshal can't do jack shit, and you know what I think of the damn police commissioner. And I know you feel the same."

"Indeed. But surely you know the situation with the mayor."

"I know. But in spite of that, I'm gonna have to ask you to do what you can to get in touch with him. It's something only he, as mayor of this city, can do for me."

"Hm. Very well, I shall oblige. But in exchange, I believe midterms for the first semester are fast approaching, so I will have you ensure that they all pass - how prepared are my daughters?"

"Woefully _unprepared_," Fuutarou mutters darkly, with his bangs casting a shadow over his face as he lowers it somewhat. "Miku's the only one who's consistently attending my lessons, and thankfully she's been showing at least a little bit of improvement - she now has a good chance of passing most of her subjects. Everyone _else_, on the other hand..."

"I understand that some of my girls refuse to attend your lessons. I can at least talk to them for you - "

"Don't bother, Doc. That would be really out of character for you - and I'd like to handle this end of the contract by myself."

"Even though the terms of our contract specifically state that I will step in and intervene if my daughters are giving you trouble whenever and wherever I see fit?"

"Yes, even knowing that. It's something _I _have to do, after all."

"Hmph. Do as you see fit, then, Uesugi-kun. Is there anything else for us to discuss tonight?"

Fuutarou shakes his head, gathering his bag and getting up from his seat.

"That'll be all. Did you eat dinner yet tonight, though?"

"No, I have not, though I am used to such nights, of course. Why the concern out of the blue like this, though?"

As the head physician is voicing his slight confusion at Fuutarou's own little out-of-character moment expressing concern for his own dinner situation, Fuutarou rummages through his bag briefly and pulls out the third pack of dango that he bought from the Izumi supermarket to offer to him.

"Nino and Miku were kind enough to cook me a big lunch today, despite the fact that Nino and I aren't on very good terms at the moment. I happened to buy a third pack of dango here to eat myself earlier this morning, but I figured you could use it more. I don't think Nino would accept any forms of thanks from me any time soon, so maybe I can show her dad some appreciation instead."

But the physician shakes his head to decline.

"I will be alright, Uesugi-kun. That, and I believe your little sister is particularly fond of Mitarashi dango, correct? If my memory serves me correctly from the time I treated her for a fever a few years ago."

Smirking a little, Fuutarou packs the dango back away. "You sure? You never know when I'll offer you free food like this again."

"I shall take my chances, then."

"Fair enough; have a - "

"Oh, one more thing, Uesugi-kun. About those midterms..."

Having started to head for the door to see himself out, Fuutarou stops on a dime and turns around to face his employer again.

"This is admittedly a bit sudden, but after some consideration, I would like you to show me adequate results from the tutoring you have done for the girls. So in the midterms in two weeks, if even one of the quintuplets fails, I will be terminating your contract as their private tutor."

Fuutarou shows no reaction on his face in response to this sudden demand by his employer.

"Is that a threat, Nakano?" he asks slowly, a slight shadow now cast over his eyes.

"Not at all. I merely want to see results, Uesugi-kun. You are a man of results - so I would like to see them in this area of yours as well."

"Even knowing that two of your own girls refuse to cooperate with me, and given how busy my schedule usually is?"

"Of course. I am well aware of how much of a busy person you are. However, as their father, I am not willing to sacrifice their academic standings by giving one of my employees leeway. I would have preferred to hire a full-time tutor who can focus all of their efforts in teaching my girls and not be distracted by other responsibilities."

"Even when you're partly responsible for such responsibilities that I've got?"

"Yes, even with that in consideration as well."

"Then why the fuck did you even bother hiring me for this in the first place?"

"Because your father pitched the idea to me, and as his former classmate, I decided to oblige him. If this will make you feel better, our years of working together have established to me that you are indeed a hard worker and a reliable contractor. But none of this will matter if you do not produce the results that I desire for my children. I hope you will understand."

Fuutarou tilts his head slightly.

"I do, but whether or not I understand is irrelevant. Because for my part, I would've preferred if you could just tell me straight up if you want me to stop teaching your daughters so I wouldn't have to worry about that kind of added responsibility just to _keep _my job as their tutor, on top of all the _other _bullshit I have to take care of. You're not even paying me for the girls whom I can't teach because they refuse to work with me despite my own efforts of trying to get them to join, and on top of that, you haven't even fucking paid me yet for first month."

Raising a hand to point harshly at the quintuplets' father, Fuutarou narrows his eyes disdainfully at the doctor.

"I deal with all this shit and then some because you're a long-term client of mine, Nakano, when I would normally terminate the contract with anyone else the moment I feel they're stepping one foot out of line. But don't think for a second that I won't do the same to you too eventually, motherfucker."

Turning swiftly to once again head for the door, Fuutarou pauses one last time as he opens the door and holds it open.

"And stop talking like you actually care about those girls," he hisses, his back facing the head physician. "It's fucking disgusting."

Once the door is closed and Fuutarou's footsteps outside in the third floor hallway echo into silence, Dr. Nakano grabs his phone that's sitting on the side of his desk and begins to dial a number.

* * *

"Ow! Ow, ow, owwwww! What the...?!"

Inhaling sharply and swearing under her breath, Nakano Nino, rudely awakened by a searing pain pulsing in her eyes, immediately rolls over to her left side on her bed, with no covers to duck under because she's tossed it aside in her sleep.

As she clutches at her eyes with both hands, the pain worsens dramatically, and it hits Nino in that moment that something is very wrong with her eyes right now. This is the first time something like this is happening, and she has no clue what even is happening as she lies on her side, inhaling sharply through clenched teeth with her eyes covered by her hands.

"...what the fuck...? What's going on...ow, ow, ow...!"

But the pain continues to pulsate in her eyes, which also begin to throb in their sockets, closely matching her own heartbeat in her chest. The longer it lasts, the worse it gets - it's not the pain itself that gets to Nino, but the escalating and increasingly unbearable heat that accompanies it. It's as if her eyes are being set on fire, and there is no way to put out the fires in her eyes. The combination of pain and heat make it so that Nino cannot bear to tear her hands away from her eyes, even though at the same time she desperately wants to give her eyes some air to at least try to have them cool off.

Nino opts to lay in bed where she's awoken, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the pain will subside on its own, whatever it is that's happening. But trying to endure the scorching pain in her eyes is like pressing her hand against the bottom of a frying pan over an open gas valve on the stove - Nino is reaching her breaking point. Her mind races as fast as her heartbeat as adrenaline begins to pump into her bloodstream, fear polluting her thoughts that she'll lose the rest of her already terrible eyesight to this mysterious infernal pain.

And with the fear comes the rest as the floodgates to her emotions are smashed open in the wake of the pain's rampage through her already turbulent mind.

"...why...why is this..." Nino can't hold back the tears welling up in her eyes, which are also blazing hot and probably make her eye situation even worse, though she can't feel them until they've squeezed out of their sockets. "...why is this all happening to me..."

The run-ins she's had with Uesugi Fuutarou, her and her sisters' classmate who is also their tutor, or supposed to be, the frustration that they've ended up producing for her, the anger and indignation she's felt towards him for being an unwanted presence in their household and posing a threat to the cohesive bond that she wants to keep pure and unsullied among her fellow quintuplet siblings, the helplessness she feels towards herself as she watches her sisters slowly open up to him, leaving her behind...

As though it were inevitable, the fear and other such rocky emotions going through Nino's head amalgamate into a murky, messy pool that quickly decomposes into raw hatred. Her teeth, still clenched initially from the pain, now tighten against each other even harder than before, reinvigorated by the jolt of deep-rooted anger that now seizes control of her heart.

"...it's all your fault..." Nino hears herself whisper murderously in the dark, so maliciously so that the quintuplet for a moment isn't sure if she's the one speaking those words or not. "...it's all your fucking fault..._Uesugi_...!"

So preoccupied is she now with her sudden fit of silent but simmering rage that she slowly forgets about the pain that's sent her into such a fury to begin with, and it's only after a good five or so minutes lying on her side on her bed that she then slowly realizes that the burning pain in her eyes are gone...or at least that's what it seems like, because the aftershocks of the sudden scorching pain in her eyes still linger, making her eyeballs feel like they are still burning in their own sockets when the pain is now largely absent. It's as though she were staring directly into the sun in the sky and is now having to deal with the light scars that linger in her vision even after she turns away from the sun.

Now that the pain seems to have gone away on its own, luckily for her, Nino turns onto her back slowly to gaze up at the ceiling of her room, managing to finally pull her hands off her eyes so that they can open again, which they do, slowly and cautiously, amidst the crowd of plush dolls and stuffed animals that also share the bed with her, along the bedframe next to her head and against the edges.

Though there are no lights in her room, a pair of dim purple lights are projected onto the ceiling above her. Ordinarily these dim lights are so weak that they cannot be noticed if there is any other light source around, but as Nino is in pitch black darkness, the purple lights from her eyes are somewhat more discernible now, despite their relative weakness.

Or at least they would be if there were anyone else in the room with her.

Slowly blinking up at the ceiling above her, her anger having slowly bled off in favor of relief that seeps back into her mind that the pain has gone away on its own, Nino slowly wipes the hot tears that have escaped her eyes as her thoughts, rattled by the pain and left disturbed by the jarring contrast of the replacing relief and the absence of such intense pain, begin to wander a little.

Nino has always known that she was a little different. She and Itsuki are the two among the quintuplets whose eyesights deteriorated quickly once they entered junior high - she will never forget the day that she looked up in class at the chalkboard upon being called to answer a question, only to stand up and realize that the chalkboard was a lot blurrier than it had been before.

Even stranger was the fact that there was now a weird purple filter over the blurriness that she saw all around her.

She didn't dare tell anyone about it, mainly because she didn't know what to do in order to address it, even when her junior high homeroom teacher at the time called her father to inform him of the situation, and he promptly got her eyes checked and procured for her a pair of glasses to use. It was bad enough already that something so embarrassing like that happened to her in the middle of class, in the middle of the school day, in front of all her other classmates - and it was only made worse by the fact that she realized her eyes had changed color, too.

No longer did she have the same beautiful blue sapphires that the rest of her sisters had. Even when Itsuki also experienced a similar case, though in her case it was farsightedness as opposed to Nino's nearsightedness, Itsuki retained her blue eyes, and her status quo was not changed. Even the prescription glasses that her father got for her initially stopped working because Nino's myopia worsened even more, to the point where now, she is virtually blind without her contacts; the fact that she couldn't even recognize Fuutarou earlier of all people and mistook him for her own sister demonstrates just how bad her vision really is.

So Dr. Nakano, after investigating his own daughter's case of extreme myopia, replaced her first set of glasses with contact lenses, upon Nino's own request since she didn't like how glasses made her look like a nerd or a bookworm. Not only were they colored contacts that restored her eye color back to their original blue to match the rest of her sisters, but ever since then, her eyesight stopped worsening.

To this day, Nino still isn't quite sure if such timing was mere coincidence or an unstated effect that her contacts have on her eyesight; her father certainly didn't specify that himself, and she's never quite had the guts to go up to him as ask, despite being the one quintuplet among them who would most likely be able to charge into problems like this head-on. Normal problems like dealing with school bullies ganging up on Miku, chasing away guys in the city trying to hit on her and her sisters, and other such social roadblocks have nothing on Nino; with her direct and blunt mannerisms and interactions, she isn't afraid of anything like that, not even back at the warehouse when she was kept hostage by her drug dealer's cronies.

But her eyes and her eyesight are a completely different story, for too many reasons. Her purple eyes set her apart from her classmates, friends, and peers - the peachy-red hair that she and her quintuplet siblings all possess already set her and her sisters apart from everybody else in a country where natural hair colors barely deviate from the narrow spectrum of black to brown. But she can deal with having a unique natural hair color and all the questions she's gotten bombarded with by everyone she meets asking her if her hair is dyed or not because she loves the red and blue contrast that her hair and eyes present, and because as part of a quintuplet family, she doesn't have to be the only one to be badgered like this.

Perhaps along this logic, she should also be able to take having a set of different eye colors in stride, but such is not the case. She was born with red hair and blue eyes, and that's what she grew up with; that's what she's used to. So having her eye colors switch artificially like this is _too _unusual, _too _unique - and the way that it happened too, suddenly looking up in class one day to find her eyesight having deteriorated to the point of necessitating glasses and the color of her eyes itself having morphed as if overnight, is something Nino cannot accept.

And it's not as though something like this has ever happened to anyone else; maybe people losing their eyesight quickly in a short period of time can happen, but people changing eye colors like that out of the blue? Nino remembers having to deal with the fallout of that incident during junior high, the gossip that circulated for a time about her that she needed to get glasses in the middle of class, so she had to go around and confront the people spreading such rumors and gossip and put her foot down. Incidentally those girls she confronted were the same girls at Black Rose Junior High who were infamous for bullying underclassmen, spreading rumors and gossip about other girls, and generally being assholes that no one liked but couldn't be challenged, at least not until Nino became their target of ridicule and got provoked into going after them, so ironically her lost eyesight was replaced by the supportive and amiable eyes of many others who became enamored with her, her aggressive but kindhearted charisma, and her willingness to stand up to unsavory people giving her or classmates she knows a hard time.

Still, her elevation in school status as the hot new socialite on the block, the charismatic and extroverted quintuplet with red hair and blue eyes, wasn't enough to help her overcome her fear of her own new purple eyes that would rear their ugly heads any time she removed the contact lenses holding them back. Maybe...if she wasn't part of a quintuplet family, maybe if she were just her own person and didn't need to worry about another sibling who was born at the same time as her, she could bring herself to accept her new eyes - after all, as often as she gets angry herself, getting angry just because she's losing the red-blue contrast between her hair and eyes is a bit much, even for herself.

But what she cannot bear to lose is the connection that she shares with her sisters. Having red hair and blue eyes is great and all, but anyone can do that if they so chose by dyeing their hair and getting blue-colored contact lenses, just like herself for her contacts. It's the fact that she has four other sisters who also have natural red hair and blue eyes that she takes pride in, what gives her the uniqueness that she truly desires. But perhaps more importantly, it's part of the bond that she shares with them that transcends words and physical manifestation, a bond that she has so fiercely defended and will continue to do so should she feel it being threatened.

And threatened it is again now, by the biggest threat Nino has ever seen.

The biggest fear that she harbors about all this, however, isn't the social aspect or even the safety of the connection she has with her quintuplet siblings. They can't be, because she knows how to deal with those types of problems, or at least knows she can try...the warehouse incident is a bit of an outlier, though, so let's not mention that. Her biggest fear is the knowledge that she's kept secret to herself, locked away in the deep recesses of both mind and heart, that she is not a normal person. She already isn't, of course, being a quintuplet born with red hair and blue eyes, but physical appearance isn't what she's concerned about here. The purple filter in her eyesight that, even now as she gazes up at the ceiling in her room, infects her vision...and following the initial loss of her eyesight, her vision has since developed another unusual quirk, so now, in addition to the purple filter, her eyesight wavers and vacillates slowly, almost as if there's a fire that's perpetually underneath her eyes that she will never be able to see because the distortions of the fire's heat trails rising up into the air are all that she will ever see.

Nino uncomfortably remembers the first time her eyesight started doing that, shortly after she received her contacts...so nauseating was the experience that she spent a week being sleep-deprived because she was too queasy to fall asleep, the week that the bathroom was her room because she was so afraid of puking at any given moment, which, twice, really did happen. She may be more used to it now, but she likes it no more than she did when it first began.

All these are signs that there is something different about her, and Nino has convinced herself as such, even if she can't produce any factual evidence to prove her conjectures. How could she, though? These aren't problems that she can confide in anyone else, problems that she can share with anyone else and expect them to understand. None of her sisters seem to show any of these symptoms, either. She's tried doing everything she can to rid herself of this tick, of this incessant feeling lurking in the depths of her mind by capitalizing on her status as one of the most popular girls at school, at least back at Black Rose - surrounding herself with friends, working on her social networking, and throwing small parties at the penthouse from time to time, though she doesn't do that much anymore because such parties would always leave the house in a terrible mess the next day.

But no matter what she tries, she can't exterminate that annoying bug, that terrifying bug of feeling alone. And it only feels all the more terrifying because she's perhaps the one person among her sisters who has no right to say that she's lonely.

Maybe that's why she holds onto the bond she has with her sisters so relentlessly, so adamantly, because her sisters are truly all she has. She can lose all the friends she's made, she can lose all the contacts and connections she's made at school and around the city. But her sisters is the line that she will never compromise - even if she can never explain herself to them, explain these feelings that she has that's been troubling her for all these years, just being with her sisters is enough for Nino. Just knowing that they will be together as a family through thick and thin is enough for Nino, and she'll do whatever it takes to keep her family intact. Her sisters are hers, and hers alone.

_Because you don't actually hate them - you love them._

"Get out of my head, Uesugi..." Nino grumbles, mainly to herself.

And to top it all off...the burning sensation she's felt in her eyes tonight, which only serves to add another question to her already daunting mountain of questions that she's got about herself. She's never felt this sensation before, and what made it feel even more painful than it probably needed to was the fact that she'd never been one to mind heat much. Ever since she taught herself how to cook after their mother passed away, Nino can't recall even a single time when she was afraid of open flame or high heat. Sure, in her novice stages of cooking, she's felt the bite of flames or intense heat on her hands and the stings of flying oil from the frying pan, but she hardly gave the pain a second thought. Every time she and her sisters went on vacation to the beach, she's been able to tolerate high temperatures very well, even when under the same conditions as some of her other sisters who are more prone to getting heat fatigue.

Strange, because having a high tolerance for heat would probably complement someone like Yotsuba with her extensively practiced athletic ability better. And Yotsuba doesn't like super hot stuff and has a rather pronounced cat's tongue.

While she probably shouldn't be surprised with the fact that it's happened, given the other strange things about her eyesight already, it's the fact that it's occurred without prior notice, without warning. What caused it to happen? Was it something that she did? Was it something that was going to happen eventually, something inevitable that she could have done nothing about? Maybe it could even be the exposure to the drugs that she's bought as a means to protect herself and her sisters? Nino doesn't know. There's no way that she _can _know. Maybe like everything else about herself that she's got questions to ask about, perhaps there's no way she can find out.

Setting the back of her right hand over her forehead, Nino closes her eyes that still throb a little here and there in the aftermath of the searing pain. And to think that she'd finally started getting to used to the quirks about her vision...only to have to take yet _another_ quirk about it into account.

The weight of her new, painful quirk, having been sinking in ever since the pain ceased, is now too much for Nino to accept, at least for now. Reaching over to her blanket that she's tossed aside in her sleep that's hanging off the side of her bed, Nino pulls it back up and drapes it over herself again. Because her bed is against the wall, she wiggles a little to close the distance between herself and the wall and rests on her left side again, facing the wall with her back to the rest of her room as she hides beneath the covers. It'll be difficult having to go back to sleep with clenched teeth and more tears dripping out of her pained eyes...

Like everything else, Nino will have to force herself to live with it, but that time is not now. Instead, tonight, like several others before it, is the time to let loose her soundless thoughts, her muted frustrations, her helpless confusion, and her diluted anger into a room that is dark and empty, at a wall with neither ears nor lips, to an audience of marionettes that neither listens nor comforts.

* * *

"...san! Uesugi-san!"

Once more, asleep at his desk on a Monday noon. And once more, woken by one of the quintuplets. How did the lyrics go again? I've been in this place before, or something...

Pulling his face off his arms at his desk in the middle of the classroom, Uesugi Fuutarou shakes his head a little and rubs his right eye before getting a quick stretch and a yawn in.

"Lunch just started, huh," Fuutarou croaks, glancing up at the clock above the chalkboard. "You could've just gone ahead with your sisters, you know."

Having stayed behind to wake him up for lunch this time, Yotsuba gives him her signature toothy, bubbly grin.

"I could have, yeah. But today, I wanted to eat lunch with you!"

"Eat lunch with me...?" Repeating after the fourth quintuplet, as he's unable to hide his surprise at this statement, the exhausted mage looks up at Yotsuba with a look of cautious disbelief as he reaches down to pick up his unopened messenger bag. "Can't say I saw that one coming."

"Neither did my sisters, to be honest," Yotsuba giggles a little with her trademarked "shi, shi, shi, shi!" "But I did promise you last Saturday that I'd make up for running out on your lesson."

"I mean, that's fine, but you said you'd attend all the lessons this week. You didn't say anything about eating lunch with me."

Pouting at Fuutarou's usual stubbornness, Yotsuba takes a step forward at her tutor. "I'm just trying to make it up to you a bit more! It's the least I can do, with how much effort you put into teaching us!"

"Well, the least you can do is promise me you won't run out on a lesson like that again."

_"I'm really sorry about that, so just please let me treat you to lunch for today!"_

Yotsuba even performs a full-length bow at her tutor, who's getting up out of his seat in the meantime.

"No need to bow, I'm the last person you want to do that to," Fuutarou declares quietly, grabbing firm hold of Yotsuba's green hair ribbon and gently lifting it up so that Yotsuba's face also rises with it. "You're in luck; I didn't eat anything yet today, so please do treat me."

"But you _never _eat anything at all in the morning!" Yotsuba continues to pout, causing Fuutarou to quickly set a finger on her lips, which catches her off-guard and causes her cheeks to bloom.

"Ssshh, before Miku hears you. She's gonna force-feed me burned omurice until my fucking intestines commit digestive suicide."

"Oh, was that why the kitchen kinda smelled like something burned over the weekend?"

"Yeah. Did you not hear from Nino or Miku?"

Yotsuba shakes her head as the two of them make their way out of the classroom.

"After you left, Nino reminded Ichika that she'd had work scheduled for that day, and she convinced Itsuki to leave to go study at the library instead, so it was just me, her, and Miku left in the house. She also tried making Miku leave by telling her to go get her a drink somewhere, but she didn't because she'd already bought one for her at the supermarket. So Nino tried another way to get rid of me by challenging Miku to a cooking contest to see who could make better food."

"Aha...I guess I can imagine what happened from that point on," Yotsuba remarks with an uneasy laugh.

"Yep. Should explain why your kitchen smelled like that."

The fourth quintuplet lets her eyes fall down to the ground just ahead of their shuffling feet.

"So...Nino is still giving you a hard time, huh?"

"Would it really be Nino if she weren't?"

"Well...I guess...you're not wrong, but..."

"But?"

Yotsuba glances up quickly at her tutor beside her. "Nino's...Nino's actually a super nice person, Uesugi-san. It's just that...if she doesn't think very highly of you, she'll behave like that towards you."

Yotsuba pauses as she averts her gaze before adding,

"And...she...this is just a guess on my part, but...I think she acts like that towards you because you're the only person who's visited us at our house so frequently like you have. Unless she's, like, planning to throw a party at our house or something like that, she really doesn't like having people she doesn't know in the house. She doesn't even like it when we have maid service come in or plumbers come in to fix some of the pipes in the kitchen or something."

Fuutarou listens carefully to Yotsuba's input, for it lines up with what Nino herself had to say about him two nights ago. It wasn't likely that Nino was lying about what she had to say about him, since she'd spoken those things thinking she was talking to one of her own sisters, but it's still nonetheless reassuring that another one of her sisters is inadvertently supporting Nino's sentiments.

"So please don't give up. Nino _will _eventually see that you're not a bad person, and that all you want is to do your job," Yotsuba says, a little bit pleadingly. "I believe in you that you can do it, Uesugi-san!"

Smiling a little, though a bit vaguely in terms of the sentiments behind it, Fuutarou gives off a heavy sigh. "Thanks for the support. But the problem is that midterms are comin' up fast...I didn't exactly have the luxury of time to work with going into this tutoring gig, but now with midterms only a few weeks away, now I'm absolutely crunched for time. And it's not like my usual workload outside of tutoring's getting any better either. I had a bit of a standoff with Nino two days ago too - remember when she ran out on us after our little trial when all you came back home?"

"Yeah, what happened after that, actually?"

"Well, when I headed out, I found Nino outside the doors down on street level, so I stayed behind a little to chat with her, since I had my own key into the high-rise and into your place that your dad gave me. I think I was able to at least make her feel a _little _bit better afterwards, but I can't be sure."

Shaking her head, Yotsuba also begins to look somewhat discouraged. "She...she's been a bit moody lately. I think something's bothering her, since she doesn't normally act cranky like that just by herself."

"Ugh, great. Then I'll assume that's my fault..."

"I-It's not your fault, though..."

"Well, it's like you said, right? Something's bothering her if she's acting bitchy all on her own. Unless she's talked to anyone else over the weekend, I'm the only person who could make her act like that." Fuutarou shakes his own head too. "As long as I can monitor Ichika's schedule with her work, I don't have to worry as much about you three. But Nino fucking hates my guts, and I don't know what Itsuki's doing or what her stance is like towards me since we haven't talked much ever since our Golden Week vacation. I _need _to get the two of them to start showing up...but admittedly, I'm kind of at a loss for what to do."

The two of them head down to the school cafeteria to buy their lunches, with Yotsuba graciously paying for his lunch too. The school cafeteria has recently added its own schoolmade lunchboxes in an effort to keep students on campus for lunch rather than having the students head out to convenience stores nearby off-campus and buying lunchboxes there, and to everyone's surprise, the school lunchboxes are actually very well made and delicious, so the lunchboxes are the hot new commodity among the students. Naturally, though, with their popularity come long lines and long wait times, so by the time Fuutarou and Yotsuba finally manage to get their own lunchboxes and settle on heading up to the roof to sit down and eat, there are only about fifteen minutes left in the lunch period.

"Sorry that it took so long...I forgot just how popular these new lunchboxes are..." Yotsuba mumbles dejectedly, noticing her tutor check the time on the smartwatch that she's bought for him.

"You underestimate my power of waiting," Fuutarou smirks a little, in an effort to raise the quintuplet's spirits as the two of them sit down on a bench behind the fenced edge of the roof that overlooks the central school plaza below. "I've waited much longer than this for worse food, and less of it. And especially when someone else is buying it for me."

"Ehhhh...you don't have to go _that _far...it's only just lunch, right...?"

Opening his own lunchbox and snapping apart his wooden chopsticks, Fuutarou raises the box up to begin eating.

"To you, it might just be lunch. To me, it's another day that I don't have to worry about going to sleep hungry."

Yotsuba's hands freeze where they are, about to pull apart her own pair of chopsticks.

"Even though it's only lunch...?" she asks. A bit of a misplaced question, but the sentiments are the same nonetheless.

"A day with food is better than a day without."

"Then how come you're so much taller than us?"

"Don't ask me. Or rather, maybe you should imagine how much _taller _I'd be if I actually ate properly."

"Y-You'd be a giant!"

"Thankfully I'm not. So I guess it's a handicap I don't mind having."

"But _I _mind! I don't like the sound of you having to worry about food every day."

"It's fine, things are better now than what they used to be. I have a sister who always makes good food for me and my dad back at their place that I can rely on whenever I get hungry."

"You can always stop by our house for dinner if you want, though. You've eaten dinner with us a few times before by this point."

"Eh, I'd rather not trigger Nino more than I already have. The dinners with you girls are gonna have to go on hold for now."

Because they don't have a lot of time left for lunch, Fuutarou eats rapidly, already a fourth through his lunchbox when Yotsuba's barely even started. Yotsuba puts her thoughts on hold for now, wanting to at least give her tutor some time to himself so that he can eat. After all, what would be the point of buying him lunch if all she does afterwards is talk his ear off...or make _him _talk his own ears off...

Still, as she munches softly on a piece of karaage, there's one question that remains that she must ask, like an itch that refuses to die down until it's taken care of.

"Uesugi-san...I know this might be a little bit of a more personal question...but I would still like to know. Are you...afraid of letting other people help you?"

The fact that her tutor does not give her a swift and immediate answer like he normally would is all the proof she needs to know that yes, this is in fact a very personal question she's just asked him. Her first instinct, then, is to apologize for asking such a personal question, but for once, she manages to resist her impulse to apologize, as is her second nature other than helping other people, so that Fuutarou has time to formulate his response.

"Yes," Fuutarou finally answers, lowering his now almost fully eaten lunchbox. "I've never been comfortable with the idea of relying on others for help of any kind. That's why I've always been hesitant or always tried to turn down anything that you and your sisters offer me."

Her suspicions now confirmed directly at the source, Yotsuba also lowers her chopsticks to pause her own eating.

"And...is it alright if I ask why?" she continues.

"Well, since we've already started talking about it, sure. Without going into too much detail, the world of magecraft is, uh...it's rough, to say the least. It's a cutthroat world out there, and in this current situation that the world's facing where magecraft and magic in general is on the decline, the problems that helped contribute to its downfall are only getting worse. It's a true dog-eat-dog world, the survival of the fittest, whatever you wanna call it. Bottom line is, generally speaking, you can't trust anybody except yourself. And even then, there'll be times when you don't even have yourself to trust..."

The young mage takes a break from talking to finish the rest of his lunch so that he doesn't have to worry about having to eat on his way back to the classroom once lunch ends.

"All that, plus my own experience as a mage who's managed to live through a good bit of it myself...it's taught me to always be wary of people offering aid. Too often have I seen people try to disguise malicious intentions with seemingly harmless things, and so now I can't help but think about all the bad things that could happen whenever someone offers to help me in some way. Right now, for instance, you could have arranged for this lunchbox to be poisoned, and I wouldn't have known any better because you're someone whom I wouldn't expect to do such a thing."

Yotsuba opens her mouth to protest, but she barely manages to keep her protest suppressed, since she has a good idea what Fuutarou will say back to her.

"The smartwatch you gave me here - it could have a small bomb installed inside that could blow my left hand off and maim me. The food that Nino and Miku gave me on Saturday, that could've been poisoned too. Hell, Nino tried drugging my ass during my first week over, so that doesn't exactly help matters. Even if you girls aren't the ones trying to do these things, someone else might know about our relationship and take advantage of that to attack me while making it seem like it was you girls who did it. Deceit is everywhere, and given its nature, you never quite know where it'll come from and when. So to minimize my own risks of getting hurt, but more importantly to do my best to make sure that no one else gets involved in case something goes wrong, typically I handle things on my own, I solve my own problems. I'll have to make exceptions every now and then, obviously, depending on the nature of whatever contract I have active, since I can't exactly go around choosing what kinds of jobs I want to have, since, well...money is money, and I don't care what my job is so long as I see the check at the end after I've done my part."

Fuutarou looks straight up again, towards the rest of the city.

"I get the feeling I've said that line a whole bunch of times for some reason..." he wonders aloud.

"You _have _been hanging out with us a lot lately. Maybe you've been telling them the same thing?" Yotsuba suggests.

"Probably."

Setting aside his now empty lunchbox to dispose of properly later once they need to get going, the young tutor opens his messenger bag and pulls out a plain thermos bottle that has ordinary drinking water inside to take a swig.

"To add to that...everything has a cost. This is similar to the whole 'opportunity cost' thing I talked to you about a while back, if you remember that. But for example, when you buy something, it has a monetary value attached to it that tells you how much money it's worth, and you give the cashier that amount of money to purchase it. In this case, it's very simple - you see the cost in a way that you understand and pay it with the appropriate currency, in this case with yen."

Yotsuba has stopped eating to pay attention to her tutor, as if they're in the middle of a lesson. Except this would be one of the rare times that Yotsuba is deeply invested in what her tutor has to say.

"But not everything is so cut and dry like that. Because let's say, using the two of us as an example now, I've been hired to tutor you so that you can pass your exams and get through graduation safely. But you're not the one paying for my tutelage, your dad is. Same thing with lunch today: you bought my lunch for me, so you had to pay lunch twice, once for the two of us. And that's still involving a clear, intuitive medium like money - how do you know what the price of something is when money _isn't _involved?"

"Uesugi-san...this is starting to sound like an economics class," Yotsuba says blankly.

At this, Fuutarou breaks into actual laughter. Having never seen her tutor behave like this, Yotsuba can do nothing but stare.

"An economics class...this would be the most basic economics class in the world if that were the case," he snickers. "I can add an actual economics course to our schedule if you _really _want, but I don't think you can - "

"Forget I said anything! Forget it, forget it pleaeeeeeeaaaaase!"

"Yeah, I figured...but I guess I can't blame you for thinking that. Honestly, I think I started talking about money because I'm a broke ass bitch most of the time and money's all I ever think about..."

Uesugi clears his throat briefly.

"Basically, what I'm trying to say is - when you offer help to someone, or when you ask someone for help, no matter what form that help comes in, it needs to be paid for. Most of the time, it's money - but there are things that don't involve money at all. Favors, connections, deals, negotiations...as long as both or all parties agree to it, compensation can take literally any form, even no form at all if that's what everyone really wants. My unwillingness to let other people help me is also due to that, because the price I'd have to pay for receiving aid from someone else may be in a form that I'm not willing to pay. So if I can help it, I do everything on my own, because the prices I pay to operate alone are prices I'm fine with paying, if that makes sense."

"...so...you mean something like...you weren't planning to eat lunch today because you're okay with going hungry?"

"Wow, you're smarter than you give off, Yotsuba. Why can't you be this smart during our _normal _lessons, I wonder?" Fuutarou reaches over and pinches Yotsuba's left cheek gently.

"Uaaaaaahhh...U-Uesugi-san's bullying meeee..."

Giggling a little as Fuutarou lets go of her cheek, the fourth quintuplet falls back into pensive silence, looking down at her half-eaten lunch on her lap.

"So that means...all this time...even with all the, the...bad stuff that could happen...you accepted our help in the end. Be it food, or...gifts, or..." Yotsuba trails off briefly before picking her thought back up again. "You let us help you...knowing that something bad could happen...?"

Fuutarou lowers his water bottle.

"Well, obviously I'm not going to take risks like that without setting some kind of countermeasure to mitigate any damage that I could be taking," Fuutarou shrugs a little. "Like back when Nino tried slipping me drugs. I drank the water that she gave me, but I have runes on my taste buds that scan for foreign substances in the food and drinks I consume that let me know if I'm about to get poisoned or drugged so I can spit out whatever it is that I'm about to eat or drink."

"But...you still drank the water she gave you back then, and...it turned out you were only pretending to be unconscious."

"Heisei is a drug that's manufactured with magical means - that means it can be deconstructed magically too, and if that's done, Heisei's basically harmless. I work at the hospital with your dad, and with the drug problem that the city's been experiencing lately, we've had to deal with contraband drugs of all kinds a lot, so I know a thing or two about them - especially when it comes to the magical ones and how to counter those, if they happen to have any."

Uesugi stashes his water bottle away.

"But that doesn't mean the next time I ingest Heisei or another drug, I should expect the same result. While I don't think it's fair to say that every time you girls help me out with something, be it buying me food or getting me something like this smartwatch, I have to assess every single possible bad scenario that can come of it, it wouldn't surprise me if something were to happen to me one of these days."

Yotsuba's gaze is fixed on the cement by her feet as she somberly listens to her tutor. The smartwatch that she bought for him...the lunch that she bought for him today...all the other little trinkets that she's given him over the weeks that she's known him...and that's nothing to say of whatever else her sisters have done for him too...all of that, every single one of them could have carried a risk of hurting Fuutarou instead...? As unbelievable as it might seem, the memories of Fuutarou fighting against the gangsters at the warehouse are there to remind Yotsuba that Fuutarou isn't saying all this just to scare her, that he's got a very good reason to say all the things that he's saying. After all, she was the one who got him to talk about this - he wouldn't bother her with this stuff if she hadn't, since he keeps to himself mainly.

Like clockwork, a hand rests on top of her head, over her hair ribbon that gets flattened for a moment underneath the hand's weight.

"You let me worry about that," Uesugi Fuutarou mutters solemnly, and Yotsuba thinks she can sense a bit more weight to his words as well than usual. "Keep being you; you wouldn't be Yotsuba otherwise. And if nothing else, know that out of all five of you, you're the one who's helped me the most so far."

Unable to find her breath, Yotsuba remains frozen where she sits on the bench, with her tutor's hand on her mid-length peachy red hair. The one who's helped Fuutarou the most? Her? But how? The most she's ever done was buy him an expensive smartwatch that Fuutarou never asked for...most of the time, all she's ever done is be a dumb idiot during his lessons...

The bell begins to ring, as if Fuutarou intentionally timed his last words to her so that she won't have a chance to ask him why he felt that way.

"Ugh...time to go sleep in class again, I guess..." Chuckling morbidly to himself, Fuutarou gets up, picking up his bag and his trash with him. "I can take yours too, if you want. Wait, you didn't finish it all..."

But Yotsuba slowly shakes her head, not looking back up at her tutor.

"It's okay...um...I'll...I'll finish this up quick right now," she says lightly.

"You sure? Then I'll see you back in the classroom."

The sound of the metal door leading up to the roof of their building scrapes shut behind her as she lifts up the last piece of karaage to her mouth.

"...I haven't even done anything yet..." is all she can mumble to herself as she finishes the rest of her lunch.


	26. Your Type

**A/N**

**Changelog:**

**-Expanded the end of Fuutarou's and Dr. Nakano's conversation in chapter 25 (reintroduces manga plot point at the end of chapter 15)  
******-Added short segment towards the end of Nino's narrative in chapter 25  
**-Slightly expanded the conversation between Fuutarou and Yotsuba in chapter 25  
**

**ricardotolava450: "Who is your favorite quintuplet?" The one who didn't win. But it be like that sometimes. FeelsStrongMan**

* * *

"...I think I can feel a bit of depression comin' on."

Fuutarou's little sister Raiha walks around her big brother to peer over his shoulder to take a look at the piece of paper that he's opened up after their dinner is done, and she finds that it's a midterm announcement letter from Asahiyama High School, having been sent out a little over a week prior to the date of the actual midterms themselves.

"Wow, Onii-chan. You're usually really confident about your test scores...not really like you to be scared of a test. Won't you just ace it like you do every other test you take?"

"Is that supposed to be, like, some sort of jab at me or something?"

"No, not when it happens all the time..."

Fuutarou lets out a little heave, which comes out sounding like a mix between a groan and a sigh.

"I'm not worried about myself, obviously I'll be fine. It's the girls I'm worried for...there's even a chance that they aren't even _aware _midterms are coming up."

"Even though you said you've been over at their place tutoring them every weekday? You didn't make sure to tell them?"

"That's the thing - I _did_, but Ichika's busy with her part-time, so she's probably got that on her mind more. Yotsuba's got the brain of a goldfish and forgets everything I teach her three seconds after the lesson's done, _and _she constantly runs around the school helping everyone and their mother with every and anything. Nino and Itsuki still refuse to show up...I guess really only Miku would even be aware that midterms are coming up."

"Then at least one of them knows!"

"Yeah...still four short from my target goal, though..."

Isanari, who's sitting across from his son at their folding dinner table on the floor with an open can of Kirin, takes a big chug that immediately deletes half of the can's contents before belching out,

"Fuutarou, don't bring back all this talk of studying home with you, alright?!"

_"Motherfucker, whose idea was it to have me teach those girls in the first place?!" _Fuutarou bellows back while Raiha dully puts her hands over her ears, expecting the two male members of the household to begin going at each other. "And that shit doesn't sound like the kind of thing a responsible parent should say. Is that why we're all still poor as fuck?"

Letting out a bit of a chortle, Fuutarou's and Raiha's father gives a half-exasperated, half-amused sigh of his own.

"Look, it's not like you were always such a perfectionist and a workaholic, right?" Isanari points out, speaking more reasonably this time around.

"Maybe not, but I don't see how that's related to my worry about the quints possibly not passing their midterms."

"My point is that those girls will change, just like how you did. Everyone does - it's a natural part of growing up, no matter who you are. You've gone through it already yourself, obviously - I don't need to tell you that for you to know."

"Then why did you?"

"Just to remind you. There _are _days when it kinda feels like you're so engrossed in your work that as your dad, I want to pull you back out into reality."

"Hmph. Usually it's the other way around."

"Well, there's no reason to pull you _back down _to reality. Your problem's the exact opposite - you're _too _much of a realist."

"Kinda have to be, though, unfortunately."

"Right, but it wouldn't kill you to learn to know when to act that way and when not to. I hope you're not the same kind of person whenever you go tutor those girls, are you?"

"I try not to be..."

Isanari snorts loudly. "Then I might be hearing that from Maruo at some point. Don't blame me if I can't do much to help you keep this contract."

"Not like I would anyway. And you don't even need to go that far - I've already got my neck down on the chopping block."

"Chopping block? How so?"

"I met with him the other night, last Monday. Right before I left, he asked me to 'show the results of my work' or whatever and said that if even one of the girls fails, he'll be terminating the contract."

_"Goddamn it, _Fuutarou, after all the trouble I went through just to convince Maruo to give you that opportunity!"

"Shut your damn trap, old man, I've been juggling my usual work with tutoring them, and it ain't helpin' that two of them would rather go eat dinner with their dad than let me teach them!"

"Onii-chan, Onii-chan, you're starting to sound like a Yakuza again," Raiha reminds her brother with a flat voice.

"Am I? Let me go cut off my pinky finger real quick..."

"Please don't, you'll cause even more misunderstandings with the police."

"I won't. And how the heck do _you _know about that?"

"Because I made Otou-san tell me what happened that night."

Fuutarou throws a murderous glare over at his dad, who raises his hands in self-defense.

"Hey, it was either that or the ladle. And you already know what I feel about the ladle!" Isanari says quickly.

"You're an idiot, Isanari."

Wanting to change the topic, Raiha looks up at her dad as well.

"So...Onii-chan wasn't always such a workaholic? What was he like when he was younger?" she asks.

"Hahaha, well, let's see...er..." Hesitating a little, Isanari manages to keep up a facade of family-friendly camaraderie. "He, uh...he used to be a wild boy, just like his old man! Yep!"

"Did that also include smoking cigarettes and drinking beer?"

"Obviously not, Raiha," Fuutarou calls over disapprovingly.

"Well, ignoring those, there was no denying that he was a kid of free reign, before he got tied down with all the work that he's got on his plate now," Isanari continues after another hearty swig of Kirin.

"Then I wanna see pictures! Well, actually, Onii-chan doesn't like having his picture taken normally because of his work, so never mind that. Can you tell me more about Onii-chan's past?" Raiha presses on.

"Hmmm...I suppose he won't mind if I say that he changed after he met _her_," Isanari mentions thoughtfully before pointing across the table at his son. "Don't lie to me, kid, I know you've still got a picture of that girl you met six years ago."

At this, Raiha gasps excitedly like a fangirl meeting her idol in person for the first time.

"Onii-chan, you had a _childhood girlfriend?!" _she cries out, unable to contain her excitement and dashing around the small table to confront her older brother about this, who now looks mildly annoyed that his dad brought the topic up.

"She wasn't my _girlfriend_, Raiha. I think she was just a girl I met around the city at one point and we just hung out for the day or something. It was a long time ago, I don't remember everything about it."

"But Otou-san said you still have a picture of her! Can you show me? Please? Pretty please?"

"No."

"I'll make you curry udon again tomorrow! I just need to swindle money out of Otou-san first..."

"Raiha, don't do that. And Isanari, raise your daughter better, damn it."

"Couldn't I say that about her older brother too?" Isanari snickers back.

"Who's with her more at home, the man who sits at his office playing Minesweeper three hours a day or the guy who spends every night running around the city making sure it isn't about to blow up at any given moment?"

Isanari chugs down the rest of his beer while his son is talking back at him so that he can pretend like he hasn't listened to Fuutarou's counterpoint.

"Anyways, Onii-chan, please, lemme see! You _never _talk about what you were like in the past!" Resorting to her ultimate weapon, Raiha assumes her face of ultimate destruction and whimpers up at her big brother, _**"...please?"**_

But to Raiha's shocked dismay, her brother shakes his head adamantly still, rendering her psychic attack completely null and void.

"I don't even have the picture on me, even if I wanted to show it to you. What makes you think I'd even keep a picture like that on me in the first place, anyway?"

"Well...I figured I'd ask, just on the off-chance that you might have it on you...I mean, she, uh, that girl Otou-san said you met six years ago, she sounds like someone important to you, right? Since he said you changed after you met her. So that picture of you and her probably means a lot to you."

"It does, but remember, Raiha, I'm running around the city a lot and doing all kinds of stuff. So it's not the smartest thing for me to keep something valuable to me like that on my person while I'm working, you know?"

"Mmmm...I guess you're right...but still, I wanna see!"

Sighing and running a hand through his black hair that he lets his sister cut every so often, Fuutarou deliberates for a short moment.

"Maybe one day, once we're older and I still remember, I'll let you see it."

Raiha pouts a little, but she decides it's better to just let it go for now.

"Fine, fine, you win for now, Onii-chan. In exchange, though, take me out to a hamburger place next week sometime! Today's, what, Friday night? You said you'd be busy over the weekend with work and cram studying with everyone, so...whenever you're not busy, of course."

"Hamburgers, huh. Sure, actually, why not - we haven't been to one in a while, right?" Deliberating shortly again, this time on his sister's request, Fuutarou nods in agreement and gives her a quick smile back. "Where do you wanna go?"

"Anywhere! Family cafe, restaurant chain, I like them all!"

"Alright, I'll see if I can scrounge up some coupons for a place or something. Isanari, if you're not busy, we should all go together."

_"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?! _Fuutarou inviting his dear old man out for a family dinner?!" Literally flipping out and tumbling onto the floor backwards as though pushed, Isanari quickly crawls over to a nearby nightstand against the wall across from his office and assumes a respectful kneeling position, hands pressed together in reverence at a small, slightly cracked picture frame. "Haruna...I did it. I finally did it...I got our son to invite me out to a family dinner..."

Grabbing the now-empty can of Kirin that Isanari's left on the table, Fuutarou yeets it at his father, and the can tinks off the back of his head.

"It's not as if I haven't taken us out to dinner before, what gives?" he calls over as Raiha bops his head quickly as punishment for throwing something in the household, especially at their dad, while conveniently ignoring the fact that she beats her own father regularly with a kitchen ladle. "Sorry, I'll go pick that up, Raiha. But I'll have to get going after this - thanks for dinner tonight as always."

"Mhm! Let us know when you'll take us out to dinner for hamburgers!"

"Yeah, I will."

After properly disposing of Isanari's empty beer can and gathering his usual belongings of a messenger bag and headphones, Uesugi Fuutarou bids his family good night as he closes the secure office door behind him and scales down the rickety metal stairs to set off once more into the night.

As he walks away from Daikazoku Square, he gazes up at the dark, empty sky.

"...wonder how that picture's doing...the color might be fading a little bit by now..."

Suddenly, he stops on the curb of the square, furthest from the office. Without another word, Fuutarou changes direction and begins walking in a different direction.

* * *

"Ah, good morning, Uesugi-san ~ !"

"Good morning, Fuutarou."

Greeting the two usual girls who answer the door every time he arrives at their house, Uesugi Fuutarou pulls off his shoes and follows Miku and Yotsuba into the living room that is their usual study room, the glass table is already cleared for his arrival and lesson. Miku looks like she's been up for a while now, even though it has only just struck nine in the morning, and Yotsuba is still in her bear jammies which, oddly enough, suit her very well. She's quite fond of them, as she's shown up dressed like that to some of Fuutarou's lessons as of late, now that he's been over enough times and the quintuplets are feeling more comfortable with him in the house.

"You girls didn't eat breakfast yet, did you?" Fuutarou asks, sniffing the air once and noting the absence of any indication of morning cooking.

"I can make some for you if you'd like," Miku offers, raising her hand, but Yotsuba, alarmed at this offer, leaps forward to shake her own hands at her older sister.

"Wait wait wait wait, Miku, you can't give him an upset stomach first thing in the morning, and he's about to teach us, too!"

"He ate my cooking before. He can handle it," Miku says confidently while rolling up her sleeves and beginning to walk towards the kitchen, but Fuutarou stops her with a firm hand on her shoulder.

"As much as I appreciate the sentiment, Miku, I agree with Yotsuba, I think it's best if we just let Nino handle it today."

Indignant that her tutor's stopped her, the third quintuplet pouts back up at him. "What do you mean? You said before that you could taste the effort that I put into making food."

"Yes, but recall that I said that in part to get back at Nino for the shit she pulled on us last weekend. That, and 'being able to taste your effort' can only last for so long as an excuse to eat burnt food that's legitimately bad for you."

Miku simply pouts a little harder. "I've been practicing...! Just like studying, Fuutarou!"

"Eh...maybe you can show me another time."

Knowing that she won't be able to convince her tutor by herself, Miku turns to her younger sister in an effort to recruit her to her cause of being able to feed Fuutarou breakfast. "Yotsuba, help me out here."

"Even though I just told you not to?!"

Pouting at her sister as well, Miku turns to put her back to the two, folding her arms in the process.

"I see how it is...nobody wants me to cook. Fine...no one wants me to get better at cooking..." she grumbles.

"It's not that, Miku, it's just - it's just - " Yotsuba begins to panic a little, afraid that maybe Miku really is getting a little angry at her and Fuutarou's oppositions to Miku's good intentions, but Fuutarou bails her out for her by saying,

"Right, it's not that we don't want you to get better at cooking, it's just that right now isn't the time for that. Besides, Nino said she's the one who's been teaching you how to cook, right? Where is she, anyway?"

"Still in her room," Miku replies, pointing up at their rooms, Nino's in particular.

"Still sleeping? I thought you guys said she's usually the first one up."

"She'll have days when she likes to sleep in every once in a while," Yotsuba explains. "They're usually on weekends too, since obviously we don't have to wake up for school."

"Makes sense...good that she gives herself a break every now and then."

"Yeah, breaks that _you _should also take more often, Uesugi-san!" Yotsuba points out to her tutor with a pout of her own. "See, look, Uesugi-san, look at your eyes, they're _still _so red!"

Miku joins Yotsuba in the pouting combo, having found another excuse to pout up at Fuutarou in a last-ditch attempt to convince him to let her make breakfast for him. Having the two of them both do so at him, Fuutarou can truly see the family resemblance between them, just like what he had Yotsuba do to mimic Itsuki back during his first official day over.

"You all really _are _quintuplets, I guess," Fuutarou remarks quietly, averting his eyes.

"Aha ~ ! Uesugi-san, maybe, _maybe _you're starting to understand our charm as quintuplets?" Yotsuba giggles, leaning in towards her tutor a little closer. Miku stops pouting immediately when she sees Yotsuba do this, because her sister is getting quite close to Fuutarou. It's not like her sisters haven't gotten physically close to their tutor before during their lessons whenever Ichika or Yotsuba screw around with him, so...why is it that, all of a sudden, this particular instance of Yotsuba leaning in towards Fuutarou dwells on her mind?

Fuutarou grimaces, inching away from Yotsuba as the latter maintains her close proximity to him. "The only charm I'm getting from you five is your collective inability to score anything above a passing grade on your mock exams that I've been giving you," he answers swiftly and bluntly like usual, which Yotsuba has become acclimated to quite well by now.

"I've been passing _my _exams, Fuutarou!" Miku cries out indignantly.

"Okay, yeah, you're the one exception. But Yotsuba and Ichika still aren't passing, and that's a problem when midterms are basically in a week!"

"Well, we won't pass our exams trying to study for them on empty stomachs," Yotsuba points out considerately, rubbing her own tummy. "And I bet you haven't eaten anything today yet either, Uesugi-san."

"So you're gonna let Miku win? You're gonna let her cook us breakfast?!" Fuutarou seizes Yotsuba lightly by her shoulders and shakes her a little in jest. "How could you, Yotsuba! And I thought we were part of the Anti-Miku Cooking Coalition!"

"Aha, but when was I part of this coalition?" Yotsuba laughs.

"Right now! Membership is free!"

"Ooooh, so I'm a club member! What kinds of benefits do I get?"

"Free tutoring lessons for your midterms in a week!"

"Wow, what a steal! _But only if you let us feed you breakfast first!"_

Renewed with another round of laughter, Yotsuba pounces like a lioness, trying to tackle Fuutarou to physically convince him to eat breakfast first before their planned lesson today, but Fuutarou has the reactions to stay on par with the most athletic quintuplet and dives out of the way, performing a flawless forward roll to break his dive and smoothly transition back up to his feet.

"So this is it then, Yotsuba? We're finally having our long-fated showdown right here, right now?" he calls out to the fourth quint, who pulls down the eared hoodie of her bear pajamas.

"That's right, Uesugi-san! Our destinied meeting, our epic battle that'll span eons and be spoken of throughout the generations!" Yotsuba announces grandly, drawing from all the animes she's watched in order to put up the best act she can, even though she's the worst among her sisters at actual acting.

Smirking and lowering his profile to assume an action stance, Fuutarou pounds his right fist into his left palm several times in anticipation.

"Very well, Yotsuba! I've been looking forward to this quite a bit myself - you are truly the most worthy opponent, and thus, our battle here will be legendary!"

"Then have at you, Uesugi-san!"

"Hell yeah, bring it on!"

As soon as Yotsuba charges at Fuutarou, the young tutor simply pivots on his heels and books it, running away from Yotsuba as quickly but safely as he can, so as not to crash headfirst into the fragile aquarium underneath the bookshelves. Miku simply stares with a blank look on her face, watching her younger sister and her tutor simply run laps around her, the dinner table, and the couches in the living room for few minutes straight.

"...but what happened to the epic showdown?" she asks aloud as the two troublemakers pass her for a fourth lap.

"What're you talking about? The _midterms_ are the final showdown!" Fuutarou calls over while he's still running. "I'm not her true opponent! The true opponent is the one who lies in the heart of battle!"

"But you're not even having a battle right now, you're just running away," Miku points out.

"Yeah, I'm doing my best Yotsuba impression right now, whenever Nino calls her to tell her there's someone at school who needs her help with something!"

"Ah, that was mean, Uesugi-saaaaaaan!" Yotsuba cries out, her turn now to be indignant at Fuutarou's low blow. "Now I _really _won't let you get away!"

"Oh shit - !"

Somehow, even after several straight minutes of constant laps around the living room, Yotsuba cranks her speed up a noticeable notch and almost overtakes Fuutarou, who also speeds up to maintain his lead, but Yotsuba's surprise speed throws the young tutor off-guard, and he accidentally trips over his own foot while accelerating himself. This happens right as he turns the corner around the long couch to run alongside the glass table, past Miku, but because Miku is standing right in the path of his tumble and with the speed at which he's tripped, Fuutarou can't redirect his forward momentum to dive out of Miku's way, and Miku certainly isn't expecting Fuutarou to trip at that moment either.

So Fuutarou crashes straight into Miku, but realizing the crash is unavoidable as soon as he feels himself trip, Fuutarou grabs Miku tightly as he runs into her and twists his body over with his last step before crashing into the wooden floor beyond the living room carpet so that he can cushion Miku's fall for her, her head tucked safely against his collar so that when the two of them do crash-land, her head merely bumps the bottom of his chin.

"Ugh...really sorry about that, are you okay?" Fuutarou asks immediately, grimacing and rubbing the back of his own head where it's hit the floor. Yotsuba hurries over, since the collision between Fuutarou and Miku seemed pretty bad from her angle, while Miku reopens her pressed eyes, tightly holding onto the boy who tackled her like an NFL linebacker. "Shouldn't have done that...got carried away a little bit there."

Upon reaching them, Yotsuba stops as soon as she sees how they've ended up: Fuutarou has his right hand still around Miku's side, and Miku is lying with half her body on him, her ample chest pressed down on his own with her head tucked in a rather affectionate manner right underneath the young mage's chin.

"W-Waaah! Miku, y-you're so...so _bold...!" _Yotsuba cries out on impulse.

In the split moments before Yotsuba interrupts, while she still lays on the boy who crashed into her, Miku didn't even feel angry at all at Fuutarou's blunder, merely surprised and, of course, a bit sore from the collision itself. But lying there, on Fuutarou, with her head tucked in for her by her tutor who still has his arm around her, Miku didn't feel like getting up so soon.

Hearing him pant close to her ears...feeling his chest rise up and down strongly against her own to give his lungs the air they need...the big and strong, yet gentle and precise hands that pressed against the back of her head and waist...

It's only when Yotsuba voices her sentiments that Miku then realizes just exactly what she must look like, lying on the floor on top of her own tutor, so she quickly but silently tears herself away from him and sits up frantically.

"It was my fault, not hers, Yotsuba," Fuutarou groans as he, too, gets back up to his feet, rubbing his back where he's fallen. "Also, lesson learned, don't run in the house. Thank God Nino isn't awake yet, she'd _really _have me kicked outta the house if she gets wind of this..."

"Ah, well, it - it was also partly my fault too! I ran around in the house with you!" Yotsuba says quickly. She doesn't want Fuutarou to take all the blame for something that she also had a part in. "Here, Uesugi-san, where did you fall? I can rub it for you."

"On my back, right in the middle...ow, ow, yeah, right there..."

As Yotsuba massages the part of his back where he fell, Miku, still sitting on the floor, still has her blue eyes glued to the floor. Her heartbeat has quickened, even though she isn't the one who's been doing laps around the living room, and she's just trying to do whatever she can to calm herself down.

"Hey, Miku, you alright? Anywhere that hurts for you? I can take a look if there's a place that hurts," Fuutarou calls down to the third quintuplet as Yotsuba pats his back to indicate that she's finished her job. Miku just barely manages to scrape up the will to look up at her tutor who sits down next to her on the floor before averting her own eyes.

"Um...you hit me right here...so it's a bit sore..." she mumbles, putting a hand over the front of her left shoulder.

"Yeah, I must've hit it with my face, not even joking..." her tutor grunts uncomfortably. He rubs his nose, remembering that he nosedived into Miku before going down with her, so he uses the base of his left palm to firmly but gently rub Miku's shoulder where he hit her.

"Ugh, bit of a rocky start to today's lesson, huh..." Fuutarou groans to himself lightly. "Why're our weekend lessons always gotta be so, uh..._eventful_ like this? Sheesh."

"I'll accept full responsibility for today, Uesugi-san!" Yotsuba snaps off a surprisingly crisp salute to her tutor.

"No need, you've already accepted responsibility for scoring a zero on that last mock exam I gave you three earlier this week, so you can't accept any more responsibilities."

"Awwwww!"

While Yotsuba and Fuutarou are bantering about her miserable mock test scores, Miku finds herself closing her eyes naturally as Fuutarou massages her left shoulder. With her eyes closed, she can better concentrate on his big and strong hand pressing against her shoulder...

...and she finds herself enjoying the sensation noticeably more than she probably should.

But like all good things, her quiet enjoyment ends all too soon when Fuutarou gets back up, having figured he'd done a good enough job and wanting to actually start his lesson.

"I'll go get Ichika so that we can actually start, and we're already like ten minutes past our start time," he determines. "You two, get ready for our lesson today."

"But we still haven't eaten breakfast yet!" Yotsuba pouts once more.

"Then I'll go get Nino and tell her to make you girls breakfast, how's that?"

Also giving off a sigh of her own, Miku joins her sister and tutor by getting up to her own feet, having suppressed the excited emotions she's gotten.

"Go wake Nino up then. You can just go straight into her room - she never bothers locking her door."

"Really? I feel like she'd be the one girl among you who'd _always_ have her bedroom door locked whenever she's inside..."

Wondering this to himself, Fuutarou shuffles up the stairs, his legs still recovering from all that burst running with Yotsuba around the living room, and enters Nino's bedroom.

As soon as he opens the door, the young mage freezes where he stands, his eyes narrowed from post-sprint exhaustion snapping open. It's due to his own self-afflicted exhaustion that he wasn't able to sense this even before entering Nino's room, but now even in his current state, there is no mistaking it. Something is wrong in the air of this room.

Closing the door softly behind him, Fuutarou, now on full alert, approaches the sleeping Nino who, again, lies in bed with her covers tossed aside yet again, as is her nighttime habit, amidst her crowd of plush dolls and stuffed animals - even an alarm clock sits among them, well within arm's reach of the sleeping beauty.

This aura in the room...could it really be? The young mage is having a difficult time believing it himself, with how unexpected this development is. But the longer he is in Nino's room, which feels filled to the brim with such an aura, the more convinced he becomes of what he suspects.

On his guard now, Fuutarou approaches the second quint in her bed carefully. Two Saturdays ago, he spied Nino's strange purple eyes compared to her usual blue, and now today, all of a sudden, there is a small but lingering sense of latent magical energy in the room. It can't be just a coincidence...Nino is sleeping peacefully in her room, and with the security runes he's set up all around the Pentagon and on the Nakano penthouse itself, this couldn't have been the work of a possible attacker, otherwise he'd know about it.

The young mage, in pursuit of the truth, finally reaches Nino at her bedside. Snoring lightly, in a somewhat oversized long-sleeved shirt, and with drool trickling out of the right corner of her mouth, the leader of the two-member Anti-Uesugi Fuutarou Coalition dozes with the kind of lethargy any healthy high school girl is capable of on a Sunday morning.

Until she opens her eyes, that is.

And the first thing she sees is a tall, short-haired boy by her side, with the face of a street thug and a hand reaching down for her face like she's about to get her vibe checked.

Nino's blue eyes and Fuutarou's black ones lock together for the first time of the day, and Uesugi's hand freezes in place as soon as they do.

"...good morning, Nino. Your sisters need you to make breakfast for them, otherwise Miku's gonna blow up the kitchen," Fuutarou smiles pleasantly.

Even as he's talking, though, Fuutarou can see Nino's eyes tear up quickly as she stares back up at him in horror that he's the first thing she sees in the morning, in her own room at this hour. Pulling his hand back, the young tutor closes his eyes and raises his hands up to his ears to brace against the inevitable -

_**"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !"**_

* * *

_"I don't fucking believe this!"_

Five minutes later, after dragging Uesugi downstairs with her, Nakano Nino is seated with one leg over the other on the long couch with Fuutarou sitting on the floor before her, Indian-style.

"How could you enter a girl's room first thing in the morning like that?! And without _my _permission, too!" Nino gripes down at Fuutarou, who's not even paying attention to her and instead is gazing out the side glass door out to the veranda. "I don't care _who _you are, you don't just do that to a girl like me! Do you have _any _sense of shame whatsoever?!"

"Well, given my usual line of work, I think I'm obligated tell you...no, I don't really," Fuutarou replies casually.

"And if you're asking about permission, I gave him permission to go into your room to wake you up," Miku also says, standing behind her older sister and the couch that she sits on.

"And what kind of right do _you _have to let him do that?!" Hollering at her sister, Nino swings around at her on the couch.

"I knew he'd be sure to wake you up, one way or another. Either he'd wake you up, or you'd wake up on your own from him being in your room."

_"That's still not an excuse to let him just waltz into my room like that!"_

"Ugh...he's back _again...?" _Itsuki, having woken up from all the commotion that Nino has stirred up, yawns as she steps off the stairs to reach the first floor. "And Nino, is breakfast ready yet...?"

"I'm gonna make it, but first I need to teach Uesugi a lesson for walking into my room like nothing was gonna happen afterwards!" Nino declares aggressively. "What do you have to say for yourself? Spill it!"

"Nothing much; all I need to say is that Miku told me to go wake you up so I did. That's all I got," Fuutarou testifies, raising both hands up.

"I don't believe you for a damn second! A boy like you doesn't just waltz right into a girl's room like that unless they have reasons! _Reasons!"_

"Reasons, you say, huh? Care to elaborate just what kinds of reasons they might be? Because I sure as hell don't know."

Having the reversal card played on her, Nino stops herself short as her cheeks begin to glow red. "I-I don't need to explain them to you, you already know! Stop acting like you don't!"

"But I really don't. Before I started tutoring your sisters, I'd never even been to the house of a girl I knew, much less been into her own room. I hardly ever go out of my way to talk to people if I don't have to, and it's not as if I have a lot of friends, right? Besides, the only girl I talk to more than you five is my own sister, and we have to share a tiny house together, if you can even call it a house. So I'm not kidding when I sit here telling you that I don't know what to expect, other than having you scream in my face the moment you woke up with me right next to you."

"Wait, wait! Then that means - that means you _knew _why I would scream at you though, right!? Checkmate, Uesugi, you just played yourself!"

"Nino, cool off on that already. I was the one who asked him to go up to your room; he would've never gone up there if I didn't tell him to," Miku repeats herself. "It started when I tried offering to make breakfast for him and Yotsuba, but both of them didn't want me to, so I relented and told Fuutarou to go grab you so that you could make breakfast for us."

Now that Miku is taking the time to lay out the whole story for her, which is something she does only when she's being serious, Nino finds herself losing steam in her prosecution of her would-be tutor, who is now looking down at his phone, checking his morning texts and emails.

"Sheesh, why's it always gotta be _me _that ends up in these kinds of situations?" Nino complains rather helplessly, tightening her folded arms around her chest a bit more. "First you walk in on me right after I got out of the bath, and now you walk into my room while I'm still sleeping. Surely this can't just be a coincidence! You don't do this to my sisters!"

"Would you prefer it if I did?" Fuutarou asks suddenly while still fixed on his phone.

"NO! What kind of a question is that?! You fucking creep! Leave me and my sisters alone!"

"Sorry, already too late. Yotsuba and I were screwing around a little when I first showed up and we did laps around the living room here, but I tripped at the end and ran straight into Miku and pushed her down. You'll have to yell at me for that, too, I'm afraid."

Nino once more snaps to her younger sister. "Miku, did he really do that?" she demands, her voice equipping a dangerous edge to it.

Miku doesn't respond. Instead, where she stands behind the couch nearby her sister, she begins to fidget a little, her blue eyes averted and narrowed, clearly recalling a recent memory.

Reacting swiftly, without a word, Nino practically throws herself off the couch to get up and start kicking at Uesugi for his own admission. Because Nino is still in her oversized long-sleeved shirt that barely covers her undergarments, Fuutarou looks up to see both Nino's right foot being thrust at him, and plus a little something extra behind them - the purple stripes on the strip of cloth separating his eyes from the forbidden land.

Normally he wouldn't care to have seen Nino's panties, but the fact that they have purple stripes - why did they have to be purple? As the bottom of Nino's foot smashes against his face, none of which he feels because he parries Nino's kick with his own face, Fuutarou can't help but feel like he just got baited, which hurts way more than Nino's kick ever will.

"U-Uesugi-kun!?" Itsuki cries out, since she was about to walk behind Fuutarou to head into the kitchen just to see if there isn't a snack she can eat first before breakfast when Nino bounces out of her seat to plant the bottom of her foot into their would-be tutor's face. "Nino! Just what on Earth was _that _for?!"

"He just said that he assaulted Miku, Itsuki! Weren't you listening just now?!" Nino roars back. "I knew it, we really _can't _have a stalker and a molester like you in the house! I'm calling Papa right now to get him to terminate his contract and - "

"Now, now, Nino, let's calm down a little, shall we? He was clearly only saying that to mess with you."

The four quintuplets already down on the first floor, having started to converge upon seeing Nino kick Fuutarou in the face to help contain the situation, look up at the stairs on which Ichika, the eldest among them, is now descending, holding something in her hand.

"Listen, Ichika, this asshole - " Nino begins to yell, but all Ichika has to do is raise a hand to silence her and the second rowdy quintuplet complies, albeit unwillingly.

"I heard everything, Nino. And like what happened last time, Fuutarou-kun isn't the type to do these kinds of things on purpose."

"Then how do _you _know if he's just saying that stuff to screw with me?"

"Because I do that myself a lot. You should know, right? I mess around with you girls all the time."

"But Uesugi doesn't sound like you at all!"

"I mean, naturally he doesn't, people have their own ways of messing around, you know. And you're all used to me screwing around that if someone else like Fuutarou-kun shows up and starts doing that too, you won't recognize it as easily."

"But that's still not like him to mess around! He's a damn workaholic! All he ever thinks about is work! Tutoring! And more work on top of that!"

"What, a work-addicted guy like me can't crack a joke every once in a while?" Fuutarou calls from the floor of the living room, rubbing his face where Nino's foot connected harmlessly.

"By the way, Uesugi-kun, is your face okay? That looked like a pretty bad hit Nino gave you..." Itsuki asks hesitantly.

"I'm fine, thank you very much. If you've got the time to show me some concern, you should join us, Itsuki," Fuutarou suggests, and Itsuki quickly turns around again to put her back to him to decline his offer.

"In any case, Nino, he's here to teach us to make up for the lessons Yotsuba and I skipped out on earlier last week. We even told you that he'd been here on Sunday morning, so no need to make a big deal out of this." Ichika then hands Nino the object she's holding in her hand. "And here - the thing we talked about yesterday night."

Realizing what her older sister's giving her, Nino quickly grabs the object, but not before Fuutarou's keen black eyes, despite their perpetual bloodshot appearances, catch a good glimpse of it. It's a handheld ear piercing kit - and Fuutarou only knows what it is because he's used one on himself a long time ago.

"You sure you can do it alone?" Ichika drops her voice, as if to prevent Fuutarou from overhearing, but Fuutarou's heightened and practiced senses pick up everything they're saying anyway. "You don't like sharp things like this, do you?"

"I-I already told you that I'll be fine! Don't make fun of me here..."

Now that Ichika has done him a favor and defused the tricky situation that Nino posed to his Sunday lesson for his students, Fuutarou gets back up to his feet to join the quintuplets.

"Alright, while Nino makes you all breakfast, I'd like to start right away. We got a lot of things to cover today and - "

"Hey, wait just a damn minute!" Nino interrupts Fuutarou again abruptly, but now the young tutor, becoming visibly irritated at Nino trying to cut him off again, especially in light of what she did last weekend, talks back.

"Not today, Nino, our midterms're coming up next week, and I can't afford to let you crash this lesson this time. If you're trying to start some shit - "

"I'm _not! _It's just - " Nino hesitates, and Fuutarou catches her eyes glancing a bit nervously down at the thing she's holding in her own hand now. " - follow me to my room. I need you to do something for me."

"Do something for you?" Fuutarou repeats incredulously while Ichika develops a wry smile, much to Nino's silent chagrin. "You just spent the last ten minutes here yelling my ass off about how I shouldn't come into your room, and you want me to come _back _in?"

"Nino's really indecisive sometimes," Miku remarks dryly at Fuutarou's side.

"Shut it, Miku, you're part of the reason for all this! Anyways, yes, I'm asking you to come back into my room, got a problem with it?"

"Uh, _YES? _God, where should I even start - "

"Well I don't care! You'll follow me up to my room or I won't make breakfast for everyone!"

"N-No breakfast!? Uesugi-kun, whatever Nino is demanding, you _must _comply! We can't have her holding our breakfast hostage like this!" Itsuki cries out, horrified at the idea of not being able to eat on a Sunday morning.

"And this is why you don't have only _one _of you five know how to cook! What do you girls even _do _if Nino's not around?"

"Ichika usually just orders take-out for us," Yotsuba shrugs.

"Yeah, that doesn't sound very healthy. Forget it, I'm not that great myself either, but at least I know how to make some basic stuff and I won't burn it all like Miku does," Fuutarou determines, turning to the kitchen to head there while Miku begins to pout again at his back, but Nino quickly reaches over the couch and manages to seize hold of his shoulder.

"Oh no you're not! I don't know what kind of food you'll be making my sisters - you might put something weird in there for all I know!" she accuses, but this only serves to draw a quietly scathing look from her would-be tutor.

"Ah, yes, of course, Nino, _you _would know everything about slipping something weird into someone else's food or water, huh?" he hisses back, causing Nino to wither somewhat with the uncomfortable truth, but she rebounds one more time to stand her ground.

"Forget about that! This is _our _house you're in, so you have to do what _we _say! And I'm telling you to follow me to my room to help me with something, got that? It won't take long, and I'll fucking leave you all alone after this's done!"

"Fuutarou-kun, just go with her for now. I promise we won't run off like the other times," Ichika says calmly, always being the voice of reason among her quintuplet sisters, which is something Fuutarou can appreciate, despite all of her own absentee showings to his lessons, so he obliges her with a heavy sigh.

"Fine, I'll go up with Nino to do whatever she wants me to do. The rest of you, except for Itsuki I guess, get your notes and stuff ready for when I get back."

Following the second quintuplet back up to her room while the others gather their study materials from the bookshelves above the aquarium, Fuutarou closes the door that Nino leaves open for him behind him after he enters and faces her. The look on his face currently is one that Nino has only ever seen him wear in one other instance in the short month or so that she's known him, and that was when he was beating up those thugs who tried kidnapping her and her sisters at the warehouse that one weekend.

"N-Normally I'd rather die than let you into my room like this," Nino stammers shortly, feeling the pressure that Fuutarou is putting on her silently just with the deeply annoyed look on his face as he walks slowly into the middle of the room to let Nino explain why she's brought him here. "But if you pierce my ears for me here, I'll let you go!"

She raises the ear piercing kit that Ichika handed her downstairs, but Fuutarou, having already seen it during the exchange itself, merely glances down at it as Nino holds it up to show him.

"...that's it?" he snarls in a low voice, like he's in disbelief at what Nino's asking him to do.

"Y-Yeah! That's it!"

"There's no fine print that you're purposely leaving out here to screw with me, is there?"

"Bitch, _you're _the one who's screwing with me today!"

"I didn't see _you _take a kick to the fucking face, but sure, if that's all you want me to do, leave it to me, I guess..."

Taking exactly two steps forward, Fuutarou snatches the ear piercer with surgical precision out of Nino's hand and tests it a few times to make sure it's working properly, running his fingertip down the blade to disinfect it magically, just in case Ichika forgot to do so already.

"Sit up and stay still - this'll be over quick," he murmurs. Setting the ear piercing kit down on the side of the quintuplet's bed on the covers, he reaches his hands at Nino, putting his left hand on her stomach and the other on her back to firmly force her to sit up properly, as though he's acting with the superlative authority of a doctor. He then parts Nino's extremely long peachy-red hair to expose her left ear, which he will pierce first, and picks the piercing kit back up.

Taken back by how experienced Fuutarou seems to be in this, Nino suddenly grows a little meek, at first letting Fuutarou do as he needs to, but when he takes firm control of her ear and brings the kit in close to do the deed, she impulsively bails out at the last minute and forces her head away.

"H-Hey, wait a second, wait! You can't just - just act like you know everything! And besides, I - I need some time to prepare myself!"

"Then fucking do them your damn self," Fuutarou hisses, offering the piercing kit back. "You didn't even need me to do this for you, just use that mirror over there and get it over with!"

"No way!"

"Why the hell not?"

"Because I'm - I'm _scared! _I don't like needles, okay? I'm one of those people!" Pouting just like her sisters, Nino folds her arms angrily and turns away again. "I hate the sight of needles - weird, I know, fucking laugh at me all you want. I don't get it either, since I use knives to cook all the time. But I don't like needles for whatever reason, even when I know what they do and what I'm supposed to use them for."

Fuutarou glances down at the needle of the ear piercing kit. Even though the needle of the kit itself is quite short, the fact of the matter is that this needle will still be poking a hole straight through her ear, so as admittedly annoyed he is at Nino at the moment, Fuutarou feels that it would be unfair for him to get mad at her for something she can't help, in this case her trypanophobia.

"You can't just get one of your sisters to help you out with this? Why the hell did you think having me to do this was gonna be a good idea?" Fuutarou points out exasperatedly.

"Because it'd be hella weird! And it's embarrassing to have to ask them to do that for me! Ichika's gonna make fun of me for that, and Itsuki doesn't handle the sight of blood very well, so I definitely can't ask her..."

"Wouldn't Ichika make fun of you anyway, now that she knows you're having me help you?"

"Shut up!"

Fuutarou quietly takes note of Nino's remark at the end there. Itsuki doesn't like seeing blood...that might explain how she was acting when he was fixing and cleaning her broken nose after that warehouse incident...

Running a hand over his head again, Fuutarou inhales and exhales deeply, attempting to mentally reset himself. "Why do you even want to pierce your ears, anyway? You're scared of needles, and you don't wanna ask your sisters for help with this - on top of that, I hope you're aware of how much it's gonna hurt."

"How would _you _know? You're probably only saying that to try to scare me," Nino retorts quickly.

"Please, I don't need to bother trying to scare you when a needle like this one here does that job for me."

"Sh-Shut up, asshole!" Glaring at her would-be tutor for a moment, Nino drops her gaze again to look at the floor, unable to handle the piercing gaze of the boy she's forced to come into her room with her. "...but there isn't...really a reason in particular that I'm trying to get my ears pierced. I just...wanna do it because, well, y'know...everyone else's doing it at school."

Narrowing his eyes, Fuutarou briefly jogs his memory of his classmates and the recent trends at school, what little of it he can bother himself to recall. He doesn't really know of any kind of piercing trend at school, even though Asahiyama's dress code did not expressly forbid piercings so long as they were limited to the ears only. He doesn't remember seeing that many girls walk around with ear piercings on campus either, so Nino is probably just giving him a bullshit excuse. But even if that were the case, Fuutarou doesn't feel like accusing her of that since that'll take even more time away from him. And who knows, maybe the friends she hangs out with really do have a piercing trend going on among them, so Nino might be getting peer pressured into doing the same.

"And why don't you hesitate a little, huh? It wouldn't kill you to take your time with this kind of thing, since you're opening up a hole in someone else's body!"

"Oh ho? _Hesitate?"_

Taking another step over to close the distance once more, Fuutarou squeezes the piercing kit, making it emit an ominous clacking noise, and once more pulls it up to Nino's left ear.

"This is absolutely the _perfect_ opportunity I have to _truly _get back at you for all the shit you've pulled against me this past month," Fuutarou vents quietly, talking like a movie villain who's finally captured the protagonist and is about to do unspeakably horrible things to them. "And you think I'd _hesitate? _Don't make me laugh - prepare yourself, Nino. This _will_ sting. On the count of three - one...two...two and a half...two and three quar - "

_"Just do it already and stop screwing around!"_ Nino bellows, just as swiftly jamming her toes into Fuutarou's left shin.

"Sorry, that time I'll admit to messing with you again," Fuutarou apologizes, rubbing his left shin painfully since he didn't think ahead to parry Nino's kick that time. "But seriously, if you want me to pierce your ear for you, I'd rather take the time to do it properly so that the process is safe and there won't be any risk of infection."

"Infection? But how am I gonna get an infection from just getting my ear pierced?"

"You're using a needle, for one. I know Ichika's got one of her ears pierced, and seeing that she's the one who gave you this - " Fuutarou raises the piercing kit once he's done rubbing his shin. "It's safe to assume that she's used it before. I don't know what she's done to clean the needle, or if she's even bothered to disinfect it at all. Plus, I need to wash and disinfect my own hands so that I don't accidentally cause your ear to have an infection either, since like you said, I'll be opening up a hole in your ear."

"Man, do we _really _need to bother with that kind of stuff? It's only ear piercings!"

"Then like I said, do it yourself, if you don't want me to do it for you."

"Urk..." Nino has nothing to say to this.

"That kind of attitude is what'll get you in trouble, Nino. Remember that part of my contract's responsibilities is to make sure you and your sisters are safe at all times. Even if I can't be held responsible for something like this, I'd rather that you pierce your ears safely and responsibly in a way that'll minimize risks of infection or other complications that could happen from piercing your ears like this on your own at home."

"Tch. You really are like Papa..."

"Did you forget that I work at the same hospital that he does? It's only natural for me to want to follow proper procedure like this. That, and if you end up doing this on your own and you botch it, or if your ear ends up getting infected because you didn't disinfect properly, then I have to be the one to explain everything to your dad when we take you to the hospital."

Nino sits on her bed, with her arms still folded, her eyes turned away, and her lips pursed into a dissatisfied pout. Sighing one more time, Fuutarou reaches into his back pocket to pull out his student handbook after setting the piercing kit down on the corner of Nino's desk and opens it to show Nino a picture behind a laminate pocket.

"If it'll make you feel any better...here, take a look at this," he says as Nino glances back to see what he's showing her.

The photo Nino sees before her depicts a young boy in late primary school or so, wearing a dark zip-up hoodie and a messenger bag with a thick carrying strap. His hair is gelled back in true delinquent fashion, exposing the entirety of his forehead, his left ear sports a single small earring, and his face shows a nonchalant, juvenile scowl as his muddy-golden eyes are angled away from the camera shot.

"Whoa...wait..." the second quint, slowly forgetting about all the frustration and antagonism she's been harboring against her would-be tutor, leans in more closely to get a better look at his photo. "...this little thug...he might just be my type...!"

Lowering the photo so that Nino's compelled to look back up at him, Fuutarou scowls down at her, not unlike the kid in the photo.

"He's your type? You're telling me delinquent dimwits like him are _your _type?" he asks disdainfully.

"Y-Yeah! So what!" Nino gripes defensively, clenching her teeth again back up at him. "He's a lot better looking than _you_, with how dreadfully plain you are! Who is he, anyway? And why do you even have that picture on you?"

"This is me."

"Oh, that's you? You were a lot better looking when you were youn - "

Nino freezes. Having dropped her gaze to take another look at the photo, the second quintuplet only now registers Fuutarou's three words after she deliberates on it aloud for him, and she inches her wide and shaking blue eyes back up at the boy standing in her room in front of her.

"...say sike right now," she whispers. "Say it, Uesugi. Say it right fucking now."

Fuutarou instead pulls up the photo next to his own face so that Nino can easily see the juxtaposition, and he even keeps the same scowl on his face as the kid in the photo. Sure enough, the resemblance is uncanny - too much so to deny that both the kid in the picture and the boy who is holding it are in fact the same person.

"I wasn't lying when I warned you that getting your ears pierced will hurt for a while, since I'm speaking from experience," Fuutarou answers to a sweating, trembling, and already internally screaming Nino. "If you look at my left earlobe, you'll see the little scar that's left behind after I stopped wearing that earring in the photo. This photo was of me six years ago."

Fuutarou calmly closes his student handbook and returns it to its rightful place in his back pocket, and he smiles pleasantly down at a horrified Nino who seems to have lost her voice, because her mouth is open like she's trying to say something but no words are coming out.

"So it turns out that I'm your type, huh? What a plot twist we've got here, don't'cha think? Who knew the one girl in the Nakano household who hated me the most would turn out to like me the most. Now if only you'd act on that and come study with us, huh?"

Nino's voice was going to return to her sooner or later, and as her body retches and she tilts her head back a little bit, raising her hands up to her ears in a futile effort to dig out Fuutarou's words that she's just heard, Fuutarou does the same to protect his own ears. The smirking smile still isn't gone from his own face, and he suspects it'll stay awhile as Nino finally screams,

_**"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA - "**_


	27. Quintessential

"And that'll be it for tonight."

Closing the English reference book that he's been using to review to the girls their school English material for the month of May, Uesugi Fuutarou exhales quickly and stashes it away in his messenger bag, then drains the rest of water in the glass that Miku has gotten for him that is devoid of any unknown drugs.

Surveying the glass table, the tired young tutor observes his current three students. Ichika has immediately set her head down on her arms on the edge of the table, clearly mentally exhausted from today's lesson. Miku isn't faring much better, also resting her head and her back against the long couch behind her, and Yotsuba, having groaned a sigh of relief at Fuutarou's end of lesson, has opted to eagle-sprawl on the floor at the side of the glass table where she's been sitting, gazing with a thousand-yard stare up at the very tall ceiling of their penthouse.

Fuutarou isn't exactly setting a good example himself - he's been constantly demonstrating little ticks of behavior to get himself to focus properly in today's lesson, and while he's somehow managed to keep himself focused on his own teaching and make it seem to the girls that he isn't really all that bothered, he gets the sense that the girls have all noticed his ticks today, because both Ichika and Yotsuba have been more cooperative and more focused on their studies than usual when their lessons are usually filled with Ichika's gentle teasing and/or Yotsuba's occasional antics. Miku, too, has been regularly bringing snacks for them to enjoy throughout their lesson, but Fuutarou suspects that she knows that he's more energy-depleted today than usual and is trying to help him out.

But he can handle his own fatigue - it's the girls he's worried about. The fact that they've been having lessons every weekday for about a month and a half by this point, and then throw in the weekend auxiliary lessons and the pressure of midterms coming up next week is finally starting to take their toll on his students. He first started noticing their mental fatigue crop up earlier last week; back when he first started giving them lessons, the girls would still have energy left at the end of the day to talk to him and interact with him, but lately they haven't even had the energy to do that, with the exception of seeing him out and bidding him good night. Miku, naturally, is the one who's hanging in there the best, because both Ichika and Yotsuba have their own agendas to take care of, spontaneous or not, but even Miku is fast reaching the end of her rope.

And then there's Nino and Itsuki to worry about, another whole can of worms that he really doesn't want to have to deal with, yet something that he must solve by this week, a problem to which he has yet to find a solution, despite all his attempts to verbally convince them. Well, that's not quite accurate: he's willing to deal with that problem, but he just doesn't have much faith in his ability to do so, no thanks to his own selfishness that he projected to Itsuki back in Hawaii during Golden Week.

"Good work, you three," he says finally, raising his head at last after going through his mangled thoughts in his head, and his three students all sit up tiredly to give him their attention. "I know I've been hard on you all with all these tutoring sessions for the past month and a half, especially when none of you, maybe except for Miku, ever even studied this much before I showed up."

"You got that right...I feel like I studied a hundred times more than I ever did my whole life in these past six weeks," Ichika chuckles, finally breaking out a small version of the pleasant, amiable smile that Fuutarou has come to know her for.

"The sad part it, that's probably not even an exaggeration," Yotsuba giggles weakly. "I think my brain's been expanding in size too. I can _feel _myself getting smarter!"

"Too bad that last mock test we took didn't seem to suggest that too," Fuutarou remarks offhandedly, causing Yotsuba to pout back at him in protest, but unlike other days, she doesn't repay her tutor with a comeback of any kind, likely because she's just too pooped out for tonight.

"Fuutarou, what about you? Ever since Sunday, you haven't been looking too great yourself either," Miku points out finally out of concern for her tutor. Finally one of the quintuplets is calling him out on it, and Fuutarou isn't surprised that Miku's the one to do it, given her relationship with him, which he believes is the closest out of the Nakanos not named Maruo.

"Eh, don't worry about me," he says quickly, shaking his both his head and his right hand at his students in swift deflection.

"Don't say that, Fuutarou-kun," Ichika responds in kind, however, which takes the young tutor back somewhat, since Ichika usually isn't one to comment on someone else's well-being like this, as that has traditionally been Miku's role. The eldest quintuplet pulls her head up off her arms and the table to face him properly. "You're worrying about us right now because we've been studying like you've wanted us to for all this time. You can't let us do the same for you?"

Pulling on a difficult expression, Fuutarou feels himself stumped for words, as he can't refute Ichika's logic at the risk of incurring hypocrisy.

"I'm only saying that because you girls probably never studied this much before, so you all must be really tired and it shows," he explains slowly, facing Ichika back. "Whereas I've had pretty rough periods of time where work really kicks my ass. I know how to deal with situations like that...but for you girls, I feel like maybe this kind of a situation is hitting you all pretty hard."

"It is, I don't deny that. I'm sure all of us here can agree that we're so tired we'll probably feel our brains leak out of our ears when we go to sleep tonight," Ichika chuckles somewhat morbidly. "But as our tutor, you wouldn't be setting the best of examples for us being as tired as we are, right? _Us _being tired is understandable. But if the boy who's supposed to be teaching us is just as tired as we are, how're we supposed to be able to study properly to begin with?"

"You could learn how to study on your own, for starters."

"Oh, but you know we're too dumb for that. That's why Dad hired you, right?"

Fuutarou hangs his head defeatedly. "I appreciate that you're being honest with me, but I've never felt so depressed hearing the truth like that...especially when it's one of my own students saying it..."

Ichika manages to give a hearty laugh, enjoying these reactions she's getting out of her tutor-classmate that she usually doesn't get to see.

"Hey, they called me the Heartbreak Girl back when we were still at Black Rose because I'd turn down all the guys who used to ask me out," she professes.

"But Black Rose is an all-girl's academy."

"Right, but we ran into plenty of guys whenever we'd hang out around the city. Nino used to drag me and the others around a lot whenever she'd hang out with her crowd around the city after school. For some reason, the guys would hit on me a lot..."

Fuutarou eyes her in disbelief. "Yeah, I wonder why..."

"Oh ho ~ ? Fuutarou-kun, maybe..._you _know the reason ~ ?" The eldest quintuplet leans in a little in Fuutarou's direction, and her right hand seductively traces down her collar to let loose the top button of her white dress shirt. "Maybe...you could teach me _that _too ~ ?"

Fuutarou's black eyes are fixed on Ichika's blue ones, refusing to budge as Ichika wants them to.

"I'm fifteen, and what is this?" her tutor asks flatly.

"I-Ichika...!" Realizing what her oldest sister is trying to do, Miku scrambles to Fuutarou's rescue and covers up Ichika's now partially-exposed bosom with her own hands.

"Awww...you're too experienced for that, huh? Shucks, I tried, I tried ~ " Giggling at her own failure, Ichika lets Miku button her up again. "Besides, I know you're probably dead tired like us right now, but you're a healthy fifteen-year-old boy, aren't you? You know you wanted to look ~ "

"Your dad's gonna stuff me in the morgue the next time I go see him if he finds out I'm ogling you."

"Aha...yeah, that...does sound like something he'd do, actually..."

"Has Dad ever put anyone into the morgue?" Yotsuba asks curiously.

"No, that was just a joke. Though honestly, I agree with Ichika, it wouldn't surprise me if he actually did at one point - he's a heartless motherfucker sometimes."

Yotsuba sets her elbows on the glass table and rests her chin on her palms, gazing back at her tutor.

"About Dad, actually, if you're a mage, is Dad one too? Or is that something you can't tell us?"

Ichika, Miku, and Fuutarou all stare back at Yotsuba and her innocent question, but only Fuutarou remains looking back at her because Ichika and Miku avert their own eyes from the sudden question regarding Fuutarou's primary line of work.

"I get the feeling that the longer we know each other, the more you're able to swindle these kinds of answers out of me, Yotsuba..." Fuutarou sighs weakly.

"Ehehe, that's because we're friends, right? And friends trust each other!" Yotsuba gives her tutor another one of her vibrant smiles. But this time, her radiant smile that stretches from ear to ear comes off as rejuvenating, a welcome sight for Fuutarou's own perpetually bloodshot eyes tonight. Maybe it's because he can't scrounge up the energy to feel annoyed at Yotsuba's near-constant upbeat nature, or because he really could use a mental pick-me-up of any kind, but whatever the reason, Fuutarou can feel at least a little bit of weight shed itself off his mind.

"I wouldn't exactly call us _friends_ yet, though..." Fuutarou says softly.

"Not yet? Even though you've basically seen us every day for the past six weeks?" Ichika points out. "So how much longer do we have to keep this up for you to consider us friends?"

"You're my students, first and foremost, and I'm your tutor, first and foremost. Besides..."

But Fuutarou stops himself. He was going to say that it's better off for someone like him to not have any friends at all, but he realizes that that may come off as rather edgy and self-serving, so he opts not to say it aloud.

"Besides...what?" Miku asks, interested to know what he was going to say.

"Besides, I have _standards_ for people to become my friends!" Fuutarou announces quickly, deciding to take advantage of this conversation topic. "If you want to become my friend, you have to pass your midterms first!"

Fuutarou expects the quintuplet sisters to all groan at him and protest, or at least point out to him how absurd he sounds to them right now. But when he surveys his students again, for some odd reason, they are all beginning to look slowly but progressively more motivated.

"So all we need to do is pass our midterms...?" Miku murmurs to herself, nodding in the process.

"If that's all we need to do, Fuutarou-kun, you'll regret setting the bar so low," Ichika smiles coyly but dangerously back at her tutor like a movie-perfect femme fatale. "And you can't take that back, either."

"I've heard that one before, back when I made you all take that first mock exam," Fuutarou returns teasingly with a smirk of his own. "Will the five of you be able to score higher than a hundred points collectively this time around?"

"You bet! We'll show you the power of quintuplets!" Yotsuba asserts powerfully, and she even flexes both of her arms at him for emphasis.

"Then I'll be looking forward to it."

Having already worn the shoulder strap of his messenger bag, Fuutarou gets up to his feet, stretching out some of the exhaustion he feels gripping his bones.

"Because you've all been working and studying hard so far, I'll give you girls tomorrow off," the young tutor declares, and the girls all cheer, though Miku doesn't quite share the same enthusiasm as her other sisters.

"But...wait, Fuutarou, does that mean...you won't be coming in tomorrow?" she asks a little meekly.

"Well, if I'm not tutoring you, I have no reason to be here, right?" he shrugs. "Besides, for all the studying you girls've done, I think you all deserve a break here. It's not good to study _too _much in one go, after all, and I do kind of think I've been pushing you girls a bit too hard lately. And the day after tomorrow on Thursday, it'll just be a shorter lesson than usual, and it'll be just a chill review session for maybe like two hours or so."

"Ah! Wait a minute!" Yotsuba, having reached across the glass table to clasp hands with her eldest sister in celebration of their day off tomorrow, suddenly stops as her own green hair ribbon stands up straight in alertness. "Uesugi-san is being nice to us...he's praising us for studying hard...and he's even giving us a whole day off..."

Releasing Ichika's hands and bolting up to her feet, Yotsuba quickly walks around the glass table, grabs her tutor by the shoulders, and begins shaking him back and forth, crying,

_"Who are you, and what have you done with the REAL Uesugi-saaaaan!?" _she cries, squeezing her eyes as hard as she can while shaking Fuutarou with equal or near equal force.

"But I'm right here, though?" Fuutarou says while his own head is rocking back and forth.

"But - but - but what if you have..._AN EVIL TWIN BROTHER?!" _Yotsuba cries.

To play along and taking this opportunity to tease Fuutarou a bit more, Ichika lets out a loud gasp, raising her hands over her mouth.

"Yotsuba's right! The _real _Fuutarou-kun would _never _give us a day off! He can't possibly think of something so generous like that!" Ichika even gets up to her own feet to strike a pose that is perhaps far more ridiculous than it needs to be by putting an outstretched hand in front of her face in such a way that only her blue eyes can be seen in between her fingers and pointing directly at her tutor with the other hand. "You've exposed yourself, fake Fuutarou-kun! Now, tell us who you _really _are!"

In response, Fuutarou pulls Yotsuba's hands off himself and takes a step back. He parts his feet at the perfect distance, puts his left hand down on his belt at his left side, conjures up his pair of aviators from his storage rune to snap onto his face for the sake of the pose, and points just as dramatically back at Ichika.

"Well done seeing through my disguise, Nakano Ichika. I am not, in fact, the Uesugi Fuutarou who has been contracted to tutor and protect you. I am instead his alter ego - _M. K. Shinoda!"_

Fuutarou acting this way is so blatantly out of character for him that even Nino, who's been sitting at the table watching videos online on her phone this whole time, stops what she's doing and looks up at him, and all four Nakano quintuplets down on the first floor stare at Fuutarou for a full five seconds before -

_**"PFFFFFFFFFFFF - AHAHAHAHAHAAAA! ! ! !"**_

Both Ichika and Yotsuba start laughing their heads off, and Miku slowly succumbs to the hilarity as well, inching her hands over her face so that Fuutarou won't have to see her giggling under her breath at how ridiculous he looks. Nino, too, who's heard the entire conversation go down, has to duck her face down and hold her phone up so that Fuutarou doesn't call her out on joining in.

Watching the girls all laugh at him, Fuutarou immediately turns around and assumes another Indian-style sitting position, facing the wall behind him next to the big flatscreen TV in the living room, with the wall literal inches from his face.

"F-Fuutarou, what's - what's wrong - ?" Miku calls out, trying her best to stifle her own increasing laughter as she gets up to go over to her tutor. Upon reaching him, she finds a dark aura of depression emanating from him, and the first thing she hears out of him is a deep, life-contemplating sigh.

"I guess I'm really only cut out to be a tutor, huh...I shouldn't even try to act like anyone I'm not..." Miku hears him muttering to himself. "More homework...longer tutoring sessions...tutoring every day...yeah, that'll show 'em..."

Upon hearing this, Miku feels the urge to turn around to yell at her sisters to recruit them in helping her snap Fuutarou out of his cloud of depression. But upon second thought, tutoring every day...longer tutoring sessions...won't that mean that she'll get to spend more time with him...?

Shaking her head quickly to get such thoughts out of her head, Miku puts her hands on her tutor's shoulders reassuringly.

"Don't worry about it, Fuutarou. Ichika just set you up, you know she likes doing that."

Suddenly Fuutarou whips his neck around to angle his gaze up at her.

"Miku, I know you were laughing at me too, don't lie to me," he accuses her swiftly.

"I-I wasn't!" are the first words that come out of Miku's mouth on impulse.

Just as suddenly, Fuutarou puts back on the aviators that he's taken off and points back up at her. Miku doesn't expect to see his alter-ego again and her own kneejerk reaction returns with a vengeance, and Miku has to turn away so that Fuutarou can't see her burst into even more giggles.

That is the last straw for Fuutarou. He gets back up to his feet without a word and strides over to the glass doors that lead out to the veranda, but Yotsuba, spying his diverted course, cries aloud and leaps after him, grabbing him by the back of his shirt in an attempt to stop him.

"U-Uesugi-san, Uesugi-san! ! ! !" she shrieks, half-alarmed, half still laughing. "That's the - the verandaaaaa! That's not the direction of the front door!"

_"It is now,"_ Fuutarou mutters dangerously, inching closer and closer to the glass doors that block his access to the veranda.

"But that's not where the elevator is! ! ! !"

_"Gravity is the only elevator I need, Yotsuba. And it's one-way only, how great is that?"_

_"UESUGI-SAAAAAAAAAAAN! ! ! !"_

It takes the collective effort of his three students to dissuade him from using their veranda as his new elevator, but once settled down, he heads for the front door to traverse down the Pentagon properly.

"Like I said, we'll take tomorrow off, and the day after that will just be a review session. Matter of fact, I think today should be our last actual lesson - we're so close to midterms by this point that trying to teach you all anything new will be counterproductive. It'll probably be better for us to just consolidate what you _have _learned so far," Fuutarou determines as he pulls his shoes back on.

"You better take care of yourself too, Uesugi-san!" Yotsuba reminds him as well, putting her hands on her hips and leaning in towards him. "You said at the beginning that this has to be a collective effort on everyone's part, right? You should be taking this next day off as well!"

Fuutarou merely gives her a dry chuckle, and his dead black eyes pierce her own blue eyes so deeply that Yotsuba, for a split second, can't feel herself breathe. "Well, unfortunately for me, I can't just 'take a day off'..."

The three sisters seeing him off gaze at him somewhat somberly while he quickly pops out his phone to check a new text he's received in the meantime.

"Well, even if we can't ask you to take a whole day off, maybe you can at least take it a bit easier?" Ichika suggests. "We might've been joking around for the past couple of minutes, but if there is one thing we can be serious about, it's that you need a break too. Miku and Yotsuba always go on about how you're always super busy, yet you always show up at our place to teach us. Maybe you've been late a couple times, and, uh...some days you've had to teach Miku by herself, but you haven't missed a single day yet. Lately, just like how we've been getting more burned out, you've been looking more and more stressed too."

"That's right! It just doesn't feel fair for you to tell us to take a break when it's obvious that you're still beating yourself up out there," Yotsuba nods fervently, regaining her confidence now that she's got her oldest sister backing her up.

"That's also true. Then I'll try to take it easier this week. Do try to study a little bit tomorrow, though."

"But you just said that we didn't need to!" Ichika also pouts, completing the pout trio.

"I know, but you girls are the type to forget everything you've learned if you don't review it every day. So just as a bit of insurance policy against something like that happening. I'll see you girls tomorrow at school, then."

Exchanging goodbyes and goodnights, the front door to the Nakano penthouse closes, and Fuutarou's heavy, tired footsteps clomp away on the other side towards the elevator lobby. Miku feels an uncomfortable twinge in her chest when she hears a muffled but still clearly distinguishable and exhausted sigh from the other side of the door.

"Fuutarou-kun...won't be taking it any easier, will he...?" Ichika mumbles sadly to her sisters, who offer no reassurance back, for they all know what will most likely happen.

"He's been sleeping longer and longer in class," Miku notes quietly, her eyes set on her sisters' feet on the floor. "Last month, he'd at least be awake to head to lunch with the rest of the class or when school ends. But lately...he's been sleeping through that, too."

"If it isn't one of us waking him up, he'd probably just sleep through the entire school day," Yotsuba adds pensively. "And he's been looking worse and worse and worse over the past two weeks. It's like after we came back from Hawaii, he just got so much busier all of a sudden. He's so busy that even when we know next to nothing about what he does, even we can tell how much he's probably going through."

"And he's working to help us try to pass our midterms next week..." Miku mentions, and she looks up at her sisters. "...couldn't there be, um, maybe something that we could do for him...?"

"Something we could do for him...but just what on earth _can _we do? He probably won't even accept it anyway, you saw him when Yotsuba tried giving him that smartwatch. And especially now, now that Fuutarou-kun did accept that from Yotsuba, he'll probably refuse anything else we try to get for him," Ichika points out.

Finding themselves at a roadblock, Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba stand there emptily at the front door for a few moments.

"And here we were, thinking _we _were tired..." Yotsuba mutters downheartedly.

"Well, for now, let's try not to dwell on this. Fuutarou-kun wouldn't want us to act like this, you know? I'll think of something we can do for him in the meantime, just leave this to your big sis."

Redirecting her sisters back into the living room, Ichika sets her eyes on her immediate younger sister, who is still sitting at the dinner table, having gone back to watching videos on her phone.

"I know you've been listening in on us, Nino. You can hear what people are saying down here on the first floor pretty well, after all," Ichika smiles in Nino's direction from the short couch.

Looking up from her phone, Nino scowls up at her only older sister. "And so what of it? What do I have to do with anything the rest of you're talking about?"

"Well, I was just thinking...maybe you should join us for lessons for once."

At this, Nino goes right back down to her phone. "No thanks, I'll pass. What makes you think I'll ever let him tutor me when I've already made it cle - "

"You sure about that, Nino? After all that studying you're doing at night when no one's looking?"

Tensing up just as immediately, Nino darts her eyes back up at her older sister, and Ichika's smile widens just barely at this reaction from her younger sister as she thinks to herself, _go__tcha._

"Y-You're just making stuff up! I'm _not _studying! Why would I - " Nino begins to hotly contest Ichika's hypothesis, but Ichika pulls out her phone, opens up a voice recording app, sets the volume on max, and selects a recent file to play back, and the quintuplets on the first floor can all hear a digital Nino's voice, clearly spoken behind a wall, reciting,

_"..._quintessential_...of the pure...and essential essence of something...of or relating to...the most perfect embodiment of something..."_

Lowering her phone after stopping the playback, Ichika finds the absolutely horrified expression on her sister's face quite enjoyable.

"All of our rooms are right next to each other, and the walls aren't exactly soundproof. We've all dealt with each other making noise and gotten used to each other by this point after all these years," Ichika explains with the kind of satisfaction only obtainable from exposing someone else's dark secrets. "And whenever you study English, Nino, you always practice by speaking it aloud. Honestly, to your credit, that's probably the best way to study English, and it shows since you can speak English the best out of all of us. It's just that in this case, it gave you away ~ "

"But I thought English was already your best subject, why are you studying it more when you could be studying other things?" Miku asks.

"W-Well, it's - it's not like I get super high scores on English! And I know _conversational _English, it's the vocabulary that I always have a hard time with because they always test us on words that I barely ever get to use!" Nino exclaims quickly in self-defense, her cheeks circulating blood rapidly through them. "And I'm not studying _because _of Uesugi, don't get me wrong here!"

"Isn't it? But I don't even properly remember the last time you studied," Ichika points out. "It must've been, gosh, all the way back in the beginning of middle school that I heard you actually studying in your room. You're telling me that it's all just a big coincidence that midterms are coming up, and you're starting to study again when normally you wouldn't even _know _about midterms until the day of?"

Having gotten up out of her seat at the dinner table, Nino gapes at Ichika, as if she's got more stuff to hurl at her in her own defense, but having been caught red-handed, all she can really do is lower her gaze, red in the face and still unwilling to admit her secret studying.

"Nino...you should join us. Really," Yotsuba says calmly. Ichika realizes as Yotsuba takes the lead now that it's probably best for Yotsuba to try to talk Nino into studying with them and Fuutarou, since Yotsuba is speaking with her own serious voice that is entirely pure-hearted and genuine, to the point where not even Nino will go against what she says, despite Ichika herself usually being the default figure of authority among the quints.

"No. I refuse," Nino shakes her head adamantly as she tussles her hair and folds her arms.

"Then at least be with us for midterm studying. Just give it a shot, that's all we ask. Study with us and Uesugi-san for this week until midterms. Please?"

"Hell no! I still haven't gotten over what he did on Sunday, either!"

"Oh yeah, speaking of which, why _did _you scream like that on Sunday? The second time, not the first time," Ichika wonders aloud, and at this, Nino's face's shade of red deepens even further.

"Uesugi tried to - he tried to - _he tried to take his anger out on me because I asked him to pierce my ears!" _she finally cries. "So I screamed in self-defense, yeah, that's exactly it! I was just - protecting myself!"

"Protecting yourself from a boy who's supposed to be protecting you already - yeah, something doesn't add up there," Miku rolls her eyes a little.

"Hey, this's happened to me before! You can't blame me for acting that way!"

Arching her neck backwards a little, Ichika, exhausted from all the studying she's been doing and the part-time work that she's been putting in whenever she's got the time, sighs a little because she's definitely not in the mood to sit through Nino's fierce attitude tonight; already Nino's screechy voice is making her head start to pound, and she'd rather not deal with a headache tonight if she can help it.

"Alright, that's enough, that's enough. The three of us kind of need a break tonight, so let's give this a rest. All I'll say is this, Nino," the eldest quint says, speaking with a firm voice to let her sisters know subconsciously that she is taking control of the situation here. "If you're gonna study in secret like that in your room, which isn't really even secret by this point, you might as well come study with us. Like Yotsuba said, at the very least, study with us for midterms next week, and you can go back to doing whatever once they're done. I won't ask you why you've felt compelled to study like that lately, and I don't want you to think that we're pressuring you to let Fuutarou-kun tutor you."

"But like, isn't that basically what you're doing?" Nino argues quickly.

"Maybe it is, I'll admit, if thinking that's what's going to make you feel better about yourself. But that's not what's important, your grades are what's important here, and how you're going to get them. And as your sister, not even as your older sister, just as your sibling who cares about your grades, I'd really appreciate it if you could come study with us."

"That's funny, I don't recall you ever really caring that much about your own grades, and yet you're standing there saying you care about mine?"

"Aha, well...I, uh, guess you got me there. Even still, I can still be concerned about the kinds of grades my sisters get, right?"

Grumpily frowning at her older sister, Nino folds her arms slowly across her chest. "Then why aren't you also telling Itsuki this too? Why's it just gotta be me here? Just because I happened to be downstairs and not Itsuki?"

"Itsuki's been studying all this time, though," Yotsuba points out quickly. "I, uh, I don't know when you started studying on your own in your room, Nino, but we know Itsuki's always been studying, even before Fuutarou got hired to be our tutor."

"Exactly. She's been diligent all on her own this whole time, whereas you only just started studying now that midterms are right around the corner," Ichika agrees, nodding her head. "That, and between you and Itsuki, you'll benefit much more with a tutor like Fuutarou-kun helping you."

"I call bullshit on that. Just because Itsuki studies by herself doesn't mean she magically doesn't need a tutor either! Look how much she's studied and look at the kinds of test scores she gets!" Nino rebuts, raising her voice again, but this time she controls her tone because she's actually trying to make a cohesive argument.

"Well, that's...I won't argue against that, and I understand you're saying that now since we brought Itsuki up, but right now I just want to know if _you _are willing to study with us," Itsuki continues. "Will you do that for us? For our sakes?"

"Study with you? For _your _sake? That doesn't make any sense," Nino scowls.

"No, it makes perfect sense. We're quintuplets, after all - remember when we were younger, when we used to do everything all together?" Ichika pulls on her best sisterly smile as a last resort to sway Nino's opinion. "While we've grown out of that habit since then over the years, there are still lots of times when we'll all gather together to do something together again. And no matter what it is, we always enjoy doing stuff together at the end of the day. And I'll bet it'll be the same even for studying. It's just that we haven't all studied together before because we never cared to do something like that. Even if _you _won't really take advantage of Fuutarou-kun's lessons, just you being there will make Miku and Yotsuba really happy, I'm sure of it."

Yotsuba is also nodding strongly, listening to every word Ichika says with stoic fervor. "It's true, Nino! Being able to study together - even if individually we don't like to study, you at least have to admit that studying _together _is gonna be a lot different, right?"

Finding herself pressured from two fronts, technically three if Miku also decides to join in on these quintuplet negotiations, Nino falls silent. Now that her secret nighttime studying has been exposed thanks to Ichika's preparation, Nino can't try to hide the fact that even she feels the looming pressure of midterms this following week.

Perhaps more importantly, though, Nino can't deny the added pressure she herself feels from the boy who isn't even here in their house now: Uesugi Fuutarou. Yes, Fuutarou has been bugging her every day lately to get her to come study with her sisters under his tutelage, but he'd only ask her once a day and no more before leaving her alone for the rest of the day to tutor her sisters. And even Nino can tell that Fuutarou by this point has already mentally resigned himself to the fact that she will probably never willingly join his lessons. She has also been able to tell, just like the rest of her sisters, that Fuutarou has been looking increasingly tired as of late; normally she'd just walk right out of the classroom with her sisters at lunch or at the end of school, but repeatedly seeing her male classmate with his head in his arms, silently catching some Z's at his desk straight through the school bells indicating the different times of the day - the sight of him like that has managed to lodge itself in her mind. Throw in all the other shenanigans that she's been through involving Uesugi, and as a result, whether she likes it or not, mainly the latter, Nino cannot deny to herself that her would-be tutor has been on her mind quite a bit lately.

As if just to guilt-trip her harder, Nino's memory also flashes the sight of Raiha's happy, slightly cream-smeared face on the day that she bought that strawberry crepe for her to bail Uesugi out of a potentially sticky situation, no pun intended. And of course, the memories they've made with Raiha during their Golden Week vacation in Honolulu, at Waikiki Beach - and the marked absence of her brother during most of that week.

For as staunchly opposed as she was to letting Uesugi tutor her along with her sisters initially, Nino has gradually felt her starting opposition to him begin to develop cracks, cracks that, like those on a damaged windshield, have been silently growing bigger and bigger over time, especially after they returned from Hawaii, in such a way that now that she looks at herself retrospectively, even Nino finds herself a bit surprised at just how much less opposed she feels to Uesugi compared to a month ago. All that time she's spent downstairs with her sisters, listening to Fuutarou tutor her sisters, seeing how much fun they seem to be having studying with him...she really should've just holed herself up in her own room so that she wouldn't find herself in this position in the first place.

All this angers her out of embarrassment, which would be an understandable reaction, of course, but Nino can't quite bring herself to keep being angry because she feels like she's lost the moral high ground in this argument, and the fact that she's been trying to study secretly on her own is her own undoing, now that Ichika's used it against her here. So now, as Nino stands here at the dinner table, helplessly brandishing her double-sided lightsaber back at three of her Jedi sisters who are all waiting on her final answer, the second quintuplet slowly comes to the inevitable conclusion that she's been driven figuratively into a corner, confronted by her three dutiful sisters who now possess the moral high ground over her and her back against the two walls that are her own grades and the indirect pressure that Fuutarou poses to her.

Having broken into a small sweat and unable to bear the pressure any longer, Nino finally relents and looks back up defiantly at her sisters.

"Fine, fine! I'll let him tutor me, but _only _for these midterms coming up! Once those are done, I'm going back to normal!" she lashes verbally out. "There, that's what you wanted, right?"

Nino's consent transforms the terse, tired looks on her sisters into faces of joyous relief, and Yotsuba begins to cheer triumphantly while Ichika and Miku both sigh breaths of relief.

"Yaaay! Thank you, Nino!" the fourth quint, naturally the one to still have the energy left to run over to Nino, gives her a big ol' hug, which Nino feebly tries to resist, but she just can't bring herself to turn Yotsuba away when she's so clearly happy.

"Y-You don't need to hug me over something like this...!" she grumbles loudly, unable to reciprocate her younger sister's hug. "And by the way, I'm not done! If I'm gonna let Uesugi tutor me, I've got some demands _I _wanna make!"

"Well, I mean...I'm not sure if your demands are going to be reasonable at all, but I guess we can at least hear them out," Ichika shrugs.

"First, since I'm joining you guys for now, I want Itsuki to come join us too!" Nino expresses. "You said that we used to do everything together, right, Ichika? Then it wouldn't be right if we left Itsuki out of this!"

"Aha, that's a good point! Let's go convince Itsuki too!" Ichika gives a little golf clap at her younger sister's suggestion. "Itsuki? Itsuki! I know you can hear us! Come out for a second, there's something we wanna talk to you about ~ !"

"Can sound _really _travel through our rooms _that_ easily...?" Nino mutters to herself in disbelief.

"You're the one who always calls us down for dinner whenever anyone's still in their rooms," Miku points out to her sister, who jolts a little at this, having never had this put into perspective for her like this before.

Sure enough, Ichika's raised voice does indeed summon Itsuki, who emerges from her room looking quite distressed to peer down at the rest of her quintuplet sisters on the lower floor.

"Just what on Earth do you want from me, all of you?" Itsuki demands indignantly, having had to deal with hearing her sisters downstairs arguing for the past half an hour, almost. "Please keep it down, I can hear all of you from here! I will have to borrow Miku's headphones to study if you all cannot - "

"Sorry, sorry, that's our bad, we're done with everything now," Ichika raises a hand up to her own face to convey her apology up to her youngest sister. "But we have something to ask you, Itsuki - would you be willing to study with all of us with Fuutarou-kun for midterms next week?"

As expected, Itsuki also balks at this ridiculous suggestion being pitched at her.

"Has my answer not been clear yet? No, I do not want to - " Itsuki begins to say, but this time Nino is the one to talk back.

"Itsuki, everyone's convinced me to join them for midterm studying," she reveals, much to Itsuki's understandable shock.

"Eeeeehhhhh?! But - but - " Leaning over the railing somewhat with both hands on it, Itsuki stares wide-eyed down at Nino. "But - how did this happen, Nino!? Were _you _not also opposed to Uesugi-kun tutoring us?!"

"Look, I'm only doing this just for these midterms, and I'm going straight back to how I was before!" Nino yells back. "But my condition for joining everyone in studying was to have you come join us, too!"

"I-I refuse! I absolutely refuse!" Growing terribly red in the face in embarrassment, Itsuki reels where she stands behind the railing. "You have betrayed me, Nino! How could you throw me under the bus like this! Whatever happened to the Anti-Uesugi Fuutarou Coalition?!"

"'Anti-Uesugi Fuutarou Coalition'...? You two were a lot more militant about this than I thought..." Ichika remarks with a light giggle.

"D-Don't look at me, I didn't come up with that, Itsuki did!" Nino hisses fiercely back at her older sister before looking up at Itsuki again. "I don't care, Itsuki! You're gonna join us whether you like it or not, because I sure as hell don't either!"

_"I refuse, Nino! You cannot make me come study with - "_

"Oh yeah? How does no breakfast, lunch, or dinner from me sound until after midterms are done, Itsuki?!" Nino challenges.

"Ouch...she went there..." Ichika grimaces, half-expecting Nino to do Itsuki dirty like this.

"And against Itsuki, too...I guess she's the one person that would work really well against," Miku also comments, watching Itsuki to see what her reaction will be like.

Reeling even harder as if she's been hit by a truck that gives free rides to other worlds, Itsuki angrily points a finger down at the household cook.

"That is - that is not fair! You cannot hold our meals like that hostage! That is dirty, Nino! _DIRTY!"_

"Well, that's just too bad, isn't it! Not _my _problem that no one else in this house bothered learning how to cook! And I know how much you rely on me cooking for you!" Smiling deviously, Nino returns fire with a domineering finger point of her own back up at her youngest sister. "Just give it up, Itsuki! If I have to suffer through the embarrassment of having to let Uesugi tutor me, I'm dragging you down with me!"

Knees weak, with arms shaking at Nino's overwhelming ultimatum, Itsuki buckles and slumps a little over the railing, making sure not to let herself lean over too much.

"Uuuu...how could you do this, Ninoooooo..." Itsuki moans sadly. "I thought we were sisters...sisters cannot possibly do such nefarious things to each other like this..."

"You still haven't given me your answer yet!" Nino snaps, admittedly feeling a bit better about herself now that she's able to force one of her own sisters to submit to her own will like this.

"What choice do I have...?! I can perhaps be able to handle dinner by myself by eating out, but eating out every day is not healthy, and...and I must have breakfast to function properly in the morning..." Itsuki raises her head from the railing in defeat. "I hate to admit this, and I have no idea why this is happening, but...I shall let you have your way, Nino. But I will remember this...!"

Another round of cheers comes from Ichika and Yotsuba at the successful addition of their last quintuplet sibling for their newly enlarged study group, thanks to the unintentionally cooperative machination on Nino's part. Miku even sings with a blank face a little victory tune at their acquisition of Nino as a fellow party member.

"Ah, Miku, was that from Final Fantasy 7?" Yotsuba asks, being an avid gamer with Miku, who nods with a small smile.

"You owe me, Ichika," Nino grumbles over at her older sister, who nods.

"I'll remember this one. You should make one of Itsuki's favorites for dinner today to make it up to her, though," Ichika suggests.

"Mmm...I guess you're right. Itsuki doesn't know everything that's going on right now, and we can talk about it again over dinner..." Nino raises a hand to her chin to think about what to make for dinner today before looking up at Itsuki on the floor above them and calling out, "Itsuki, how does filet mignon sound tonight for dinner?"

At the sound of filet mignon, Itsuki immediately bolts up to her feet, her drooping, depressed ahoge suddenly regaining its strength out of nowhere and standing up at attention.

"W-Will you wrap it in bacon like last time?!" the youngest quintuplet who loves all things meat asks excitedly, and Nino can already see saliva forming inside her sister's mouth even from a floor away.

"You're luck, we still have some bacon left over, so yes, I can do that for you. So come down, why don't you," the culinary quintuplet responds, tussling her hair one more time before walking off into the kitchen to prepare dinner.

"Omigosh, thank you, thank you thank you thank you, Ninoooooo ~ !" Instead of running down the stairs, Itsuki, in her utmost excitement at one of her favorite dishes, leaps onto the side railing down the stairs to slide all the way down in a rare and unusual feat of physical ability out of the quintuplet whose most prominent physical activity is eating. She hits the first floor running to give Nino a big, loving hug of appreciation.

"Y-You don't need to _hug _me over this, okay?! I'm just doing this because I figured you'd be mad at me! It's not that big of a deal!" The other quintuplets watch Nino and Itsuki in the kitchen, as though their floor-to-floor conversation just a minute ago were merely a fading memory.

While Itsuki continues to hassle Nino in the middle of her cooking out of excitement for tonight's dinner, Miku turns to her eldest sister once more.

"Tomorrow's our day off...you said you'd think of something to do for Fuutarou, right?" she asks quietly.

"Yep. What's today, Tuesday?" Ichika deliberates quickly to herself before an idea pops in her head that causes her to raise her phone that she's been holding in her hand ever since she pulled it out to expose Nino's secret self-studying. "I think I've got it. Let me send Fuutarou-kun a text real quick..."

Miku leans in to take a glance at what Ichika's texting him. As she reads along to what she's texting, though, Miku widens her eyes more and more.

"...wait...Ichika...?" she murmurs softly, looking at her sister in mild alarm. Ichika merely grins mischievously back.

"You can't deny it's a good idea, no? We'll be killing two birds with one stone, so to say. Aaaaand...sent."


	28. For Old Time's Sake

_Hey, we've managed to convince Nino and Itsuki to join us for midterm studying this week. And no, before you ask, this isn't a joke, we really did manage to get them to join. I know you're also not planning to listen to us and keep working tonight like you usually do, so on Friday, why don't you stay the night with us at our place? That way we can make sure that you'll give yourself a full night's rest. If you refuse, I'll call Dad and tell him that our tutor is starting to underperform at his job, so don't forget to keep your Friday night open ~_

* * *

As if she'll ever get a hold of her father with a direct call, Uesugi Fuutarou snorts to himself quietly amidst the high-altitude winds buffeting his body. And too bad Ichika is blissfully unaware of the fact that Fuutarou already reports his tutoring progress to the girls on a regular basis to her father to keep him up-to-date with everything that's been going on so far.

Lowering his phone, the young mage, having resumed his nighttime duties, stands on the edge of the helipad located at the top of the Pentagon high-rise. Rather than taking the elevator down to the ground floor like he usually does, tonight he has taken the elevator up to the roof to return here. His black half-kilt dances behind his legs as a result of the whipping winds that seem more violent than normal tonight, but that doesn't concern him much. He merely pinches the tip of his black cap's visor and pulls it down to ward against the wind, if that can even be described as such.

The wind is trivial in comparison to what he must handle tonight. As he gazes off into the distance towards the city downtown, Fuutarou can spy the faint yet telltale strobes of police lights, indicating his next target.

Rather than using his phone, Fuutarou pulls up his smartwatch, pulls it up somewhat to his face, and speaks,

"Uesugi Isanari."

The smartwatch receives his verbal command and dials the number silently, the small square screen switching accordingly to a dialing in progress screen, then to a call connected screen.

_"Read ya loud and clear, kid."_

"Have you been monitoring the progress on that police raid that's going on downtown?" Fuutarou asks.

_"That I have. It's a big one this time - looks like they've found a really big cache."_

"Isanari, tell me I'm not the only one between us that sees that as a huge red flag right now."

_"You're not. All this time, the police's only uncovered small stashes - and mapping out their hits and raids throughout the city, they've almost always been contained to lesser traveled parts of the city, the outskirts, or the boondocks. Not only is this raid tonight the biggest one we've seen yet, just judging by how many goddamn police cars are in the area, but it's smack in the middle of downtown."_

Fuutarou narrows his eyes in the direction of the police lights far off in the heart of the city. Even in light of the worsening drug trafficking problem that the city is being plagued with, there is no reason for there to be a commotion like this. With how vigilantly the city police has been in cracking down on drug trafficking wherever they can get their hands on it, it is very strange, to say the least, for the police to simply stumble upon a huge cache one random night like tonight, and right in the middle of the city, too. And even stranger is the fact that police drug raid history has kept them out of the heart of the city - until now.

"Ping that location on Dragon, I'll want a better look at this before I get there," Fuutarou orders his father as he raises his wrist so that his magically modified smartwatch can plant a comms rune next to his left ear to maintain the call. Turning around, he raises his hand towards the large red H on the roof. _"Fate is in Heaven."_

Obeying his activation command, the large surveillance rune he's planted over a month ago on this high-rise reactivates and glows into view. Once fully reactivated, Fuutarou uses his smartwatch to pull up the map of the city once more, though on a simple two-dimensional magic panel rather than its full-size, three-dimensional magic hologram, and with it, he drags the map over to the general area where he believes the police lights to be congregated and awaits his father's ping, which pops up on his map for him to zoom in on. And once zoomed in, he selects a specific surveillance rune in close proximity to the sirens to activate remotely, just like the one near him.

With the ping that Isanari has given him, Fuutarou double-taps the marked location, and the magic panel provides a live feed, complete with ambient audio, for its owner to view. Police cars and their lights are everywhere on this street; he figured there would be sirens aplenty, but then again it wouldn't really make much sense for the police cars to leave their sirens on in the middle of the city, as they'd add an even more annoying disturbance on top of the disturbance they already cause with their presence and lights alone.

The building that the policemen seem to be most concentrated outside is a net cafe, judging by the signs beside the building. Many of the buildings downtown have underground levels, frequently buildings like net cafes, bookstores, arcades, and merchandise stores, so whatever's drawn the police there tonight, it's probably downstairs - and Fuutarou needs to know what's caused this commotion before the police dismantle the evidence and clean it out, if they even choose to do it themselves.

"Isanari, I'm going in. Keep eyes over the AO," Fuutarou says, and not even waiting for him to confirm this, he steps onto the glowing rune on the helipad. Positioning himself in the very center of the large surveillance rune, the young mage waits five seconds once he's standing still before the rune, glowing stronger and stronger, suddenly emits a burst of white-blue light, leaving nothing behind once the flash of light is gone, not even itself. The roof of the Pentagon returns to normal.

But the surveillance rune that Fuutarou activated prior to disappearing has simultaneously begun glowing at the same time as the one on the high-rise, and the instant Fuutarou is whisked away front view from the tower, he finds himself standing on the rune in the heart of the city. His eyes are still flashbanged somewhat from the teleportation as a mild side effect, though the temporary blindness does fade away quickly. Still, it's something he can work on to further optimize the teleportation feature he's added to his rune system.

Once his sight returns to normal, the teenage mage finds himself on the attic floor of an apartment building near the congregation of city police cars. There are people living in the apartments underneath, but this attic floor is rarely used and is only accessible from within the apartment itself, at least to its own residents, making it an ideal spot to plant a surveillance rune.

Leaving the surveillance rune behind that fades back into the wood flooring and out of sight, Fuutarou heads down the stairs all the way to the bottom, descending about eight flights of stairs to emerge out onto the street. He double-checks his Presence Concealment rune to make sure it's active for his objective tonight and crosses the street to approach his target building. Policemen in vests are standing on the partially blockaded street, directing traffic wherever needed, and Fuutarou, with his Presence Concealment active, carefully weaves his way through the street to avoid getting hit by cars in the process.

The policemen standing guard around the perimeter of the NO CROSSING lines set up around the street do not even bat an eye at the teenage boy dressed in all black and a white dress shirt underneath walking up to them and simply ducking underneath the yellow police tape to let himself into the building. The policemen and policewomen inside the tape discussing the situation do not seem to even acknowledge Fuutarou's existence either.

"This is going to make headline news later today...the commissioner's going to have to hold a press conference about this soon," one of the policemen groans.

"Sure seems so, right. And the press's been hounding us for weeks already, going on about why we can't seem to get a handle on this situation..."

"Can't the commissioner just cease all the press conferences? That way we don't have to deal with them."

"Can't do that, rookie. That'll make the situation seem way worse than it is, and it'll give a big opportunity to the press to ridicule us to no end, saying that we're incompetent motherfuckers who don't even care to do our jobs right."

"I mean, they wouldn't be wrong, now, would they?"

"Hey, watch where you're saying that. You're lucky we've been in the same unit for a while, so I can let that pass. Don't you let some of the other senior officers catch you saying that."

"Fuck if I care, man, this is bullshit. All we've been doing is conducting raids and stuff like this - taking away these crooks' drugs and shit isn't going to stop them from just bringing in more."

"Weren't you suggesting that the commissioner just ought to cancel all the press conferences, though?"

"So that we can concentrate on doing what we _ought _to do to stop all this drug trafficking that's been going on! But we aren't even doing that, and like she said, it's not like we're gonna stop press conferences any time soon!"

"Then what are you saying, rookie?"

"I'm saying that all these raids, all these busts - they're not solving the problem correctly. Every drug cache we find and confiscate is just another band-aid we slap onto this problem. It's just temporary. If the crooks lose one cache, they'll just set up another in some other part of the city. At first, we hoped that by busting their caches enough times, they'd stop bringing in drugs for a while because maybe they'll take a while to restock, and with enough hits, maybe they'll even be discouraged from trying to circulate or sell in the city. But that hasn't happened! They just keep bringing in more, and we don't know how!"

"Well, we _have _been cracking down on their drug labs too, you know. And doubtless, there're more labs we haven't found yet that could still be producing."

"Yeah, but even with that in mind, it's just really weird, you know? Something's off about this whole situation, I can't shake it..."

"Eh, relax. If it's this raid tonight that's got you on edge, don't let it, it'll be just another raid like all the others. It's just that it's in the middle of the city, which is weird, but our boys haven't found anything out of the ordinary yet. I'll take you boys out to dinner tonight, it'll be my treat."

"Gonna be a late dinner, then, which how this's shaping up to be. Figure we'll be here awhile..."

As the senior police deputy and her junior officers begin talking about dinner plans after their duties, Fuutarou, who's stopped nearby before entering the building to eavesdrop, finally steps into the building proper.

As he suspected, the police restriction tape is placed to bar entry downstairs to the basement, and so he slips underneath the bright tape and heads down the stairs - so long as he doesn't do anything blatant that will net the attention of those around him, he will remain essentially hidden in plain sight.

Fuutarou reaches the basement and lets the voices of police officers down here guide him to where he needs to go. The lower floors above him are storage floors for the net cafe above, but the basement is filled with a much different kind of stock: boxes and bags and cartons of contraband drugs. Several more police officers are standing by, surveying the area as investigators are busy snapping photos of all the evidence.

"This's easily the worst drug trafficking situation the country's ever seen," Fuutarou hears one of the officers mumble quietly to his partner as he passes them. "We can't let word of this leak out. It's already bad enough that we've found something like this in the middle of the goddamn city..."

"Honestly, we shouldn't have sent so many officers here. It's making a big commotion, the press's bound to get wind of this even though we've barred them from entering this area within a three-block radius for tonight."

"Not to mention what social media's going to do with this, too...ugh, this's already a nightmare, and it sucks knowing it can get even worse..."

Leaving the policemen and investigators to their own devices, Fuutarou quietly and discretely conducts a little investigation of his own. Most of the drugs are the usual suspects - cannabinoids like marijuana and hash, opioids like heroin and opium, stimulants like cocaine, amphetamine, and methamphetamine, club drugs like methylenedioxymethamphetamine, rohypnol, and gamma-hydroxybutyrate, dissociative drugs like ketamine, PCP, and saliva divinorum, hallucinogens like lysergic acid diethylamide, mescaline, and psilocybin, and other miscenallenous drugs like anabolic steroids and inhalants.

But one curious investigator, Fuutarou notices, is taking pictures of a few unmarked metal cases sitting on top of a few other boxes in the far corner of the room, and when he approaches him from behind, he hears the investigator muttering something to himself.

"...I've seen these before...in another raid...metal cases just like this...but no one's been using them...no one's been buying them...at least, not that we know of...so what are these even doing here...? What even are they...?"

It would appear that even the police are now privy to the existence of liquid Heisei. After so many raids on drug caches like this, they were bound to learn of it, but it seems like they don't know what it's really being used for. Not that he has a full picture of what its full purpose is yet either, but Fuutarou doubts the police will ever come to learn what it really does. They might bring in a few samples for testing, but it's a magical compound; whatever they find won't tell them anything unless they hire a magical investigator or freelancer like himself to do it for them, and he'd know about it if they did something like that. So the most they'd probably be able to discover is the connection between the liquid Heisei and the powder Heisei, but the logical conclusion they'd make is that the two drugs more or less do the same thing. Unless, of course, they come across a victim of liquid Heisei...which he'll have to account for, now that he thinks about it. But then again, how would they be able to determine the cause of death in a case like that when the cause is magical?

But while it's certainly in circulation by this point in the city, Fuutarou has only run into a few more cases of liquid Heisei-induced deaths. And he always gets to them before they can be discovered by the general public, thanks to his vigilant scouring of the city every night, though he knows that he probably can't keep that up forever, and certainly not when Ichika is compelling him to spend a night with her and her sisters.

Taking a step back out of the policemen's and investigators' ways, the young mage, surveying the stash, deliberates on the implications of tonight's police raid. He came here in the hopes that maybe some of Shirazumi Rio's gangsters would be here, or maybe even Rio himself or herself or whoever. If only some low-ranking gangbangers were here, then they would've most likely been arrested by the police here, but there is no sign of any violent struggle or resistance anywhere, so the stash must have been found unguarded and unattended, which is also very strange. The best case scenario would have been to meet Rio directly so that he can confront them directly, but clearly that isn't the case here.

A huge cache of drugs like this, located in the middle of the city...left totally unguarded, and inviting all these police officers to flock to it to investigate and confiscate it...

Then, it hits Fuutarou like a ton of bricks.

His eyes snapped open, the young mage quickly but quietly casts a rune from his fingertip that he raises into the air, and the small outline of a rune, invisible to those who cannot perceive magic, rapidly expands through the air away from his fingertip like a single ripple created by a drop of water, scanning the room for any signs of magic presence.

The scanning rune locates the Heisei drugs, of course, which reflect a small magic signature back - but that's not what catches Fuutarou's alarmed attention. It's a significantly bigger, unidentified presence that he senses in the center of the room, inside a large and heavy cardboard box wrapped with layers and layers of duct tape.

Ordinary magical objects or runes should not be giving off such a huge magical signature like this - only those with concentrated amounts of magical energy. And in this context, in this part of the city, with so many police officers in the vicinity, with no gangsters around, there's only one thing it _can _be.

Hurrying over to it at the risk of breaking his Presence Concealment field, Fuutarou drops a knee next to the big, thick cardboard box wrapped with lots of duct tape. The cardboard box appears to have a magical jammer somewhere on it, a device that blocks magical presences from emanating properly from its source, which would explain why Fuutarou wasn't able to detect it upon entering the basement initially. But it's just a box - there aren't any external devices on it. Then, Fuutarou realizes that it must be the duct tape - that's why there's so much of it wrapped around the box itself when there isn't any reason to put that much on it normally.

Thankfully the box is sitting by itself next to a few other boxes of ordinary contraband drugs, so he can pick it up discretely without compromising his position. Checking the room, the police officers talking nearby are close to the stairs leading up to ground level, but with some careful movement, Fuutarou figures that he should be able to carry the box and still slip through. It'll be cutting it close, especially when his Presence Concealment field will just barely cover the large rectangular box along with him, but this is the safest course of action if there really is a magical bomb inside this box.

Following through with this plan, Fuutarou gingerly lifts the large box. This would be impossible for a lanky guy like him to do normally, at least not without the help of magically augmented strength, for the box is easily far too heavy for him to be lifting it up at this awkward angle from the side without such magical aid. Once he's got it up in the air, he slowly readjusts his grip on it so that he can hold the box more efficiently and easily, making as little noise as possible and dodging investigators who walk by him in the process to avoid having them bump into the box and give him away.

And once he's secured the big rectangular box, Fuutarou heads for the stairs back up to the ground floor.

Or, that would be the plan, if one of the police officers near the stairs didn't decide to lean a little to his left right as Fuutarou is passing him.

"Huh? Wait, what was - "

Knowing his cover is immediately blown with that stroke of bad luck, Fuutarou does not hesitate and instantly books it up the stairs with the huge box on his left shoulder, now that he's carrying it with just one arm. With his Presence Concealment shattered, the policemen turn to look at the escaping Fuutarou and cry out in alarm.

"All units, someone just got down to the basement somehow and is trying to escape with one of the packages! Detain him _immediately!"_ Fuutarou can hear one of the police officers shout into his radio as all three of them race up the stairs. The box is large and unwieldy, but Fuutarou manages to hold onto it as he bursts through the police tape barring entry into the lower floors and back out onto the streets.

"Hold it right th - " the female senior police officer cries out, standing in Fuutarou's way with her junior officers, and all three of them have their police batons drawn and ready, but Fuutarou simply runs straight through them, using the large box he's carrying as a battering ram of sorts to force his way through. He doesn't need to worry about disturbing the possible bomb inside the cardboard box either, since magical bombs like this require a magical detonation method and will not detonate upon physical abuse. Knocking down all three officers to the ground thanks to the length and sturdiness of the big box, Fuutarou pulls the box out of his vision so that he can keep seeing where he's going and leaps over the police car in front of him that's parked next to the sidewalk and out to the middle of the street.

Spying an alleyway dead ahead, Fuutarou continues to dash across the street, reaching the other sidewalk with police officers chasing after him, but they cannot keep up with his magically augmented sprinting that leaves them figuratively choking on the dust that he kicks up in his wake, and suddenly turning a corner into another alleyway, Fuutarou converts the distance that he's put in between himself and the chasing officers into time that he in turn uses to create a rune beneath his feet. The rune glows quickly with more whitish-blue light, and after a second or two, he pushes off with his feet, launching himself all the way up onto the roof of the building he's behind and landing safely out of the officers' sight before they can reach him and see where he's gone off to.

As the officers down in the alleys below voice their confusion and shock at their suspect's apparent and abrupt disappearance, along with the box he was holding while making his escape, Fuutarou sets the box down quickly and raises his hand, palm up.

_"Threefold Blossom, activate," _he chants in a low voice rapidly.

A pair of small blue runes appear above his palm, and sliding up and down past each other over his hand, they leave in their paths an oddly shaped block of bright blue light, light that solidifies into the shape of a knife with a six inch blade, a blue pommel and hilt, and a white handle. The knife drops into his hand once solidified, but Fuutarou opts to catch it as it's falling instead and kneels down next to the box to cut it open.

Inside the box are even more metal cases, presumably filled with even more liquid Heisei syringes, though obviously Fuutarou can't check that first. Instead, he tears open the box even more and begins pulling out the metal boxes inside until he finds what he's looking for: a small burlap sack nestled in far down into the cardboard box, in between two tightly packed stacks of metal cases. Now that the duct tape is torn aside and unable to continue jamming the burlap sack's magical signal, he can sense the magical signature pulsing, practically in the same vein as the ominous ticking of a bomb with a timed fuse.

Locating the magical bomb, Fuutarou simply pushes the metal cases aside, not caring for the contents within. Once enough of the metal cases are pulled aside and cast onto the roof of the building beside him, he pulls out the burlap sack and rips it open with his knife to see what kind of a bomb it is.

It's an alarmingly large burlap sack, and thus it contains an even more alarming six whole blocks of M112 military-grade C-4, housed as two stacks of three inside their sack. An old smartphone is taped with some more duct tape against the blocks of C-4, the phone connected to the plastic plate underneath the M112 blocks via blasting caps to dictate their time of detonation.

This is enough plastic explosives to level this entire block of the city, and then some, if not just two whole blocks outright. Fuutarou figured Rio or whoever's devised this trap would use a magically-based bomb, and he was horribly mistaken. They didn't even bother with that, they're just going to blast this place with good old plastic explosives.

The only thing magical about this bomb is its method of detonation - the smartphone taped to the explosive has a small rune that he can sense tied to it, which he forcibly reveals by placing his hand over the phone and channeling magical energy of his own over it. Whoever rigged this bomb, just like himself, also practices magitech - a millennial term coined in the past decade by modern mages to describe those who have learned to combine magic and modern human technology and put magic to use that way.

So Fuutarou immediately sets to work, knowing that the bomb can blow at any moment. The detonator rune is the key; if he can disable the detonator rune, then the C-4 explosive is effectively defused because it'll have lost its means of detonation. Thinking quickly, with sweat beginning to pop on his scalp, the young mage, having closed his eyes with his hand over the smartphone detonator, works feverishly to successfully disarm this C-4.

The best way to do this is to wrest control of the rune away from its original owner by reprogramming it to accept his own magical energy signature as its primary detonation authority. This would not work on a true and experienced mage, those who have blood ties to magic and have practiced magecraft enough to stop people like Fuutarou from trying something like this, because their magic bloodlines would only respond to their own kind and would never, at least theoretically, bend to the will of anyone else. But Fuutarou knows this isn't the case because true mages would never stoop so low as to use something like C-4, a piece of modern human technology, to commit an atrocity like what is about to happen if he doesn't disable this bomb.

By reversing such control from its original owner to himself, this means that Fuutarou can analyze the rune, which would be left perfectly intact and be completely accessible because the rune will act as if he were the one who created it. That way, he can reverse-engineer the rune and begin scanning for a specific signature to track down the culprit behind this attempted act of terrorism, whether it be Rio or someone else entirely. The only problem is that it is normally very time-intensive, time that he obviously does not have at this very moment.

So instead, after attempting to directly hack control over to himself on the off-chance that the rune wasn't very well constructed, which does not work, Fuutarou changes gears and goes with the far simpler option: constructing another rune to put on top of the detonator rune. If he can place a jamming field around the detonator that stops all magical signals from reaching the detonator rune itself, the rune will never know when it will be instructed to blast the blocks of explosives. The jamming tape is a similar concept, but it works in reverse so that the detonator itself cannot be magically detected externally. Fuutarou hesitates as he sets up a blank rune over the smartphone's rune - he knows he probably can make a small, temporary jamming field, but the question is how.

He doesn't have to think long, because he remembers the Presence Concealment spell that he knows how to cast over himself in order to infiltrate areas undetected, as long as police officers don't suddenly bump into him out of the blue. If he can render himself undetectable to other people, including other mages, that means that he's able to mask both his physical and magical signatures. Couldn't he apply the same principles to a jamming rune, just in reverse?

But try as he might, Fuutarou can't seem to make a rune like this, one that can reject all incoming magical signals. He's never come across a situation like this where he'd need to make a magical jamming field to prevent a bomb from receiving a magical signal, and while he's trained for a possible scenario like this, he didn't think it all the way through that he'd need to learn how to create a magical jammer.

And the bomb is still active all this time, ready to go off at any moment.

So he turns to his last resort - grabbing the knife that he's conjured to rip open the box and has since set down on the roof to concentrate on trying to disarm the C-4 detonator, Fuutarou raises the knife over the phone, over its exposed detonation rune.

Normally he would never do this, attempting to destroy a detonator rune altogether. There is too much risk involved - the detonator rune can be rigged to explode upon destruction, for instance, and depending on the explosive it's intended to trigger, it could detonate the bomb it's attached to along with it.

But since this is C-4, even if the detonator rune will go off, the rest of the bomb won't, so the city block here will be spared. Fuutarou assumes the rune is rigged to blow upon destruction or tampering, but this is a bullet he'll have to bite - if it doesn't outright kill him first.

Hopefully the girls don't miss him too much. They haven't known him for that long, so they'll get over it. Well, at the very least, he won't have to worry about Nino or Itsuki doing so.

_These weapons you've been entrusted with are special. They can do things that you wouldn't expect them to. So if there ever comes a time when you're out of options..._

Well, this is one of those times. Time to put this one to the test.

Squeezing his grip around the knife handle, Fuutarou plunges the weapon into the smartphone, directly through its rune.

* * *

Yawning, Nakano Nino, after having used the toilet, brushed her teeth, and washed her face to prepare for bed, tiredly reaches the top of the stairs, looking forward to go to bed. Well, at first - as soon as she puts her hand on the doorknob, Nino stops, shuddering a little as she remembers the searing pain that she was feeling in her eyes the other day that woke her up in the middle of the night. It hasn't happened again since, but...

"Nino? Are you not yet asleep?"

Surprised to hear one of her sisters at this late an hour, Nino turns to her right to find Itsuki, also in her pajamas, ready to go to bed, peeking out at her on the second floor of the penthouse, where all five of the quintuplets' bedrooms are located.

"I was just about to go to sleep, why aren't _you _asleep yet?" Nino asks her youngest sister instead. "It's kinda odd for you to be up at this hour. What time is it, even? Isn't it, like, already almost midnight? We have to be up in seven hours, you know..."

"I-I could say the same about you! Since, well, you need to be up the earliest out of us five so that you can fix our breakfasts..."

"Uh huh, that's exactly it. I hope you haven't forgotten about what we agreed to earlier before I made dinner."

_"I have not, Nino!"_

Nino chuckles quietly, since the rest of their sisters have turned in early tonight from all the studying they've been doing lately.

"Then that's good. Good night, Its - "

"Uh, Nino, please wait!" Itsuki says suddenly, pulling Nino's attention back to her before the latter can slip into her own room. "I know it is already very late, but...if you do not mind otherwise, can we talk for a moment...?"

Nino steps backwards out of her own doorframe to face Itsuki again. "Does it have to be now? We should really get some - "

"It will be quick, I promise! Please?"

Having always had a soft spot for her sisters whenever they ask something of her in earnest like this, Nino is unable to bring herself to refuse Itsuki a second time, so scowling, she sighs and gestures to her younger sister to follow her into her own room.

"Fine, but let's make this quick, okay?"

So Itsuki trots after her older sister and closes the door to Nino's room behind her as Nino jumps up onto her bed to sit on it while Itsuki takes her chair.

"So? What's this about all of a sudden? It better not be about the filet mignon I cooked for dinner tonight and how differently you want me to season it for next - "

"It is not about the food! Why is food always the first thing that comes to everyone's minds whenever I wish to speak to people...?" Itsuki grumpily pouts.

"Who knows, maybe the mirror can say more than I can. But anyways, that aside, what did you want to talk to me about?"

Brushing off the food joke, Itsuki takes a deep breath.

"I have been...thinking about this ever since dinner, and...I would like to know where you stand in all this right now," the youngest quintuplet says slowly. "But...what is your stance right now...towards having Uesugi-kun as our tutor? Please, be honest with me."

Hearing this, Nino feels her impulsive desire to question why Itsuki is asking her something like this in the first place, but because Itsuki is asking her an earnest question, she decides to return this earnestness in kind with a serious answer.

"I'm...not opposed to him being here as much as I used to be before," Nino mutters, turning for a moment to pull over one of the bigger stuffed animals, a big bunny that's half the size she is wearing a deep blue trench coat whose side reads "RHODES ISLAND" so that she can hug it tightly in front of herself. "Would I still willingly let him be my tutor? Hell no, but...at least it's nice knowing that...the others are learning from him, I guess..."

"Does that have anything to do with how you have been secretly studying at night, by yourself? Like what Ichika said?"

"Sh-She only brought that up so that she could force me to join them for tutoring!" Nino hotly blurts out on impulse, but she purses her lips to calm herself down. "...but it's not _because _of Uesugi that I'm studying, okay, don't get this all mixed up. I'm studying because of all of _you_. You, Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba. You're all studying hard - it wouldn't be fair to the rest of you if I were the only one slacking off not doing anything."

Nino hugs her big stuffed bunny plush a bit more tightly.

"...don't dwell too much on that, Itsuki. I can handle myself. Even if Ichika didn't force me to join them tonight, I would've still done my best to study on my own so that at least we can all graduate together. That's all I care about. That's all that's ever mattered to me," Nino murmurs, raising her blue eyes back at Itsuki's sitting across from her.

Itsuki's facial expression doesn't change at this.

"...then you still remember the promise you gave us, after Mother passed away," she says quietly, and Nino shifts a little on the side of her bed hearing this.

"First Miku, then you...color me surprised that you both still remember what I said back then," she sighs softly into the back of the bunny's neck.

"O-Oh? Did Miku also mention something like that recently...?"

"Yeah, but...but it was a while ago. Back when Miku and I had a little talk..." Nino's voice trails off as she remembers the context for that particular conversation.

Itsuki, pausing to give Nino time to fully express her thoughts, picks up the slack when Nino chooses not to continue them. "Then...I can trust you on this still? That you are only agreeing to study under Uesugi-kun's tutelage for these midterms, and these midterms only?"

"That's exactly it. No matter what kinds of scores I get, after midterms are done, I'm going right back to how things were until today. I don't care what happens to Uesugi after that...that's got nothing to do with me."

Suddenly, Nino raises her head from behind her stuffed bunny.

"Then what about you, Itsuki? You've asked me how I feel about this whole situation, so now it's my turn to ask you. You've been studying by yourself all this time, and unlike me, your self-studying was never a secret."

Tensing up a little at being the one to get put on the spot, Itsuki listens alertly as her older sister gives her a small little glare back while she speaks her piece.

"We started out in the beginning when Uesugi first got hired as our 'tutor' being the two to be outright opposed to him, right? And because of that, you've been studying by yourself in your room or at the library. But during our Golden Week vacation, there was a point where you could've actually started letting him tutor you, and the only reason why that didn't happen was because of Uesugi himself, because he didn't like your reasons for wanting to join or whatever. Now that all this's happened tonight, I should ask you: what do _you _feel about Uesugi and his tutoring? Do _you _still feel the same way that you did in the beginning like me?"

Biting her lower lip visibly, Itsuki lowers her gaze once Nino pitches this question to her, formulating her response. Once it's complete, she looks back up at her older sister.

"Because I asked you to speak truthfully on this matter to me, I shall do the same for you," she says slowly, steeling herself internally for what she is about to say. "It is mainly my own pride that is keeping me from joining the others for Uesugi-kun's lessons. That, and...the reassurance that you provide to me that you also refuse to accept Uesugi-kun's tutelage."

Nino leans in towards Itsuki a little. "What, are you saying that if I were to go study with Uesugi, you would've followed suit no matter what? Then what was the point of me threatening you earlier tonight if that's the case?"

"W-Well, because you said that this is only a temporary matter, I will still be studying by myself!" Itsuki says quickly.

"But if I were to go study for good with Uesugi, that would mean that you'd be the only one who isn't, and so you don't want to be left out from that," Nino repeats coolly.

"It is..." Itsuki hesitates, "...complicated..."

"Well, now that we're already here talking about it, I'm curious to know what's going on with you," the second quintuplet shrugs, leaning back to sit back up on the side of her bed. "Like you said, I took the time to lay it out to you straight, how I feel about everything that's going on right now. Now it's your turn, Itsuki. I don't care how long this takes; if you say you're gonna do the same for me, then I'll expect the same. So spill it, Itsuki."

For a good few minutes, Nino gazes silently back down at her youngest sister as the latter once more nervously puts together what she will say. And again, once she's done, Itsuki returns Nino's gaze to begin.

"My own studying is...inadequate, Nino. I do not think it is unreasonable for me to believe that...all five of us knew this of ourselves, that we...we were not studying enough, we were not studying _hard _enough, we simply were not studying at all...but my case is different from the rest of yours'. While that could be said of the rest of you, the same cannot be said of me. Studying enough, studying _hard _enough, merely studying at all...that is not the issue that I have, that was _never _the issue I had. No matter how much I study on my own, my scores do not seem to be improving. All the mock tests that I have given myself, ever since Uesugi-kun started teaching our sisters, they have barely risen above the score I got on the mock exam Uesugi-kun gave us during that very first week. In comparison to everyone else, who have all shown notable improvements in their own scores ever since Uesugi-kun began teaching..."

"Well, everyone's scores are still near failing or barely passing, so..." Nino smirks a little.

"Even with that in mind! Even with that in mind...even if their scores are still bordering the passing threshold, the improvements in their scores that Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba all show...they speak for themselves. They show that they are improving, while I am not. I am still stuck with similar scores that I got from the start, and that is all I have to show for my own studying."

The youngest quintuplet's neck begins to sag, so her gaze gradually drops more and more the longer she finds herself talking.

"In the beginning, I believed that so long as I tried my best, I tried my hardest, my test scores would reflect my efforts. So long as I put in my very best effort into studying, I could improve my scores and thus my grades all on my own - and therefore be able to reject Uesugi-kun's tutelage because I would have no need for it. But as the weeks passed, and with our first midterms being next week, I am forced to see that mere effort is not enough; hard work alone is not enough. There is something that I am missing, or a problem that I have that I cannot identify and solve on my own, that is stopping me from achieving the same improvements that everyone else is showing. I realized this when I first saw everyone's scores slowly begin to improve noticeably, and I scrambled to try to figure out what it was that Uesugi-kun was doing right, what Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba were doing right that I was doing wrong, or simply not doing at all. I even contemplated spending one of their tutoring days listening in on them, similar to what you do, sitting with them at the dinner table while Uesugi-kun is here teaching, but again, my pride prevented me from doing even that. And so I remained in my room, continuing to study by myself, telling myself that I would surely also start improving too, that I would not be left behind, that I would not be outdone by my sisters who, before Uesugi-kun began to teach them, hardly ever studied on their own...well, with Miku as the one exception, perhaps..."

Nino notices Itsuki's hands on her lap curl up slowly but surely into fists.

"...but that has not been the case. I can accept Miku showing such improvement, because after me, she is the one who studies the most among the five of us. But Ichika and even Yotsuba...while my own test scores could still hold up better than theirs as of now, at this rate, I am not confident that that will remain so. So at this point in time, I am forced to accept that Uesugi-kun's tutoring, whatever it is about it, is providing the key to better grades that I lack and cannot find on my own...or at least, it is highly unlikely that I will be able to find it on my own at the rate that I am going."

"And how you rejected Uesugi not once, but twice is stopping you from joining everyone else, huh...?" Nino mumbles quietly.

Itsuki closes her eyes momentarily, tiredly. "I do not know what your first impressions of Uesugi-kun were, Nino, when we first met him. But I met him first out of us five during lunch at the beginning of the school year in the cafeteria, where I asked him if he was interested in tutoring me, and he accepted. At the time, I did not know that he was the very same tutor that Father hired to teach us, and so that meant that he knew who I was and did not tell me that he was that same tutor. So when we met him together in the house later that same day, I felt betrayed, because he intentionally did not tell me upfront that he was the tutor we were expecting later that day. Thinking back on it, I should not have been so judging of him - yes, his being in our house despite being a stranger to us was surprising and odd, but it appears that Father trusts him enough to have let him do something like that, and perhaps there were reasons of his own that he could not disclose to me his status of being our tutor during lunch that day. I do not know if I would have still accepted his tutelage, but thinking back on my behavior then...perhaps I could have chosen to act a bit differently..."

While Itsuki is briefly recounting the events of their first encounter with Uesugi Fuutarou, Nino uncomfortably dwells on it too in her own head. She might have punched him a bit _too _hard...

"I feel the same, too, about my meeting with him during our Golden Week vacation. I know I talked about this with everyone once before at dinner after we came back, but...I feel that it bears repeating: I was so taken back by his refusal that I did not think to try to convince him, to try to change his mind, and instead rejected him a second time. I scolded him for being stubborn, for being hard-headed, when in reality I was no different from him, by my own admission..."

"I mean, it's not like you had much of a choice there, back then."

"Perhaps not, but that does not make me feel like any less of a hypocrite. And after Golden Week, we have all been noticing Uesugi-kun showing up to class looking more and more haggard, more exhausted by his other work. And despite his constant sleeping in class, he still carries out his duties as class representative without fail, _and _he has not missed a single day of tutoring our sisters. I was loathe to admit this at first, I admit, mainly during the week immediately following our vacation. But the feelings I had towards him because of that second rejection I gave him could not last forever. I told him back then that the longer he goes without being able to teach me or you, the more money he will be losing out on because of the nature of his contract - what little we know of it, anyway, and his refusal to accept me as a student for the reasons I had at the time would only serve to cement his suboptimal situation. He told me that he would simply find other ways to make up for the loss that you and I present to him for his tutoring job - and seeing him as of late, even I can tell that...he did not say those things merely to sound tough, or...stubborn."

Itsuki's hands finally begin to relax on her lap, loosening from the tight fists that they have been for a while now. The room falls silent following her testimony until Nino breaks it in turn.

"Can you answer me this, then, Itsuki?"

"Hm? What is it?"

"Even ever since a month ago, when Uesugi first started tutoring, I figured that even though you'd refused to let him tutor you, eventually there'd come a point when you would join the others and study together. I figured that you, along with Miku, are the two of us who study a lot, so naturally, you'd recognize that it'd be in your best interest to start studying with someone like Uesugi, who's obviously pretty smart, as much as I hate admitting that. Am I wrong in thinking that would've been the case, even if it weren't for what happened tonight?"

"I...I do not...doubt that. At the rate at which I am going now, certainly, that sounds like it would have been an inevitability."

"Even with Uesugi's whole family situation and stuff aside, right? Just looking at it from the perspective of our own grades?"

Itsuki nods, albeit slowly, confirming Nino's deepest-rooted fear. The fear of being left behind...the fear of being stuck in the past...the fear of accepting change...

Noticing Nino sink her face back down into the back of her stuffed bunny's neck, Itsuki slowly gets up from her sister's chair and seats herself next to her older sister...

...and gently puts an arm around Nino's shoulders to pull her in close.

"...what's this all about?" Nino mutters softly, still with her face glued to the back of her stuffed bunny's neck.

"You do not need to hide it from me."

"Hide what, exactly?"

"You are acting this way because of the promise you made to us six years ago, no?"

"How do _you _know?"

"What else could it be?" Itsuki rests her head softly next to Nino's. "We might all know about the promise you made to us back then...but I have always been your confidant. I know you just a little bit better than everyone else, even despite all the times when we may have our differences in preference or opinion..."

"Just a reminder that we aren't telepathically linked or whatever."

"I am well aware. But for some things, we do not need telepathy to know what we are thinking."

The two sisters remain like this for some time, time that the clock on Nino's bed cannot track.

"...aren't I supposed to be doing this? I'm the older one, you know," Nino says finally, dragging her face off her stuffed animal.

"Perhaps so, but I was always the one you went to whenever you felt angry about something. That is why I did this, because I figured...just for old time's sake..."

"...hmph. Old time's sake..." Nino repeats pensively after her younger sister. "Then...for old time's sake...why don't you spend the night here...?"

"E-Eh!? W-Well - " Itsuki pulls away from her older sister for a moment, blushing a little from the embarrassment. "Aren't we...are we not a bit too old for that now...?"

But Nino, seizing this opportunity, leans in closer to Itsuki with a devious smile. "You said for old time's sake, right...?" she pressures her youngest sister. "Surely you won't back out of this, would you...?"

Groaning a little, Itsuki turns around to grab a plush animal doll that's just as big as Nino's, but it's a kangaroo sporting a pair of shades and a big red hoodie jacket of its own with the word "BROOKLYN" across the from in big black letters. "Some things you just need to grow out of, Nino!" she pouts.

"Then wake up on your own in the morning, so that I don't have to wake you up for you from now on!" Nino counters.

"So _that _is why you want me to spend the night with you?! Simply so that you can wake me up at the same time as you do?!"

Nino clicks her tongue in disappointment. "Shit, I've been found out...! But even still...!" Itsuki spies a devious glint in Nino's eyes as the latter turns back to her anyway and chants, "You won't get away, you meat bun monster!" right before she tosses her big stuffed bunny aside and dives onto her younger sister.

"Meat bun - !? E-Eeeeek! Nino, Ninoooo, wait, stop, stop, stooooooaaahahahahaha ~ !"


	29. Mydriasis

"I've been meaning to ask, but...just what were you two doing last night...?"

Now arriving at school the next day, the quintuplets, still yawning and stretching their arms as they head onto campus almost exactly half an hour before their first class of the day starts, greet their schoolmates who tell him good morning as they pass. Even almost two months into the school year, the quintuplets find that their schoolmates still find the sight of the five of them walking around school all together like this fascinating and can't help but remark about them as they pass.

"People still look at us like we're some kinda walking zoo exhibit, huh?" Nino scowls after a pair of boys who are the last to pass them, walking in a different direction towards their own homerooms while debating which one of the quintuplets is the best among them.

"Just ignore them, Nino...it is not as if we have not been through this before at our old school," Itsuki sighs, putting a hand on Nino's shoulder just in case the latter decides to stomp off after the boys to give them a thorough berating. "And sorry about last night, Miku, I wanted to talk to Nino for a moment, and...well..."

"It went on for longer than it _should_ have, that's for sure. So much for it being just a short talk, huh?" Nino puts her knuckles on top of Itsuki's head, squishing her ahoge in the process while giving her a good knuckle rub and causing her to yelp a little.

"Yeah...maybe it keep it shorter next time...or at least keep it down," Miku mumbles. Given the brooding and almost detesting look in her eyes, it's clear that she isn't pleased with the commotion that her sisters were causing in the next room over.

"Nino and Itsuki hanging out together, huh. That sure sounds nostalgic, doesn't it?" Ichika smiles over at the two of them. "I remember when we were younger, you two would always stick together whenever the rest of us weren't around for some reason..."

"What were you two talking about? It _has _been a while since we saw the two of you together at all, now that I think about it," Yotsuba asks curiously.

"N-Nothing! Nothing much..." Itsuki begins to say quickly, hesitant to explicitly reveal the contents of what she and Nino were talking about the previous night, but Nino has different ideas.

"We were talking about what we thought about Uesugi teaching us. After all - "

"Wait wait wait, Nino, must - must you tell everything about...?" Itsuki interrupts her sister quickly.

Nino scowls back at Itsuki this time. "Aren't _you _supposed to be the smart one after Miku? Think about it - now that Ichika's made us promise to study with Uesugi, naturally he's gonna ask us what got us to change our minds. He's not just gonna take Ichika's word for it since he knows how she acts a lot of the time; he's gonna wanna hear it straight from us. It's something everyone's gonna hear about anyway at some point. So we might as well get it out of the way now and embarrass ourselves here rather than embarrass ourselves both in front of everyone here _and _Uesugi on top of that."

"Wowie ~ Nino sure knows a lot about how Fuutarou-kun behaves, huh ~ " Ichika coos with a hand over her lips. "All that time you've spent with us downstairs listening to us study with him sure is paying off, isn't it ~ "

"Sh-Shut it, Ichika! I can't help that when I'm always downstairs with you guys!"

"But you could be like Itsuki-chan and just stay in your room if you don't like it ~ "

"I have to be down there to make sure that Uesugi doesn't try anything funny when I'm not looking!"

"Still with that excuse, Nino...?" Miku sighs off to the side.

"Don't you start with me too, Miku! All of you, just let me answer Yotsuba properly first!" Nino frowns at the rest of her sisters excluding Itsuki. "Like I was saying, we were discussing what we thought about Uesugi teaching us for the reason I mentioned: we need to have something to say to him to explain ourselves so that it doesn't seem like we're letting him tutor us because we _want _him to."

"So what did you come up with, then?" Ichika asks, still with that teasing smile on her face that Nino is completely conscious of.

"Well, obviously _you _forced me into this," Nino snaps back while tussling her hair indignantly. "Itsuki has a better reason than me, though, admittedly."

"U-Um, well..." Again finding that Nino is shoving her against her will into the spotlight, Itsuki nonetheless gathers her thoughts to convey them properly. "It turns out that...my own self-studying has proven inadequate. I have been keeping track of the test scores that the three of you have been getting from taking the occasional mock tests that Uesugi-kun has been administering every so often and comparing them to my own progress...only to find that the three of you have indeed been making noticeable improvements in your scores, while I have been...stagnant, to say the least."

"Oooh, so that's why you wanted to see the mock tests that Uesugi-san was giving us!" Yotsuba nods sagely like a lightbulb's just gone off above her head as she connects the dots on her own.

"She asked you for those tests? Since when?" Miku asks, completely oblivious to Itsuki's string-pulling with Yotsuba behind her back.

"Uh, I think it was about a week and a half ago? It was right after Golden Week, I know that for sure," Yotsuba answers while counting her fingers to try to pinpoint exactly when.

"So you asked Yotsuba for Uesugi-kun's tests because she's the one who wouldn't tell anyone else that you were doing that, huh? Crafty, Itsuki, I like it," Ichika giggles.

"I-I did not mean to try to deceive anyone! I just knew that asking you or Miku would have been a bad idea because both of you would have known what I was up to!" Itsuki defends herself pleadingly.

"Well, if you're at the point where you felt the need to take the same tests that Fuutarou was making for us just to see how you stack up against the scores we get, you might as well start studying with us from now on..." Miku sighs.

"And...well...that leads me to what I was going to say, what I told Nino last night: I have been forced to accept that maybe...maybe I really do need a tutor after all. And Uesugi-kun happens to be tutoring the three of you already, so..."

"Awww, don't make it seem like you didn't wanna join because of Uesugi-san!" Yotsuba laughs, throwing her arms around an embarrassed Itsuki.

"I-I still do not! I am still the same as Nino, I am merely joining you all because after some self-reflection, I have decided that for the sake of my midterm grades, it is to my, advantage to study with everyone!"

"Then we'll do everything we can to make sure everyone _stays _studying together! Right, Miku? Ichika?" Yotsuba turns to her fellow sisters who are part of the Uesugi Study Club.

"That's right! Once you're part of the sisterhood, there's no escaping it! _No__t without consequence, that is ~ " _Ichika murmurs scarily, a dark shadow being cast over her eyes as she tilts her head menacingly towards Nino and Itsuki, the latter of whom uses this opportunity to break free of Yotsuba's grasp to cower on the other side of Nino.

"N-Ninooooo, Ichika has a really scary look on her faaaaace!" she cries, peeking out from around Nino only to find Ichika still leering at her and ducking back behind Nino again.

The five Nakano girls finally arrive at their homeroom, stepping inside to take their seats. Miku and Yotsuba, in particular, are conservatively eager to find their tutor dozing as usual at his seat in the middle of the classroom -

Uesugi Fuutarou's seat is empty.

Being the first one among her sisters to enter the classroom, Yotsuba stares at the empty desk, blinking at it and scanning it over and over with her confused blue eyes to make sure she's not seeing wrong. No bag, no Uesugi Fuutarou. Her classmate and tutor is very assuredly not present.

"...huh...? Wait, Uesugi-san's not here..." she says aloud quietly as the rest of her sisters file in past her. Miku, realizing that Yotsuba is telling the truth, also develops a worried look in her eyes, but Ichika pats both of them on their shoulders reassuringly.

"He's probably just taking a break. Think about it, he doesn't really have much invested in school, right? So he's probably catching up on some much-needed rest right about now," she says calmly. "It's better for him to rest at home rather than at school."

Leaving her sisters with that, Ichika joins Nino and Itsuki at their seats at the back of the classroom - but both Miku and Yotsuba remain at the door of the classroom, still with their blue eyes fixated on Fuutarou's hauntingly empty seat.

"...Yotsuba, call me weird, but..." Miku swallows a bit of her saliva back, "...after seeing Fuutarou in his seat every morning like before...him not being here is...weird, isn't it...?"

"Miku, you just said 'weird' twice. I just thought I'd...let you know that," Yotsuba mutters back.

"I know. It was...on purpose."

"Liar."

"I'm not lying about that."

Miku sighs a little. "Maybe Ichika's right, then...we're probably just dwelling on it too much - "

"Are we, though?"

Yotsuba's doubt stops Miku in her tracks as the latter is just about to begin walking over to her own seat.

"You can call _me _weird for thinking about this too hard, Miku. But...if you really think about it, right..." Yotsuba's eyes are still fixed on Fuutarou's lonely desk. "...Uesugi-san...doesn't seem like the kind of person who would take a break just because he should...does he?"

Staring at her younger sister for a second, Miku then creaks her neck back over in the direction of their tutor's seat in their homeroom. The sight of it, coupled with her knowledge of the text that Ichika sent Fuutarou the night before once Nino and Itsuki both agreed to come study with them the next time Fuutarou came by to tutor, once again reseeds worrying doubt into her mind.

"...no, you're not weird for thinking that," Miku whispers shortly. "Because...that's exactly the kind of person he is."

As if right on cue, the door behind them opens abruptly, causing both Miku and Yotsuba to jump, and then spin around, both hoping that the door opened because of -

"Um, are the Nakano quintuplets here yet - ah, of course, here you all are," their homeroom teacher whom Fuutarou has called a bald rat before steps into the room carrying a short stack of Japanese History study guides for their midterms next week. "Or, two of you, anyway. Uesugi's father called the school earlier this morning and informed us that he will not be attending school today...as if him being here made any difference whatsoever..."

Miku's cold blue eyes fix themselves onto her homeroom teacher's smirking face as he clears his throat, realizing that he's speaking ill of a student who isn't even here.

"His father informed me that you girls seem to have close ties with him, so I will have to ask one of you girls to hand these study guides to him so that he may distribute them to the class properly at some point before the week is out."

"Oh, if it's just handing them out to the class, I can handle that!" Yotsuba says cheerily, offering to take the study guides from their teacher. "I think I know just about everyone in class by this point, so it'll be no biggie!"

"I see. But must you handle this responsibility yourself? Why not let the _class representative _carry out what should be _his _duties?" the teacher scoffs.

It is by now that Yotsuba, as if sensing the murderous intent leaking from the quintuplet sister next to her, quickly glances to her left to find Miku's hands already balled into fists down by her sides and her frozen blue eyes staring lifelessly back up at their bald homeroom teacher.

Yotsuba isn't one to normally notice fine details, but her sisters are a different story. She's never seen Miku's eyes, specifically her pupils, dilated so much before. It's to the point where her blue eyes are thin rings circling empty black disks.

Why is there a pair of faint blue rings inside her dilated pupils?

Why does it feel like Miku is about to -

Before Yotsuba can stop Miku herself, someone else does that job for her. Seizing Miku's left shoulder firmly, Nino, having reached Miku faster than Yotsuba despite being all the way across the classroom, glares with narrowed eyes into Miku's icy ones as the latter turns to see who's stopped her.

"I don't know what you were about to do, but knock it off," Nino whispers quickly.

To reinforce her command, Nino forcibly turns Miku around and pulls her along back to their desks as their classmates who are also in the classroom waiting for homeroom to begin and their homeroom teacher stare after them.

"Mmm...some family trouble, perhaps? I suggest you girls handle that outside of class, otherwise I will have Takeda help you sort it out if you cannot," the homeroom teacher warns Yotsuba, since she's still left behind. "Everyone else, please get ready for homeroom, I will be right back..."

So Yotsuba takes the stack of study guides and begins distributing them silently to her classmates who are present, and once she's done with that, she rejoins the rest of her sisters at the back of the class. Miku is sitting at her desk with her face buried in her arms on the desktop, while Itsuki looks on with a mix of confusion and concern at what Nino just did. Ichika seems to be acting aloof as she normally would during class.

"Nino...what just...?" Yotsuba begins to ask as she walks by Nino's desk, but the second quintuplet responds quickly to talk over her.

"Nothing. Miku's just tired because of me and Itsuki being up late chatting, that's all."

Yotsuba looks around at her sisters one more time, gauging their behaviors before sighing heavily to herself. It appears that Uesugi will be absent entirely from class today, and now her sisters are acting quite strange...she hopes that all this is just one big unfortunate coincidence.

* * *

"Miku! Miku, hold up! I need to talk to you!"

The third quintuplet in question stops and turns around to find her immediate older sister, Nino, hurrying after her just as the former is about to step out of the shoe locker room and onto the rest of campus.

"...didn't you say that you were going to go hang out with your friends after school today?" Miku questions Nino back as the latter approaches her and changes her shoes for her outdoor ones at her own locker.

"I _was_ going to, yeah," Nino says quickly. "By the way, what about everyone else?"

"Ichika's gone straight to her part-time; apparently she's got a ride over there today. Yotsuba's doing the usual, going around helping out some of the clubs she knows. And Itsuki's in the library right now, studying on her own." Miku narrows her eyes at Nino once she puts on her outdoor shoes and stands back up straight. "But don't dodge the question."

"What do you mean? I didn't dodge it, I answered you, didn't I? I said I _was _going to."

"But?"

"But I told them that I had something come up."

"So that you could do what, exactly?"

Nino suddenly snarls at her younger sister. "Bitch, I don't need your attitude right now. C'mon, we'll talk as we go."

Taking her sister by her shoulder, Nino almost drags Miku along with her as the two of them exit the lockers and begin heading home.

"...if this is about what happened this morning..." Miku starts, but not for long.

"This is _exactly _about what happened this morning. What the hell else would I want to talk to you about?" Nino hisses.

"Is it really _that _important where you'd even ditch your friends just to talk to me about it?"

Stopping on a dime at the top of the stairs that leads down to the street in the direction of their home, the second quintuplet glares straight into Miku's cold blue eyes. Miku is used to Nino confronting her face-to-face like this - but this time, something feels different...just like how something felt different about herself that same morning.

"Yes, Miku, it is," Nino answers directly. "I think it's _very _important."

Letting go of her sister, Nino rapidly descends the stairs, leading the way to the streetlight where she can hit the pedestrian crossing button to cross the street, and Miku follows shortly thereafter to rejoin her sister waiting at the crosswalk.

"So? Care to explain yourself, then?" Miku snaps at her older sister, whose gaze is fixed dead ahead.

"This morning, before homeroom...you wanted to do something to our homeroom teacher, didn't you?" Nino mutters darkly.

At first, Miku does not answer. She doesn't answer, in fact, until they've crossed the street and continue their way on the sidewalk.

"...always talking shit about Fuutarou..." Miku begins to whisper under her breath, so that only Nino can hear. "Insulting him all the time, talking like he knows what Fuutarou's going through...he's got it coming to him eventually..."

"First off, you should knock that off. I don't know what you want to do, but whatever it is, snap out of that shit right now," Nino growls firmly. "This isn't you. I don't know what's made you this way - "

Glancing to her right to notice a narrow alleyway that they're passing, Miku, with unprecedented strength that Nino has never seen her use before, seizes Nino by the scruff of her white dress shirt and pulls her deep into the alley, where they are unlikely to be seen by passersby out on the sidewalk. Nino's school bag that has her phone riding the sides of the notebooks and folders inside is knocked out because of the force that Miku uses to seize Nino and pull her aside, and the bunny-sleeved phone clatters noisily onto the ground.

"M-My phone! Miku, wait, what are you - " Nino tries to say, but Miku isn't having any of it.

Slamming her older sister against the wall, Miku keeps her pinned there. Nino, already taken back by Miku's hidden, vicious strength, gasps with pain as she's shoved against the wall, grasping at the back of her head where it's made contact with the wall behind her.

**"This isn't me? Nino, look into my eyes right now, and tell me what you see,"** Miku whispers lifelessly. **"And once you do, try to tell me that this isn't me. _I dare you."_**

Without much else of a choice, Nino peers back into Miku's eyes with squinted eyes of her own.

Curtained partially behind Miku's long bangs, the dilated eyes are back with a vengeance - and once again, the faint blue rings in her wickedly expanded black pupils are in play, drilling straight through Nino's contact lenses and into her own eyes.

Before Nino has time to process what she sees in Miku's eyes, however, the moment that their two pairs of eyes meet - the heat returns, with an even fiercer vengeance.

Inhaling sharply, the second quintuplet slaps her free left hand against her eyes and buckles as the searing pain in her eyes rebounds, as though melting her eyeballs from the inside out. As soon as Nino's heat pain resurges, Miku's own eyes begin to throb, though without pain, and on reflex, she, too, covers her own eyes in confusion as to what's going on. Nino leans against the wall and begins to slump slowly downwards, finally resting her behind on the ground as her own school bag bumps against the ground next to her.

Realizing that she isn't feeling the same pain as her sister is, Miku, immediately snapping out of her own murderous state and subconsciously having her eyes revert to normal, drops to her knees to try to figure out what's going on, though of course she has no idea where to start.

"N-Nino, what's...going on...!? Is this happening because of - "

But Nino, in her pain-driven frustration and anger that's also rebounded with the burning sensation in both of her eyes, suddenly throws out her right hand, whose palm connects with Miku's face and pushes her violently away. Not expecting Nino to lash out like this, Miku yelps as she, too, is pushed over and lands on her butt on the ground in this narrow alley.

"Not - right - now - !" Nino gasps in a soft but horribly strained voice, a voice that Miku has never heard Nino make before. It serves to heighten Miku's gradually accruing sense of fear that first began when she realized that Nino's pain right now could only be because of her, whatever it was that she did to her own sister, and as much as Miku wants to do something to help her sister, she has no idea how. So she is forced to sit on the ground, watching Nino clutch at her eyes painfully, unable to do anything but wait out the pain until it can subside to at least tolerable levels.

After about two minutes, which feel more like two centuries, Nino finally is able to pull her hand off her eyes. Her erratic, panicked breathing has also returned to normal, though she is left covered in sweat that she's worked up during the relapse. However, she keeps her eyes closed as she pulls out a handkerchief from her skirt pocket and begins to wipe away the sweat on her brow first.

Watching her sister begin to clean her own sweat, Miku remains sitting in front of Nino, her mouth slightly agape still from the nerve-racking uncertainty of the situation that the two of them were suddenly thrust into, admittedly probably by her initiation.

"...are you...okay...?" Miku gulps nervously, "...Nino?"

Gnashing her teeth quietly back at her younger sister, Nino covers her right eye with her left hand while her right hand rises up to her eye, blocking the eye from Miku's view for the moment.

"Am I okay? Am I **_fucking _**okay?" she repeats in furious disbelief after Miku, who cowers a little, both in fear and guilt at what she's done in her own simmering anger. When Nino lowers her hand, Miku looks back up, but what she sees compels her to gasp a little before she clasps her own hands over her mouth. _**"Does it look like I'm fucking okay to you, Miku?"**_

In sharp contrast to Nino's regular blue eye, the one that the quintuplets all share and love, Nino's right eye is a deep, cosmic purple. Unlike Miku's eye whose pupils were dilated jarringly, Nino's iris has simply been recolored to its majestic, vibrant purple, with the black pupil it houses remaining its normal size - but it does radiate with a small blue ring around its outline which now acts as the border between the black and purple - not unlike the blue ring that appeared in Miku's eyes. And on Nino's right index finger is the contact lens she's pulled out from her right eye to show Miku what has happened.

With her sister's eye exposed like this, Miku's eyes that gaze directly into it begin to throb noticeably again, though again, the throbbing does not come with pain of their own. But it is uncomfortable enough to the point where Miku still does have to avert her own eyes to get her eyes to stop pulsing like this. While Miku is nervously waiting for the throbbing in her eyes to subside, Nino takes the liberty of removing the other contact lens from her left eye too, and reaching into her bag, she finds and pulls out her contact lenses' kit so that she can put the lenses safely away. She doesn't know if she should take off her contacts or leave them in in an event like this, as this is only the second time ever that she's had an incident with her eyes like this, but just in case, she figures she should remove her lenses in case something might happen to them, though she has to operate off pure gut instinct here. Regardless, it's a good thing she decided to start packing the kit with her ever since that first incident...

"...Nino...what's...what's going on with us...? What's happening to us...?" Miku whispers. Nino can hear her younger sister's voice begin to crack, like the first crack made in a mirror that will soon bring it all down. Hearing this drains much of the anger she was harboring towards her, though it doesn't quite drain all of the sharp irritation that she still feels towards her.

"Your guess's as good as mine. Probably better, in fact," Nino sighs shortly, still slumped against the alley wall with her sister while continuing to wipe sweat from her forehead and scalp. _"You _were the one who acted like that first this morning towards our homeroom teacher, didn't you?"

Miku raises her eyes again, and once again the sisters' eyes meet. Stimulated in return by Nino's strange eye, Miku's eyes have relapsed, the pupils dilated and the blue rings floating within their black voids. The throbbing begins anew, but Miku forces herself to deal with it so that they can try to restart their botched conversation.

"...so...you have them too," Miku croaks weakly. "These...weird eyes..."

"I only just found out about them recently. Two Saturday nights ago...or Sunday mornings, whichever you wanna call it," Nino mutters darkly, trying to get used to her blurry vision that renders her effectively blind - except for two objects floating before her that she can see with utmost clarity, like two clean spots on an otherwise dirty and smeared car windshield. "Same thing happened in the middle of the night. It woke me up, and...all of a sudden, before I knew it, my eyes felt like they were on fire...like someone was roasting them from the inside out...God, it fucking hurt..."

Nino grimaces, remembering the aching pain both from the first incident and mere moments ago. Though, to Nino's surprise, the aftershock pain that she felt the first time around is pleasantly absent this time around, and it didn't feel like the pain this time felt anywhere near as long as the first time...though Nino keeps her guard up lest she be lulled into a false sense of security about the strange nature of her eyes.

Listening to Nino's testimony, Miku feels her eyes widen. "...so...that also happens to you?"

"What part?"

"Your eyes, um, waking you up in the middle of the night..."

"I don't know, I'm saying that's what happened the first time, but this time, I guess whatever your eyes are, they triggered that same reaction out of mine, and so all this happened..." Nino squints back at Miku, in part due to her terrible eyesight at the moment where all she can really see is a strange purple haze and two crystal-clear circles of white, black, and blue before her. It's an eerie sight, a hellish sight, even, but Nino can deal with it surprisingly well, much to her relief. Then again, maybe the pain just now was so bad that her senses have been dulled to most everything else for the time being. "You sound like this's happened to you before."

Miku blinks slowly back at Nino for a few moments...and then raises her chin to look up at the sliver of the sky peeking down at them from above, in between the buildings on either side of their current alleyway.

"It started two and a half years ago."

"T-Two and a half _years_..." Nino inhales sharply through her teeth the moment she hears this amount of time. "Holy fucking shit, Miku...you've been dealing with those for all this time...?"

Miku nods slowly still. "Do you remember...the time when I had to go to the hospital during middle school?"

Recalling this, Nino presses down even harder on her already clenched teeth. "Yeah...how could I forget? That day when those assholes did that to you...they're still out there, too, one of these days I'll find 'em and fucking beat their heads in..."

"Don't bother; we've transferred schools, so I doubt we'll run into them ever again. You know them..." Miku exhales carefully, trying her best to deal with the throbbing in her own eyes. "But that's when it started, once I got out of the hospital. I've kept it secret from everyone for all this time..."

Nino wants so badly to ask Miku why she's kept her eyes a secret, but she knows she cannot, lest she put herself at risk of being exposed as a bit of a hypocrite herself with how she was planning on keeping her own eyes a secret from her sisters.

"I guess...something like this would've happened eventually," Miku continues quietly. "I had a feeling I wouldn't be able to keep this a secret from the rest of you forever. I just...could've never guessed that...it would've gone down like this..."

"Yeah, you're telling me. All this time, the two of us've been running around with these weird eyes that, well, at least I had no idea about until literally two weekends ago."

Nino pulls her head off the wall behind her to lean forward a little.

"But still, why's something like this gotta happen to me? I'm not the one who reads manga and plays games like you or Yotsuba," Nino snorts under her breath at the irony of her situation. "Isn't this kind of thing what otakus like you always dream of having happen or something like that?"

"But how would you know?" Miku challenges.

"I don't, that's why I'm asking you."

"...I'll be honest, that never really crossed my mind..."

"I guess it wouldn't, huh." Nino cups her hand over her eyes, shaking her head a little in the process.

"Do your eyes still hurt?" Miku asks, somewhat in alarm.

"No, I'm fine, they're fine. For now, at least. Do you have shit that happens to you in the middle of the night, kinda like what I described earlier, where mine woke me up in the middle of the night and bothered the hell out of me?"

Miku nods slightly, and while Nino can't see her head nod, the eyes that she _can _see do, and so she can infer the head nod that way.

"Mine wake me up in the middle of the night. At 3 in the morning, every time it happens."

"Ah...so that's why...on some days when we go to school, you'd randomly be all sleepy and tired..."

"Right, because...I wake up in the middle of the night, and...it can take me a while to go back to sleep...though I've gotten a bit better at getting used to it. My eyes too, they...don't feel like they're burning. In fact, it's not my eyes that hurt - it's my head that hurts, and I get something like sleep paralysis whenever it happens; I can't move at all. And...the worst part is..."

Nino stays silent, listening carefully to her sister talk. Now that her vision is mostly blocked, she's forced to rely much more on her other senses.

"...after my head hurts, my eyes force me to see some kind of...weird ocean. And...try not to freak out about this..."

"Freak out? What could freak me out more than what's already - "

"That ocean...is made of blood."

Nino is instantly silenced.

"...please say that you were just joking about that last part," she smiles with a cold sweat running down her scalp.

"I'm not. I find myself looking at a sea full of blood, underneath a black sky. And there's...nothing else in sight."

"...wait, so...it's...it's like a vision you see?"

"Yeah. My eyes force me to see it for a little bit...I've never had a choice about it. I stay stuck there for a little bit, and then - and then I return back to my room."

Shuddering a little, Nino feels quietly grateful that she didn't end up with Miku's fate. While she isn't scared of open blood like she is of sharp needles, or at least not to the same extent that Itsuki is, she still wouldn't be exactly comfortable if there's enough blood spilled before her. She could probably pass that off as a normal reaction, though, since it's not as if normal people see large quantities of open blood on a daily basis unless you work at a hospital or blood bank or something, but either way, she would rather not have to see what Miku sees, whatever it is that's going on with her.

"What exactly do you mean, by, uh...'return back to your room'?"

Miku pulls up her knees into her chest, as she is prone do to whenever she begins talking about a serious topic or something that she isn't entirely comfortable with discussing.

"Every time that happens, I get this...weird feeling that I'm...I'm...separated from reality. I don't know how else to put it...and I don't expect you to get what I'm trying to say..."

"Okay, I get that you think of me as too much of a real lifer and that maybe abstract stuff like that isn't exactly my strong point, but c'mon, things are weird enough already that stuff like that's bound to come up, right?"

"Mm...I guess you're right. But that's how it is...until that, that..._vision _goes away...it's like I'm in another world. Even my room doesn't feel like my own room until it's over."

"So, it's an out-of-body experience. Or maybe more like a lucid dream?"

"I didn't know you were a psychiatrist, Nino."

"Oh, c'mon, don't give me that. I know a lot of people, y'know? And people all have their own problems and such; I used to know a few people back at Black Rose who had sleep issues, and we used to talk about stuff like that."

Listening to Nino, Miku debates silently to herself if she should go into further detail about her situation, but she decides against it and asks her sister instead,

"What about you? What's happened so far with...your eyes?"

"I mean, I've already said everything that's been going on on my end. It started two Saturdays ago, after I tried kicking Uesugi out of the house for walking in on me after I got out of the bath...my eyes start burning like hell, and it hurts like a fucking bitch, and I can't do anything about it until it goes away on its own, kinda like you, I suppose..." Nino rubs her eyes a bit, on the off-chance that maybe doing so will correct her vision as she feels terribly defenseless and vulnerable not being able to see anything while outside the house, but the only things she can see clearly are still the eyes of her sister. Yeah, she'll probably be having nightmares about this tonight...

"Speaking of Fuutarou...he's a mage, right? Do you think maybe he can...help us with this? At least be able to explain to us what's going on?" Miku suggests.

"Hell if I know! _You _can ask him if you want, but I don't want to."

"Well, why not...? This is obviously a huge problem, isn't it?"

"It only is if we make it out to be one. Uesugi's already involved enough as it is with our family; we don't need him butting in on _this _now."

"But this is something he _should _be involved in, out of everything! I can understand you not wanting him to be around for his tutoring stuff, but - "

Using her ability to see Miku's approximate location with the clarity of her eyes, Nino lurches forward and grabs control of her shoulders to pull her towards herself so that their faces stop inches from one another.

"Miku, listen to me. We aren't normal - the fact that there's something wrong with our eyes says as much. Neither of us know anything about magic, or magecraft, or - or whatever, but we very well may be the same thing that Uesugi is and we never even knew. Mama never told us when she was still around, Grandpa didn't tell us, and Papa certainly never told us either."

Miku narrows her eyes back at Nino's; the throbbing has luckily subsided for now, but who knows when it'll come back. Why is it that when Nino draws close to her like this that the throbbing goes away?

"Nino...what are you saying?"

At first opening her mouth to speak, Nino hesitates and pulls away, also taking her right hand off her sister's shoulder to gesticulate with it.

"I don't know yet myself, I'll admit," she finally says, "but my hunch tells me that...we've been left in the dark for all this time on purpose. Somebody in our family, or at least someone close to us, at some point, deliberately made it so that none of us knew the truth about ourselves. And it's not just the two of us we need to worry about, because if this can happen to us, this shit can happen to the rest of us, and we just don't know it yet. Hell, maybe it could've already happened to the others, and they're trying to hide it from us like both of us were!"

"But you don't know that."

"Don't know what, exactly? Which part?"

"The part where someone's been trying to hide this from us. The reason why my eyes started acting up was because of what happened to me back in middle school two and half years ago."

"Okay, so yours happened because of a traumatic event, I guess. But what about me, then? I didn't need to get hospitalized to have this happen to me, and it just happened on its own! How do you explain _that?"_ Nino waits for Miku to answer her this question, which she naturally cannot, so she continues. "Think about it, Miku, just hear me out here. A month and a half ago, we didn't even know Uesugi; he wasn't a part of our lives at all. All of a sudden, we transfer into _his _school, Papa hires _him_ to be _our _tutor, we get attacked by those thugs of that one guy I knew for years and _he _comes in to bail us out of it, and now this. On top of all that, we know Uesugi's keeping an eye on us everywhere we go because he's said it himself. Don't you think all this is just...just _way too _convenient?"

Miku's mutated eyes widen at first, now that Nino is putting things into perspective, but they narrow quickly again in staunch resistance.

"You're saying that Fuutarou's the one at fault here?" she challenges darkly.

"It _has _to be! Who else could it be? And it all makes sense, too!" Nino pulls away from her sister to spread her arms out wide in emphasis. "The way I'm seeing it, Uesugi got all cozy with Papa and convinced him to hire him as our tutor so that he can get close to us, and he's using the tutoring gig as his alibi while he waits and bides his time for something to happen to us so that he can take advantage of us at the right moment. He even tried doing that two weeks ago, you know! When he walked back into the house when I just got out of the bath! He must've known somehow that I can't see without my contacts, and he probably used the excuse of leaving his wallet and phone back at the house so he could come back in!"

"But why would he go after you? You and Itsuki don't get along with him at all. If he came after me or Yotsuba or Ichika - "

"Because he must've known somehow that my eyes would start acting up! Remember what I said, about how my eyes first started hurting the _same night? _And not only that, he came into my room the next weekend, last Sunday morning! Thank God I woke up just in time before he could do anything, and you know what he was doing? He had his hand reaching out to me! At my face, no less!"

"You're probably just exaggerating - "

_"I'm not exaggerating, though! _He really did that! You can doubt me all you want, but I swear that's what he did! Why else do you think I screamed that loudly when it happened?!"

"You'd scream that loudly regardless of what he was doing, so long as he was in your room."

Nino cringes a little at the truth of Miku's words.

"A-Anyways, that aside, he's trying to do something to us, I'm sure of it, now that I know you've been having this..._issue _with your eyes, and for all this time, too. And he's starting with _me _because I'm the one who gives him the most shit, so he'll take his anger out on me first."

But Miku still isn't convinced by her sister's bravado. "I still don't buy it. If Fuutarou really is up to no good like you think he is, he's had plenty of time and plenty of opportunities to carry out his agenda. Papa even gave him a copy of our house card so that he can let himself in anytime he wants, at least until he gave it to you that one Saturday night when you accidentally locked yourself out."

"And I'm saying, he's biding his time! He's waiting for the right moment!"

"And when's that going to come, exactly?"

"You're asking me? How the hell should I know? I'm just saying that's what he's doing! Surely!" Nino raises a matter-of-fact finger next to her own face. "Remember what he told us at home, when he brought us back from that warehouse? When he was telling us who he really was and a bit about himself as a mage? Mages are selfish and self-serving, and Uesugi even said the same about himself because he said he's basically a mercenary, a mage-for-hire. What if he's after our eyes? Or maybe some kind of power that we have that we don't know we have yet but he does?"

"But Fuutarou isn't that type of guy! Why would he - "

Nino stabs a finger in Miku's direction, and her fingertip ends mere centimeters away from the latter's nose.

"You're too naive - you don't know how shitty people can get yet. While I get that you wouldn't get it, seeing how you've always secluded yourself away from other people, trust me on this, Miku - being around lots of people, even if it's just at school or around the city, I know how people can be sometimes," Nino declares. "You might feel a certain type of way for Uesugi; it's obvious to all of us, with how much you've opened up to him over the weeks that we've known him, so you want to trust him. But I don't - what's to say that he isn't also being paid off to do something to us later on down the road? How do we know for sure that he isn't using his tutoring as an excuse to get close to us for some ulterior motive?"

Unwilling to buy Nino's arguments but unable to refute them either, Miku stays silent, processing everything that has been said thus far.

"Then...what should we do? Is there something...we _can _do?" she asks slowly.

Nino hesitates too, for all the accusations she's made. "I don't know yet either, I'll be honest," she admits with a frustrated sigh, "but you can't blame me for not knowing what to do either because...how the hell were we supposed to expect something like this happening."

"For starters, then, we should decide on whether or not we want to keep this between the two of us, or if this is something we should tell everyone else," Miku suggests. "What do you think? You're the one who usually makes the most sensible decisions when it comes to things like this."

Remembering her own eye pain, Nino purses her lips briefly again. "Let's keep this on the down-low for now. While the others very well could have experienced something like what we've done through on their own, the fact of the matter is that this is the first time, at least to us, that we've known about someone else among us having the same issue. I can see Ichika keeping something like this to herself, but Yotsuba and Itsuki, no way - both of them would come crying to one of us if something were to ever happen to them. But on the chance that this problem is just limited to the two of us, I want this to stay contained to the both of us. We don't need to bother them with something like this."

Miku smirks suddenly. "Don't take this the wrong way, Nino, but...it's kind of weird hearing you wanting to keep a problem to yourself when you'll speak your mind whenever you want with us."

"Oh c'mon, don't give me that. Do you seriously think this's something I can just yap about to everyone else?"

"That's...that's true...but what if the others _have _gone through something like this on their own?"

"Then just like what happened between the two of us, we're probably bound to find out one day. And when we do, we can talk about it then with them. Until we know for sure that they've gone through the same thing, we shouldn't openly discuss this kind of thing with them because either they're going to get preoccupied with what's happening to us, or they'll just think we're going crazy or something. That's the gut feeling that I get about this whole matter."

"Fine. Then what about Fuutarou? How's this going to affect things? You and Itsuki already promised to study with us and Fuutarou, are you going to bail from this too?"

Nino frowns difficultly. "I'd fucking love to, but that'd be too suspicious; I always do whatever I say I'll do, so if I were to refuse to show up, Ichika'll know that something's up. So for now I don't have a choice but to play nice. By the way, we can't let Uesugi know that we've found out about these eyes that we have; if he's really up to something, then once we show him these eyes, we'll blow our cover. No way he _doesn't _react to these, that's for damn sure, and I refuse to believe otherwise. Like I said, we have to keep this between just the two of us until more stuff happens, and then we'll decide what to do from there."

Pausing and gazing back at her sister's eyes, Nino then suggests,

"Miku, I don't think you'll agree to this, but what do you think of failing your midterms intentionally?"

"And why the hell did you think I'd ever agree to that?" Miku spits back viciously.

"Yeah, figured. Because if we all fail our midterms, then Papa will lose faith in him as being a good tutor and will cut him from the job; that way we don't ever have to deal with him again, and we get rid of the chance that he's going to do something to us."

"Do you really think that just getting him to lose his job tutoring us alone's going to keep him away from us? Like you said before, he knows where we are at any time. And you were calling _me _the naive one?"

"W-Well, it'll expose him! If he's up to something and he loses his tutoring gig, he'll lose easy access to us and he'll start panicking!"

"And what about Fuutarou makes you think he's the type of person to panic if things don't go his way? You and Itsuki have been giving him a hard time all this time not letting him tutor you, and he hasn't panicked about that even once. You think that if he really was up to no good, stopping him from getting his way here and there's going to stop him completely or get him to start slipping up?"

Nino stubbornly shakes her head in denial. "I still don't buy it. I think he's got something to hide, and that he's playing you all. You, Ichika, and Yotsuba. And with what Itsuki talked to me about last night, she'll get the slip too."

"But why's it gotta be just Fuutarou? Open your mind, Nino, Fuutarou can't be the only one we should suspect."

"Who the hell else is there, though?"

"What about Papa? He's _never _spent any meaningful amount of time with us after Mama died."

At the mention of their father, Nino's eyes snap open, even though that won't help them see any more clearly.

"And as a matter of fact, he was noticeably younger than Mama was at the time they married, and it was obvious that Mama did that so that she could get us out of being poor before she died. And once she did, he went straight back to working all the time. How do we know _he's _not planning something either?" Miku's eyes once again begin to widen more and more as she rambles on. "What about Grandpa? He might be really old and frail, but we always knew he was a sharp man, a lot sharper than what his age gives off. He's also way stronger than he looks too, whenever he wants to be. We haven't known him for very long, obviously, but what's to say he's not doing something behind the scenes either?"

"But they're our _family!"_ Nino finally bursts out, unable to keep silent in disbelief any longer. "Yeah, Papa's never really around and it's always awkward around him whenever he is, but he's still our Papa, and he's always provided for us all these years! And don't you involve Grandpa in this, there's no way he's involved in all this! And besides, why the shit are you suspecting our own _family!? _This is your _Papa_ you're talking about, _our _Papa, _our _Grandpa! How _dare _you think that they're the reasons we're the way we are right now!"

Seizing Miku again while she's yelling, Nino sticks her face right up to Miku, who bares her clenched teeth back at her in retaliation.

"I'm just saying," Miku spits defiantly, "you were the one who called me naive over wanting to give Fuutarou the benefit of the doubt. But the way I see it, you're not acting much different about Papa, just because he's our 'family'. But I won't involve Grandpa - it didn't feel right to talk about him here, I'll admit..."

Seeing Miku retract her suspicion of their grandfather prompts Nino to begin restraining herself as well, as she pulls away from her sister again to get out of her personal space.

"Okay, but even still, Papa's been taking care of us for the past six years, so we have some history there with him, even if he's only our stepfather technically. Uesugi barely has two months! You can't just compare the two of them and be like, 'oh, we'll have to treat them equally' or anything like that, that's just absurd! At the end of the day, it's Uesugi who's the problem. I know you're not going to believe me, but if you look at this from what we have to work with, he's the biggest question mark," Nino argues, though this time she makes sure to control her voice so that she doesn't sound like she's about to fly off her rails again like she sounded a few moments ago.

Miku grimaces back at her older sister. "Nino, I get it already, I shouldn't have brought Papa or Grandpa into this. I just...mentioned them because...you know..."

Letting the touchy conversation topic die off like this, the two quintuplet sisters finally settle into an uneasy silence, now that they've said just about everything they've had to say on this matter.

"I guess we should end it on what I said to you that started all this," Nino sighs slightly, "but earlier this morning, when you were looking at our homeroom teacher - was that really you? Or was it someone else?"

Miku shakes her head. "No...it wasn't someone else. That was me, Nino. For that moment, when our homeroom teacher was talking bad about Fuutarou...I wanted to kill him."

"And do you think you really could have done something bad if I hadn't stopped you then?"

"Probably. I...I felt like I would have done something, yeah. But...I don't know what would've happened."

"And you shouldn't try to figure that out either. Why _did _you even behave like that anyway? It's not as if our homeroom teacher hasn't talked shit about Uesugi while he was in class, so why today?"

"I don't get annoyed if he does that when Fuutarou _is _in class, since I know that Fuutarou doesn't care about it."

"Then why get angry at the teacher today if you already knew that?"

"Because...Fuutarou wasn't here. I don't...I didn't like it. I didn't like how the teacher was still talking badly about him, even when he wasn't here. There was no need for him to make comments like that. So it felt like...it felt like a low blow. I didn't like it at all."

Nino scratches her cheek a little. "...yeah, I guess I get that. I don't like it whenever people talk about me behind _my _back...but still, whatever it is that you would've done, don't ever do that. We just transferred schools, I'm not in the mood to transfer to another one within two months."

Saying nothing in reply, the third quintuplet sinks her face back down into her knees. It's all too much to process...she just wanted this problem to be contained to herself, but then she almost did something to her own homeroom teacher, and in her lingering fury after school, she's now accidentally exposed Nino's own situation and dragged her into something she should've dealt with alone, even if it were inevitable that the quintuplets would have to face this problem together. And now, Nino is framing Fuutarou as the main culprit or driving factor behind everything that has happened.

Miku could very well be a mage. This never registered properly with her, but now that Nino very well may be one too, she's forced to accept this possibility. Maybe if she were still in junior high, when she was younger, somewhat more idealistic, and definitely a bigger closet otaku than she is now, she would have been absolutely thrilled to learn this secret side of her that she'd never known about before. But right now, when her life has been going smoothly recently, albeit with a few bumps at first, and her biggest joy is to study with her classmate and tutor named Uesugi Fuutarou, Miku can feel this revelation of identity threatening to tear her life apart. She almost did it to herself, too, by almost letting herself loose at her own homeroom teacher. If Nino weren't there...

Taking matters into her own hands, Nino rests her forehead against Miku's, to the latter's quiet surprise. Nino's skin is still a bit icky from the sweat that's dried off by now.

"We'll get through this together, like we always have. I know I haven't always been the best sister to you over the years; I'm fully aware of how much we've argued and fought. But we've always made up and kept going, and I don't want this problem to end any differently for us. In fact, this is the one problem we _can't _let do that to us. And all the stuff I've said about Uesugi so far - I'm just worried about what could end up happening to you or to everyone else. I only said those things because I'm scared of what could happen, because this isn't like anything we've ever dealt with before. I don't actually hate him as a person, and he very well could be innocent in all this, but we just don't know enough. That's why I said all those things, because I want us to be safe, first and foremost."

The throbbing is gone from Miku's eyes now.

"I didn't mean to cause all this either. I...planned on keeping this to myself so that...something like wouldn't need to happen. But I lost my temper, and if you weren't there to stop me, I don't know what might've happened this morning. Even then, I...I dragged you in here and...and got angry with you, too, and...made your eyes hurt you again, and now we have all this extra stuff to worry about, on top of midterms next week...I didn't mean to do any of this, Nino. I'm sorry..."

"Hmph. Now you know a bit more about what I feel every time I see what you've done to the kitchen whenever you try cooking."

"D-Did you really have to bring that up now!" Miku squeals indignantly as Nino busts out giggling at her own diversion. "I've been trying my best not to leave behind such a big mess! Gosh!"

"Relax, relax, I'm just giving you shit. Consider that payback for shoving me against the wall here."

Finally getting back up to her feet, and with Miku following suit, Nino shakes her head a little, squinting out in the direction of the sidewalk that they were taking to head home.

"Also, you're gonna have to lead the way...I can't see shit right now without my contacts," the purple-eyed quintuplet sighs heavily. "Ugh, walking home like this's gonna be such a pain..."

"You can't put them back in right now?"

"I could, but I want to take a shower and clean my contacts first. I don't want to take any chances in a dingy alley like this, y'know?"

Nino glances back at Miku, whose eyes she can no longer see clearly.

"What, got anything else to say to me before we leave? Might as well get it out now, while we're still in the talking mood," Nino advises.

Now that her eyes are able to look at Nino's purple ones without the throbbing, Miku gets a good look at her sister's strange eyes. The faint blue rings have disappeared, but the irises remain. Miku, who has lived all her life seeing the same blue eyes in herself and all of her sisters, finds herself slowly mesmerized by the sight of her older sister standing before her with a differently colored set of eyes.

"It's...it's nothing. I was just thinking to myself...how pretty your eyes are like that," Miku smiles a little.

"P-Pretty...?"

Nino can't stop herself from blushing suddenly at this unexpected remark, and she has to raise her hand over her face to hide it from her sister, who isn't fooled at all.

"I don't...I don't believe you. You're just saying that to tease me, aren't you?" she tries to scowl at Miku, who shakes her head.

"Have you even seen yourself with your eyes right now?"

"Well, no, since...since I can't see at all without my contacts..."

"Oh, so those contacts you wear make your eyes seem blue?"

"Did I not mention that already?"

"No, I don't think so..."

"Oh...I thought I did. But even then, I thought that was obvious, because you saw me take out my contacts..."

"Oh yeah, you did...I didn't make the connection there, I guess. But here, I'll take a picture and show it to you after we get home and we've taken showers. Wanna take a shower together for today?"

"W-What's with you all of a sudden! You're acting weird right now, you know! First you say my eyes look p-pretty, and now you're - "

"But you always complain to us about how much of a pain in the ass it is for you to wash your hair because it's so long."

"Shut it! Shut it, you! Oh, by the way, you made me drop my phone out here earlier, see if it's still around."

As the two sisters emerge from the alleyway, with Miku leading Nino as requested, Miku looks around the sidewalk for Nino's bunny-sleeved phone, but she cannot see it anywhere. Even after a brief search of the immediate area and some questions to passersby as Nino waits produce nothing, and Miku returns to her sister, defeated.

"I couldn't find it...someone must've taken it," she groans a little, feeling even worse about the whole situation that is entirely her fault. "I'm...really sorry about all this, Nino."

"Eh, whatever. It didn't have much on it anyway, I recently backed up all the photos and stuff I had on it to my computer, and there's nothing on there that people could use to blackmail me or whatever. I'll just call to cancel that number and get it replaced, it's not a big deal. Though I do need to find another one of those bunny phone jackets, does the phone store we went to a while back still have those?"

"Maybe, but I can search for one online and buy it for you."

"Eh, I like going in person more. You're coming with me, though, and you don't have a say in this."

"Fine, fine."

"And do my eyes really look _that _pretty? Or are you just messing with me? Be honest with me right now."

"They fit you. You've always said purple is your favorite color, right?"

"Y-Yeah, but...I just want all of us to match..."

"Pfff...you're still such a kid, Nino..."

"Sh-Shut up! Listen to me, Miku! Mikuuuuuuuu!"

* * *

_"Earlier yesterday evening, at roughly 9:10, police were investigating what is possibly the largest drug cache found in the city. During the investigation, a suspect managed to enter the investigation scene unnoticed and proceeded to extract one of the packages inside and managed to escape. Senior Officer Yamaguchi is here with us to elaborate..."_

Doctor Nakano Maruo, calmly sipping from a cup of afternoon black coffee, is watching the news in his office on the laptop on his desk when a curt knock raps on his door.

"Come in," he says, and the door, as instructed, opens with a slight creak.

"It's done. Everything's...packed in, and...sorted. Had to get rid of...some of the samples I recovered because...they broke, but...most of it should still be good."

The head physician turns in his swivel chair to take a good look at his visitor, who is breathing heavily.

"Good work. Do you need me to take a look at that?" He gestures with his cup of coffee at the young mage's chest.

"No, no need. I can...handle this on my own."

"And what about your tutoring for tomorrow?"

"And what do you fucking think...?"

And so the door closes immediately after, rendering the doctor free to resume his break.

"Reckless as ever, I see..." he murmurs, taking another short sip of his bitter coffee before turning back to watch the news.


	30. Mystic Eyes

**A/N**

**Dan the Bloody: after reading your review, I want you need to be more specific with which parts of Nino's and Miku's dialogue you did not like so that I can more accurately follow along with your critique, as their dialogue is 60 to 70% of the whole chapter.**

**I reread the chapter a few times, but I'm not seeing what about Nino's reasoning you think is invalidating what the story's built up so far, so you'll have to specifically point those parts out to me so that I can either explain why I think they're still appropriate or see what I can change. Unless, of course, they're the parts that I'm about to respond to below.**

**I'm not too sure what you mean by "not strong enough of a reason" when you brought up Maruo; not strong enough of a reason for what, exactly? If I'm understanding you correctly, you don't like how I had Miku bring up their dad in the argument because it feels like it came out of nowhere. If such is the case, Miku brings up their dad there because she's trying to fight back against Nino in their argument; she doesn't want Nino to always dictate the pace and she obviously doesn't like how Nino is putting such a big target on Fuutarou, but she doesn't have any solid proof of her own that would exonerate him, so instead she tries to divert Nino's blame away from him.**

**So to me, it makes sense that Miku tries to bring up someone else who could be responsible for their situation. To add, I don't think in the manga Miku is ever seen interacting directly with Maruo, let alone have any dialogue to him/about him. We've only ever seen Maruo talk to Nino, Yotsuba, and Itsuki at all, highlighted in chapter 54; there is one scene during the Hot Springs vacation arc when Maruo is seen in the same frame as four of the girls who are all disguised as Itsuki at the time and another time in chapter 115 where Maruo is depicted eating dinner with his daughters all together "for the first time in ages", but if I'm not mistaken these are two of the only parts in the manga where Maruo is seen with all his daughters like that. And now that the manga's done, we'll never know the exact extent of the relationship between Maruo and Miku specifically, but what I infer from the lack of depiction/interaction of those two together in the source material is that Miku at most has a lukewarm relationship with Maruo, and therefore more likely to turn to him as a possible suspect in her argument with Nino, especially when she's under pressure like she was from Nino. This would likely change if there is in fact some kind of depiction of these two in particular in the manga, but it would need to be a significant enough scene for me to reevaluate my reasoning here.  
**

**However, after reading that section of their dialogue over, I do think that I didn't do a good enough job of having Nino scold Miku for even daring to suspect Maruo; Nino strongly identifies with her sense of family, and while it's traditionally associated with her sisters, it's only natural for her to extend that to Maruo as well. Plus, the manga does make a point to give Nino at least some dialogue that shows that she does care about him to a tangible extent, emphasized in chapter 104. Slightly expanded Nino's counter-response to Miku's accusation of Maruo to better fit her character.  
**

**Finally, even though I understand that you're only mentioning this to try to explain what you didn't like in the chapter, I heavily disagree with your notion that the quintuplets themselves are stupid; just because they're all book-dumb doesn't mean they can't act like sensible people outside of an academic setting, and I believe the manga strongly portrays them as such. Possibly it's my love for the quintuplets that's bleeding through here more than anything, and certainly the girls can say dumb things, make dumb decisions, and act like dummies outright at times, but I will not treat the girls as though they do these things just because they can't get good test scores; that kind of reasoning doesn't sit right with me, especially when I feel the source material never did either.**

**Which leads me to the last bit of your review that I want to discuss: Nino's opinion of Fuutarou. Chapter 6 of the manga, which is the basis for chapter 24 of this fic, establishes that Nino doesn't necessarily hate Fuutarou because of him in particular, but more so because of the threat he poses to the family life that she enjoys with her sisters and wants to preserve and protect from outside influence. In addition, in contrast to the manga, this fic has been building Nino's affection for Fuutarou from early on, ever since chapter 10 following the warehouse incident, to be exact. ****And when the argument between Nino and Miku begins to wind down towards the end of chapter 29, when it finally hits Miku that she might've been a mage all this time, Nino sees Miku's reaction and correctly guesses that she feels miserable about the whole situation, so she comfor****ts her, because as much as the two of them may argue and fight, Nino always prioritizes her bond with her sisters above anything else and will strive to keep it intact, given enough time or reason.  
**

**All this, plus the fact that Nino isn't one to hide what she's thinking from her sisters if she feels she needs to speak her mind on something, is what makes her able to say those things about Fuutarou to Miku in chapter 29. It sounds odd, I don't doubt that, for Nino to say something like that this early on when you compare this fic's timeline to the original manga's, but given how this fic has been progressing and what's transpired here as opposed to how the original manga panned out, I feel Nino's opinion of Fuutarou here is justified.  
**

**Edit: Another 10 chapters, another short break. I'll be taking this time to go through the story as a whole to proofread and make edits wherever I see fit; if I decide to make any changes that I feel are important enough to be worth going back to read, they will be listed in another A/N in the next chapter like before. See you on the other side.**

* * *

_Can't tutor today because of work that came up, and I can't be at school tomorrow either, so enjoy your extra day off. I will still be there for the Friday overnight session, though, as promised.  
_

_Sorry for bailing out on you after you got Nino and Itsuki to come join us. Tell them sorry too for me in case they're angry at me for this too. I'll see you all on Friday._

* * *

Nakano Ichika gazes down at the text message she's received from her tutor and classmate yesterday afternoon.

It's lunchtime. The cafeteria is crowded as usual, with students flocking in from all around campus from their classes to come buy and eat lunch here. For today, she and her sisters have decided to eat lunch here as well, and Ichika herself has found a table to reserve it for her sisters while they buy their lunches and bring hers along with them.

"Aaaaa ~ " she sighs aloud, leaning back in her seat and angling her gaze up at the corner of the ceiling to her left.

Fuutarou really knows how to predict people's behaviors, Ichika thinks to herself. Nino and Itsuki both got quite upset when Ichika notified them of the text she received from him, just like he predicted. She'll have to have him make it up to her sometime for having to cover for him in this respect.

Miku and Yotsuba, on the other hand, naturally, were on the opposite side of the spectrum in terms of reactions. Miku, especially, got quite worried that something happened to him and tried to convince Ichika to text him back, asking him about his situation. It even got to the point where Miku asked Ichika to give her Fuutarou's phone number so that she could get in touch with their tutor herself, but Ichika was barely able to convince her that she shouldn't bother him, with how busy he must be if he took the time to tell the girls that he wouldn't have the time to make a tutoring session.

Ichika smiles to herself slightly. It's so like the five of them to be evenly split down the middle like this: Miku and Yotsuba on one side, and Nino and Itsuki on the other, with of course Ichika staying in the middle as the mediator between the two. Though, just by virtue of studying with Miku and Yotsuba under Fuutarou's tutelage, maybe she isn't exactly neutral as she pictures herself to be.

Leaning forward in her seat again, Ichika rests her forehead against her phone screen that still displays Uesugi's text.

Fuutarou-kun is okay.

He'll be fine.

He's just really busy.

That's all there is to it.

That's all.

_What if he's not?_

What do you mean, what if he's not?

Of course he'll be okay.

He always is.

He's just a little tired lately.

That's all.

_You don't know that._

We've been studying together for weeks now.

He always shows up.

It's just that he had to miss today because of work.

There's nothing else to it.

That's all.

_What if he doesn't show up today either?_

He will.

He'd let me know if he needs to miss more days.

I'm the only one who has his number.

He'll come back to tutor us.

That's all.

_What if something happened to him?_

Nothing will happen to him.

He's strong.

He's hard-working.

He just needs a break.

That's all.

_What if he doesn't want to teach you anymore?_

That can't be.

If he didn't want to teach, he would've never started.

He would've never bothered to put up with them for so long.

He would've never taught them all this time.

Right?

_**What if he hates you?**_

Ichika sets her phone down loudly on the table.

"He doesn't hate us..." Ichika finds herself murmuring with closed eyes - though to whom, she has no idea. It doesn't feel like she's talking to herself, but it does at the same time.

When she opens her eyes, her phone sports a pair of divine golden eyes back at her.

When she blinks, they disappear. Of course a phone wouldn't have eyes, what is she thinking? She's been making sure she's getting plenty of sleep lately...

Resting her head back down on her arms as she turns off her phone screen and pockets it to put it away, the eldest quintuplet listens to her own breaths bouncing off the table. Fuutarou-kun is fine, she said to her sisters. His missing one day isn't a big deal, everyone's got days when they can't come to school because they're sick or something happened that they need to take care of.

What if he misses two?

Ichika gives her head a little micro-shake. Why should this be a big deal? It's Fuutarou-kun. He knows how to handle himself out there, whatever it is that he's doing. It's obvious that he comes off as someone who's been doing what he does for a long time; he carries himself with that kind of confidence and decisiveness that only a veteran at his or her craft would exude.

But everyone makes mistakes, right?

What if Miku's right? What if something _did _happen to him? Just like how everyone can miss a day or two of school, even the most experienced people can still slip up and make mistakes at their professions. Fuutarou-kun's profession is a mage. And...the night she and her sisters found out about his secret identity, he brutally knocked out or slayed bad guys in their defense, with no hesitation - with a kind of cold and merciless efficiency that only someone who is accustomed to a life of killing is capable of demonstrating.

If that's the kind of world Fuutarou-kun lives in, what's to say that there can't be a day that comes when he makes a mistake, or someone gets the upper hand on him, and something bad ends up happening to him?

Ordinarily, Ichika wouldn't get so worked up over this; if none of her sisters felt the need to freak out over his two-day absence, then she wouldn't find herself doubting her own confidence in Fuutarou-kun either. She's the eldest; she's the one who's supposed to keep cool, to keep calm and act on.

Besides, he's just their tutor, their classmate. She and the rest of the quintuplets have only known Fuutarou-kun for barely two months. Ichika herself has certainly known other people in her life for far longer and has gone living out her own life without a care in the world for them, and as rude as that might sound, it's the truth. You can't give the same amount of thought and care for everyone you know in life, and instead you have to reserve that kind of dedication and energy to the people you care for the most - and for Ichika, those people are her sisters, who are everything to her. And she's sure that the rest of them would say the same.

Yet Fuutarou-kun...or more accurately, the image of him...still persists, still stubbornly lingers, much like the boy himself, in her mind.

Before today, before she got this text message from him, the eldest quint would have never thought that a boy like Fuutarou-kun would be able to leave enough of an impression on her to get her to even think about him like this. She doesn't think this because she's arrogant and that she's too good for people; it's just that like Nino, Ichika can be a very social girl who can make friends easily and be able to hang out with practically whoever she wants, thanks to her good looks, charming personality, and impressionable sociability, and so she's met and known all kinds of people throughout her life. She's met far more handsome, far more courteous, and far more charming boys than the boy who was hired to be her and her sisters' tutor and known some for much longer than she's known him.

So why is it that someone like Fuutarou-kun, of all people, is someone who stands out to her, almost as much as her own sisters? How is it that someone as blunt as Fuutarou-kun, someone who's as rude, insensitive, bad-mouthed, spartan, work-obsessed, and money-driven as Fuutarou-kun, is able to leave more of an impression on her than all these other people? Sure, maybe it's worth mentioning that she's spent a lot of time in a short period of time with him, naturally, him being their tutor and all, but you could replace him with someone different, a regular tutor, for example, and things would be completely different. What about him makes him stand out, exactly?

What about him makes him worth the worry that she has for him that she's secretly hiding?

Is it the intrigue that he represents? He is a mage, after all, and the quintuplets have seen him perform magecraft before. Is it because she wants to know more about this secret life that he lives, outside of their tutoring and outside of school? It's definitely intrigued her at the time that they first found out about his true identity, but as the weeks went by, Ichika was able to get past the whole 'Fuutarou-kun is a mage' deal and focus on treating him simply as their classmate and tutor; it also helps that Fuutarou-kun himself has always frowned upon telling the girls about his other line of work since, understandably, it might distract the girls from what he was originally hired to help them with.

Is it his personality, somehow? But that doesn't seem right either; Fuutarou-kun's personality is just about as dry as a snipped toenail and as sharp as one too, and it's bordered on outright insulting at times, especially in the beginning when he first delved into analyzing their academics more carefully and discovering just how bad of students they all were. Sure, he can be funny at times, but most of the jokes he cracks are either dark or dry humor, which admittedly suit him quite well. Surprisingly, he goes along with Yotsuba's antics quite well for someone with such a dry personality like him, so the shenanigans they get up to together are quite entertaining to watch whenever they do happen. But Ichika senses that Fuutarou-kun is only acting that way because he feels that's the best way to deal with Yotsuba, since forcing a girl like her to study nonstop can't possibly be good for her, and so playing along with her helps her relieve some of the stress that comes with studying.

Is it because of his hardworking image, or his work ethic? Or the fact that he confronted their dad during Golden Week about his family's situation, how he ought to spend more time with them? That can't be it, either; with Ichika's popularity, plenty of people, both boys and girls, have white-knighted for her and defended her in situations where she was being talked badly about or in a sticky situation, and it's not as though Ichika ever felt anything major for people who did so. She's also known plenty of very hardworking people, especially at her part-time job, so it's not as if she really has a thing for people who work hard.

Is it because of his modesty? Not once can Ichika recall her tutor say anything good about himself, and for as much as he shits on the girls' alarming lack of academic prowess and the dumb mistakes they often make during their lessons, Fuutarou-kun always acknowledges the mistakes he himself can sometimes make while teaching and readily praises the girls for things they do right, or things that he can respect, such as learning a new material in a subject they've been traditionally weak in or getting a particularly difficult question correct, as rare as that is. But Ichika has never really found modest, humble boys to be her type, and she's met some boys before in the city who would put on overly self-effacing facades to try to win her favor, whose behavior she found to be absolutely cringeworthy, almost disgusting. Who knows, maybe a boy with just the right amount or the right type of modesty could interest her, but if that's the case, then the type or amount that Fuutarou-kun presents is not it.

Maybe she's just thinking too hard about this whole thing. Fuutarou-kun is, strictly speaking, their classmate who's been hired to be their tutor. There shouldn't be any more meaning to their relationship than that; that should be the end of story. After all, Fuutarou-kun himself is the type of guy who wouldn't want other people to think too much about him either, and he himself would agree that that's all their relationship should amount to, to just student and tutor, or simple classmates.

But even as she thinks this to herself, Ichika knows it's just not that simple. Sure, she can sit here and try to convince herself that all they are, all Fuutarou-kun is to her and her sisters is student and tutor, but ever since that incident at the warehouse, there's no denying that the boy is a bit more than just that. Maybe it's that extra layer of involvement that Fuutarou-kun has that makes the difference? Certainly she's never had to deal with this kind of a situation before, where someone whom she didn't know until very recently turned out to have a potentially huge impact on her life and those of her sisters. But even then, she doesn't think that's quite the case either. Sure, yeah, Fuutarou-kun probably saved their lives that night; that she's grateful towards him for. But just because he did so doesn't mean she ought to owe her whole life to him, and he's certainly never acted as though that should be the case either.

Then why is she so bothered by this? Why is she letting herself be bothered by a single text that he's sent her?

Why does it feel like somehow, it's _her _fault that Fuutarou-kun wasn't able to show up yesterday for tutoring, even though it couldn't possibly have been?

No, it's not her who's at fault. She's worrying about this because Miku is - maybe Yotsuba hasn't noticed it yet because she's too busy goofing off, but Ichika has, that Miku more than likely has feelings for their classmate and tutor. The weeks of tutoring that Fuutarou-kun has administered to the quintuplets has sparked a change in Miku that Ichika hasn't seen in her for a while, ever since middle school, because back then, when they first entered junior high, Miku still had much of the personality the five of them had when they were kids, back during the days when they truly were identical quintuplets who did everything together and dressed the exact same day in, day out.

Miku's middle school years were rough, a series of unfortunate events, if you will. Such events shoved her into the role of a quiet, meek wallflower who wanted to do nothing more than come home, shut herself in her room, and play games or watch documentaries or anime. The bright smile she had when they were kids was replaced by a perpetual, cold frown, and the bright blue eyes that were once so full of life and youth shed their energy as though it were only a mask, now shrouded half the time by the same long bangs that she's kept from back then. And despite the rest of their best efforts to protect Miku the best they could, there was only so much they could do on their own.

It's not as though Ichika feels guilty over Miku's transformation. They can't remain kids forever; people grow up and change, and she's always the one who tells her sisters to make sure to enjoy the moment, because middle school, and now high school, only lasts for three years of their lives. Miku's circumstances were unfortunate, yes, but she's done her part as her older sister and is continuing to do so wherever she deems appropriate. It would be a waste of her time to feel regret over what she couldn't do or to dwell on what's happened, because at the end of the day, Miku is alive and well to remain her sister today. And that's all she can really ask for, isn't it?

And thus, Ichika quietly accepted this new Miku as the status quo without question. This is how things turned out, so it's just how things are now. Expecting Miku to change back or to grow out of that cold, lonely shell that she hides in to distance herself from others nowadays does no favors for anybody involved.

And then Fuutarou-kun began tutoring them.

In the same vein that Ichika cannot understand how a guy like him would be able to make an impression on her, Ichika doesn't quite understand still how he's been able to make anything of a positive impression on Miku. But whatever it is that he's doing, Fuutarou-kun is drawing the old Miku back, or perhaps more appropriately the young Miku. Ever since he began his post as their tutor, Miku has slowly been peeling that shell that's formed around her since her junior high years and crawling out of her comfort zone: studying her weak subjects on her own, cooking more frequently with Nino and making a concerted effort to listen to her instructions more carefully and not get into as many arguments with her as before, spending more time with her sisters rather than spending it holed up in her own room by herself...

And when Fuutarou-kun _is _around, either tutoring them or hanging out with them at school, Miku's face seems much brighter than Ichika remembers it being in recent memory, at least compared to before they came to know their tutor. Her once sullen and shaded eyes are now wide and attentive, her somewhat slouched posture, both while sitting and walking, have slowly corrected themselves, her headphones haven't been clasped around her ears as much anymore, and perhaps the most striking difference - she is smiling all on her own.

Just how the five of them used to, six years ago.

Ichika never expected the past to come back. The past is called the past for a reason; wishing for things bygone to return to the present time is folly and a dumb waste of time, something even someone like Ichika who doesn't really care much for her own education by this point can say. But watching Miku slowly return to how she once was, when she was just a happier kid who visibly enjoyed life just as much as her four other sisters did, was the one thing Ichika could have never predicted happening upon Fuutarou-kun's arrival. Seeing Miku happy like that...made Ichika so happy too, both as her older sister and as a fellow quintuplet. Seeing Miku enjoy herself, be happier and hang out more with her sisters and their classmate was a surprise, to be sure - after all, it weren't as if Fuutarou-kun advertised such a thing when he first began his tutoring, but it was a welcome one.

So his sudden absence for two days in a row, which has upset Miku noticeably, upsets her in tandem. It turns out, being invested in one of her sister's happiness means that if her happiness is compromised, so is her own. So much has Ichika been enjoying this changed Miku that she wants to see her continue to be this way, and Fuutarou-kun not showing up for two tutoring days in a row has given Ichika a jarring vibe check that their newfound little joy, both her own and Miku's, hinges on a cornerstone that only Fuutarou-kun can provide - take the cornerstone away, and everything else threatens to simply fall apart.

Ichika's hand subconsciously squeezes its grip around her phone. So much for leaving the past for good - how much more of it will come back to haunt them, she wonders.

Why is she even worrying about all this, anyway? This isn't like her. She's never been one to overthink things...

"IIIIII - chikaaaaaa ~ !"

Grabbing her oldest sister's shoulders suddenly after setting down her lunch tray that has two bowls, one for each of the two quintuplets, Yotsuba leans over Ichika as the latter sits up properly in her chair at the former's return.

"Back already? Oooh, lunch today looks good," Ichika smiles pleasantly back up at Yotsuba, who dances around her to take the seat across from her.

"Today's oyakodon! And yeah, it looks so yummy ~ ! Itsuki's gonna love it!" Yotsuba exclaims happily, having arrived with both her own and Ichika's chicken and egg rice bowls that are quite large for their advertised portions and are brimming with hot, steaming white rice topped with egg-lathered chicken. Nino, Miku, and Itsuki arrive shortly thereafter, right when Yotsuba takes her seat at their table, and as Ichika notices, everyone seems to have gotten a large oyakodon lunch for today.

"Wow, it's been a while since we all got the same lunch. What's the occasion?" Ichika giggles, looking around their table.

"So? It can happen sometimes; we _are _quints, after all," Nino shrugs nonchalantly as she clasps her hands together briefly before pulling her wooden disposable chopsticks apart.

"Weren't you the one who said we don't have telepathy or whatever?" Miku questions her sister.

"Oh c'mon, do you really have to bring that up now?"

"Maybe we really _do _have some kind of telepathic link!" Yotsuba beams while striking a thinking man pose across from three of her sisters.

"Wasn't there one time we tried acting like we really did have that, back when we were kids?" Ichika mentions.

"P-Please do not remind me of such times," Itsuki groans terribly. "I feel like I could just _die _of embarrassment if people in this school were to find out about all the silly things we did when we were young..."

"Yeah, like how every time we'd play house, you'd always try to be the mom, remember that?" Nino laughs, prompting Itsuki to pout dangerously cutely back at her.

As Nino and Itsuki begin to banter back and forth about their times as kids, Ichika takes this opportunity to lean in towards Miku.

"...how have you been holding up today?" she asks quietly.

"Holding up? What do you mean?" Miku glances back at her quickly.

"You know...with Fuutarou-kun."

"Oh...well...I've..." Miku's eyes fall back down to her own steaming fresh oyakodon bowl. "...I'm fine. I thought about what you said yesterday, and...I really shouldn't let it bother me too much. It just...came as a surprise, and I didn't know how else to react to it at the time. Sorry for...bothering you with trying to get Fuutarou's number and all that."

"Eh, it's fine, don't worry about it. Everyone's got their days, after all." Ichika pats Miku on the back. "Besides, he'll be here later today, and he'll be with us for the whole day and then some."

Miku nods. "But seriously, you should give me his number at some point," she pouts back at her oldest sister.

"Maaaaaybeeeeee ~ or, I got a better idea, maybe you could ask _him ~ "_

"Ichika...!"

* * *

After school, the quintuplets head home all together for the first time in a few weeks, now passing the same Family Mart convenience store from which Yotsuba bought fried chicken at one point that's close by their high-rise home.

"I don't want to see the two of you run away from this, now that you've promised to study with us," Ichika smiles over at the two former members of the Anti-Uesugi Fuutarou Coalition, who both scowl back at her.

"We aren't, gosh! We keep telling you this," Nino insists.

"Yeah, but yesterday you two got pretty mad that he suddenly wasn't showing up because of his other work, so I just wanted to make sure ~ "

"He _will _be here today, yes?" Itsuki fidgets rather nervously.

"He should be. That's what his text said, that he'll see us all on Friday." Ichika raises her phone and shakes it a little over at her sisters. "Why, are you looking forward to it, Itsuki-chan?"

"I-I am not _looking forward _to it! I am merely concerned for us collectively because midterms are next week and we effectively only have this weekend to prepare!" Itsuki defends herself hastily.

"Oh, so what you're saying is that you would've liked it if you came to study with us earlier, right?"

"That is...well..." Itsuki doesn't even bother finishing that thought.

"You should've really just asked Fuutarou to let you come study with us anyway," Miku says sympathetically over to Itsuki, whose eyes are now cast down on the ground. "We know you had that run-in and all with him during Golden Week, but...was it really worth losing out on the last two weeks of studying for that, just to decide to come study with us in the end?"

"I am well aware of what I could have done, Miku, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty. Now, I cannot undo that decision; the only thing that matters now is what I am able to do with the amount of time that I have left." Itsuki sighs shortly. "I can only hope that this decision to study with everyone and Uesugi-kun will pay off. It will not be a good look for him or anyone else if he cannot produce the results that he so advertises."

"But that's pretty harsh, Itsuki! I mean, if you think about it, even if you study nonstop with us and Uesugi-san for this weekend, you'll only be going into midterms next week with just a single weekend of studying, right? Just one weekend of studying with him might not, you know, be enough, right?" Yotsuba points out.

All four of her sisters all stare back at Yotsuba, who takes a step back away from them, unsure of why they're looking at her this way.

"U-Ummmm, is - is there something on my face? Maybe some egg from lunch or something...?" Yotsuba wonders aloud with a nervous smile.

"I can't believe it...Yotsuba actually said something logical that she would've never said before..." Nino whispers in a hushed but obviously satirical tone.

"Could it be...? Perhaps Uesugi-kun's tutoring is actually paying off...?!" Itsuki also gasps.

"Oh c'mon, now you're all just being so mean to _me!" _Yotsuba pouts at everyone while Miku and Ichika both start cracking up at Nino's and Itsuki's dry jokes.

"But it's not as if her test scores've improved all that much," Ichika reminds her sisters, much to Yotsuba's chagrin as the latter begins to whine at the eldest quintuplet to get her to take back her words.

"Oh, that is right...perhaps Uesugi-kun is not adequate enough of a tutor then..." Itsuki rescinds her previous statement almost immediately.

"Mmmmuuuu! Itsuki, Nino, Uesugi-san is a really good tutor! Even if my test scores don't reflect that, he's still a great tutor! It's that I'm just too dumb to show that; his talent as a tutor's wasted on a dummy like me!" Yotsuba persists. "I'm sure the two of you will really benefit from his teaching! It's just that, like I said, you'll only have one weekend to study with him, so maybe it won't be enough for midterms next week!"

"I mean, we know it's definitely not enough for you," Miku slyly adds.

"Uuuu! Not you too, Miku! I thought we were friends!"

"Sorry, I didn't mean that."

"But still, Yotsuba does bring up a good point, all jokes aside," Ichika nods understandingly. "We're all slow learners and bad at studying and such, right? The three of us've barely shown a little improvement despite all the hours of studying with Fuutarou-kun that we've done, and so it's really unlikely that you two'll show any such improvement in your own grades with just this weekend's worth of studying under your belts. And after we get our midterm scores back, you two might use that as proof that Fuutarou-kun didn't do a good enough job of tutoring you, and you'll go back to how things were before."

"We were already planning on going back to how things were once midterms are done, did you forget what our conditions were already, Ichika?" Nino scowls a little over at her older sister.

"I know that, I haven't forgotten. But...I'm just saying, maybe it wouldn't hurt to stick around studying with us for a little bit longer even after midterms. Just throwing that out there..."

"Hmph, in your dreams. If I said I'm going to quit after midterms, I'm going to quit after midterms. Itsuki, you too, don't let Ichika sweet-talk you into staying with them after midterms, got that?"

To Nino's creeping horror, Itsuki doesn't answer her right away.

"...I will be the judge of that, after I assess Uesugi-kun as a tutor," she mumbles under her breath, before Nino takes her by the shoulders.

"Itsuki, you can't leave me, you hear? Itsuki! _Itsuki!"_

"N-Ninoooo, please stop thiiiis! Y-You must take care, too, not to let your own grades sliiiiip!" Itsuki cries as her sister starts shaking her slowly back and forth.

"But this isn't what we agreed to when we talked that other night!"

"We did not agree to anything! You are simply making things up!"

"Looks like the Anti-Uesugi Fuutarou Coalition is starting to break apart. Miku, Yotsuba, now's our chance to capitalize!" Ichika giggles, rounding up her other sisters as if rallying them to battle against their opposing two sisters.

"Okay, Captain Ichika! I'll get Nino - Miku, you get Itsuki! Ready, set, _GO ~ !"_

Yotsuba immediately tackles Nino lightly, hugging her from the side and putting her arms around Nino's so that Nino cannot wriggle free.

"Y-Yotsubaaaa! Geddoff me, Yotsubaaaa!" Nino hollers, trying to break free of her younger sister's sudden bear-hug, but even Nino knows that it is a futile effort to try to break free from the grasp of someone like Yotsuba. Miku, who merely walks over to Itsuki's side and readjusts the star-shaped hair clips on her sideburns, watches Nino resign herself to Yotsuba's unbreakable grasp as the fourth quintuplet in question thoroughly enjoys herself with her own antics yet again.

"Nino still cannot go against Yotsuba after all these years, can she?" Itsuki smiles, also watching along with Miku.

"Itsuki, you should stay with us to study with Fuutarou after midterms," Miku suggests quietly so that Nino can't hear with Yotsuba laughing practically right in her ears. "I don't know what you have planned afterwards, but...it's fun. We used to study together too, right? Back in middle school. Let's try it again."

"But that was just between the two of us back then. This time around..." Itsuki begins, but Miku also gives a small smile of her own, a kind of smile that she would normally never make on her own.

"Obviously I'm not asking for us to go back to the past. It's more...for old time's sake," Miku says quietly, but pleasantly. "I had fun...studying with you back then. It'd be nice if we could study together again."

"I have nothing against studying together again as we once did, but...we certainly do not need Uesugi-kun to be constantly involved like he is with you three?"

"Maybe not, if you don't care about your grades actually getting better at all."

"...that actually hurts, Miku..."

"Sorry." Miku puts her arms around Itsuki's left, in a more affectionate version of Yotsuba's bear-hug applied to Nino, and with Ichika enjoying the sight of her sisters all getting along so well together trailing behind them, the quintuplets begin to approach the Pentagon high-rise.

When they step foot onto the asphalt block path leading up to the entrance to the elevator lobby, there is someone standing and leaning against the automatic glass doors, off to the side. His head is bowed so that his black hair blocks his eyes, and his arms are crossed as his messenger bag hangs by his left hip, weighed down by his usual books, reference materials, and study guides.

Feeling a hand rest on her left shoulder, Miku turns in that direction to find Ichika winking at her.

"See? No need to worry," she whispers reassuringly.

As the quintuplets approach their waiting tutor, Uesugi Fuutarou slowly raises his head to behold his students walking up to him with mixed reactions ranging from relief to warm greetings to cold looks.

"Hey, what's up. Sorry I haven't been around for the past two days - been pretty busy on my end," Fuutarou apologizes swiftly as he stops leaning against the glass wall behind him to greet the quints properly.

"You haven't been taking care of yourself, have you, Fuutarou-kun?" Ichika immediately says, taking sharp note of his bloodshot eyes that look even redder than what she last remembers and the shadows cast underneath his eyes now.

"Didn't have the time to. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered calling off yesterday, y'know?"

"Please take care of yourself, Fuutarou," Miku says worriedly, as much as she's relieved to see her tutor still doing well, despite his obvious exhaustion.

"I'll do that today. I'm staying over for tonight, remember? Ichika's not gonna let me leave, that's for damn sure."

Ichika laughs at Fuutarou's usual bluntness, having forgotten how much he and bluntness go hand in hand. "That's right! You're not leaving our place until you're fully rested!"

"Just do your job and don't try anything funny," Nino snaps lightly, though Fuutarou notes that there's much less animosity in her voice compared to earlier times in the week. "And I want to make it clear to you right now that I don't intend on studying with you all forever. In fact, I'm quitting as soon as midterms are done!"

"That's fine for now, I just want you to give me a chance to prove myself, at least. What about you, Itsuki? Do you feel the same as Nino here, or?"

"Um, I am...undecided. For right now, I wish to simply focus on our midterms, and to make sure that we can all pass it," the youngest quintuplet says resolutely. "I will decide on what to do afterwards once midterms are done."

"Fair enough."

"By the way, Uesugi-san, don't you have a keycard to our place? Why were you just waiting for us outside when you could just wait for us inside?" Yotsuba asks suddenly.

"Oh, that's because I don't have that keycard anymore, and I didn't bother asking your dad for another one."

"Don't have it?" Ichika tilts her head, somewhat confused at this sudden development. "Did you lose it, or...?"

"Gave it to Nino. She locked herself out after our little trial two Saturdays ago, so I gave her mine instead."

Miku then remembers meeting Nino in the elevator lobby and asking her how it was that she was able to get inside when she forgot her own key in the house proper. So Fuutarou gave her his own keycard so that she could go back home properly? That would explain why he's been constantly paging them over the building intercom whenever he's shown up for tutoring after the weekend rather than just letting himself in as he used to...

"Oh, and, uh..." Yotsuba points down to Fuutarou's left hand, which is missing something valuable. "...did something happen to your smartwatch?"

"The watch? I left it back at home, since I'm staying the night. I've managed to clear tonight, so I don't think I'll need to carry it around for today, just my phone should be enough. And I certainly don't wanna have another incident like last time where I walk in on Nino again trying to get my watch back because I left it behind on accident."

"You're still a dick for doing that, by the way!" Nino cries out, her face reddening in remembrance of that one instance.

"So you still aren't over it, huh?"

"Of course not!"

"Well, in any case, let's head inside," Ichika suggests. "Are you hungry, Fuutarou-kun? You probably are, don't lie. We can have Nino fix you something real quick."

"What am I all of a sudden, Uesugi's personal cook or something?! I didn't sign up for that!"

"Oh c'mon, Nino, you're not really going to have Fuutarou-kun try to tutor us on an empty stomach, will you? Just make him something simple, he'll gobble anything up."

"Uh, I never said I was hungry, either..." Fuutarou also protests quietly as the six of them enter the elevator lobby after Itsuki swipes her card and wait for an elevator to come down and take them up to the thirtieth floor, but Ichika swiftly reaches over and presses a hand firmly against his belly.

"I don't believe you for a second; if you haven't been taking care of yourself lately, how are you supposed to expect me to think that you've been eating at all?" Ichika points out. "Are you as bad at lying as Yotsuba is or something?"

"He's probably just intentionally starving himself just so that he can cop free food off us," Nino scoffs disapprovingly as the elevator arrives and opens up for them to take them up to the thirtieth floor. "That's all we are to him, just a food bank!"

"But, Nino, weren't you the one who always brought us snacks and drinks while we study?" Yotsuba counters innocently.

"Th-Those are just snacks! _Snacks! _Just light refreshments! You don't call that an actual _meal, _do you?"

"I mean, it _is _Yotsuba we're talking about, she could eat a whole bunch of snacks and call that a meal somehow..." Ichika sighs.

"Are you sure we're not actually talking about Itsuki?" Fuutarou dryly comments, and the entire elevator, save for the dry joker and one very conspicuously displeased quintuplet, explodes with laughter.

_"Are you even TRYING to keep me as your student, Uesugi-kun!?" _Itsuki shrieks indignantly over the reverberating laughter of her sisters. "After I finally gave in and decided to give you a chance, and _THIS _is how you treat me?! Absolutely unbelievable, utterly unforgivable!"

Fuutarou raises his hand in apology. "My bad, that was admittedly a bit of a low-hanging fruit, so I couldn't resist."

Hearing this, Ichika feels her naughty side creep up as she leans in towards the distraught Itsuki who is still pouting hard back at her newly instated tutor while Yotsuba is busy thinking of something like lemons or oranges.

"So...something like a lemon, then? Or an orange, maybe?" she suggests to her tutor, who shrugs at the possibility. "Do they even grow on trees?"

"Yes, both lemons and oranges grow on trees," Itsuki replies crisply.

"So you like the low-hanging ones, huh, Fuutarou-kun? I got you some low-hanging ones right here ~ " Ichika, still undetected by Itsuki, slowly puts her hands right underneath Itsuki's breasts and pushes them up, flattening her youngest sister's shirt around her chest to more sharply define the shape of her mammaries and reveal their exact sizes.

_"I-Ichikaaaaa! ! ! ! !" _the youngest sister understandably yells out suddenly, throwing her arms over her punctuated breasts.

"A-Aaaaah!" Yotsuba, just now realizing Ichika's joke, dances over in front of her tutor and holds her hands up in front of his eyes so that she can protect Itsuki's chastity. "You can't do that, Uesugi-san! That's - that's n-naughty!"

"I didn't even do anything, though. Other than make a joke about how Itsuki's a food vacuum," Fuutarou replies, and when Yotsuba drops her hands, they reveal a small smirk on Fuutarou's face.

"It's not a joke if it's true," Miku remarks as well, causing her sisters to burst out in another round of giggles again, again to Itsuki's sharp chagrin.

"But the joke's funny _because _it's true," Fuutarou corrects Miku.

"I-I superbly hope that our tutoring session today will _not _devolve into an Itsuki bullying session instead!" Sulking angrily, Itsuki turns her back to everyone and plants herself by the corner of the elevator to artificially isolate herself.

"We won't, we won't, we were just having a little bit of fun ~ " Ichika tries to comfort Itsuki, the same sister she teased just a moment ago as the elevator arrives at its destination. "C'mon, we're here, let's go, let's go ~ "

As the six high school kids pour out of the elevator and head for their front door, Nino eyes her new tutor suspiciously.

"You do that for real, and I'm kicking you out for good, understand?" Nino gripes at him quietly so that the others won't hear, but Miku, who's always attentive towards what Fuutarou is doing and what is going on around him, does end up eavesdropping on them, but she pretends not to hear.

"Do what, exactly?"

"Peeking at us, leering at us like you did to Itsuki in the elevator. Don't play dumb with me, _you _of all people can't do that."

"And what fucking choice did I have when Ichika did that right in front of me?"

"You could've closed your eyes or something!" Nino hisses quickly. "Instead you let yourself get a sweet eyeful, you disgusting piece of shit!"

With that, Nino tosses out a quick sucker punch at Fuutarou, the back of her knuckles connecting swiftly with the center of his chest.

Fuutarou recoils silently, with the only noise he makes coming from the sharp inhale that he takes through his nose. He flinches much harder than Nino expects him to, as if her light slap actually caused him any amount of pain. Watching him raise a hand up to his mouth, Nino eyes him hesitantly as she watches his mouth fidget for a moment. Lowering his hand, Fuutarou sharply inhales again, this time through his mouth, sucking his saliva back in, and Nino spies a small streak of blood on the tip of his tongue before he closes his lips.

"Let's just say..." Fuutarou's voice now grabs Nino's attention, and it sounds audibly strained in some parts as the quintuplets let themselves into their penthouse. "...it was a sight for my goddamn sore eyes. Nothing more than that..."

Not knowing what to do, Nino keeps her questions to herself as she pulls off her shoes.

* * *

"...alright, we'll stop here for now."

Letting out a bit of a tired cheer, Ichika and Yotsuba close their notebooks and slump in different directions, Ichika over the glass table and Yotsuba back against the long couch once their tutor signals the end of this first part of their overnight studying session.

"Good work, Fuutarou," Miku says considerately to her tutor, who also closes the reference book he's been using to tutor the girls and sets it down on the table. Fuutarou gives her a small nod back, raising his hand to rub his forehead with a few fingers in an effort to de-stress after having taught the five girls for the past four hours.

"How was it so far, Nino? Itsuki?" Tilting her head on her arms to take a look at their two new arrivals, Ichika smiles weakly over to them. "Not bad, right?"

Itsuki, having taken off her glasses, remains silent at first, while Nino simply scowls back at her older sister.

"Don't make it sound like _that!" _Nino snaps back.

"You don't seem that tired, Nino," Yotsuba points out, seeing that she isn't sharing the same mental exhaustion as herself or Ichika.

"That's because Nino's been listening in on our lessons a lot of the time, remember?" Ichika reminds Yotsuba, pulling her head up off her arms now so that she can support it instead with her left arm, with her elbow on the tabletop. "She already knows how Fuutarou-kun teaches; she was always just one step removed from actually coming over and studying with us."

"Well, we were studying English tonight, primarily," Fuutarou also points out as he eyes the small stack of lined paper that's filled with the quintuplets' handwriting from all the English spelling exercises that he's made them do to get the hang of the vocabulary that they'll likely be tested on during their midterms next week. "Nino's best subject is English, after all. So it's only natural that she's the one who has the easiest time here out of you five."

"When did you even get a good grasp of English anyway, Ninooooo ~ ?" Yotsuba yawns mightily in the middle of her sentence. "I don't think we've really seen you speak English much, and it's not like we get many foreign exchange students as classmates, either. Maybe you've just been hanging out with foreigners or people who just speak English well in the city or something?"

"And your favorite show's that one Korean drama we sometimes all watch together, and as far as I've been able to tell, it didn't really have English in that, obviously," Ichika adds.

"W-Why're you asking me? I don't know why, either! I just picked up English faster than the rest of you, there's nothing more to it than that!" Nino hastily defends herself.

"People can be good at subjects that you wouldn't think they'd be good at; it can happen," Fuutarou shrugs.

"Hey, what'cha trying to say about me there?" Nino glares back at her tutor with narrowed blue eyes.

"I wasn't trying to insult you, for fuck's sake. Have I ever questioned where and when in the hell you exactly managed to get a leg up on the rest of your sisters in the English learning department?"

"...I bet you were thinking it, though."

"Goddamn it, Nino."

As Fuutarou and Nino devolve into their usual bantering discourse, Ichika ponders Fuutarou's statement about the subjects that the quintuplets excel in. It's certainly strange that, given her own part-time job, her best subject isn't English, but rather, mathematics. And she isn't sure exactly when she developed an affinity for math over her other subjects; it's not like she ever went out of her way to study math in particular or anything...

Meanwhile, Miku keeps her eyes glued to her tutor. As Ichika noted when they first met him earlier in the afternoon, it's quite obvious that Fuutarou hasn't exactly used the two-day break to rest himself, but it's also clear, at least to her, that Fuutarou's condition has gotten...worse, somehow. He's certainly done a good job hiding it, though, as none of the other quintuplets seem to have noticed, though Miku gets the feeling that Ichika might already have an idea because it's Ichika, she's the best among the quintuplets at being able to read the situation about a person.

But his behavior today has been filled with constant quick throat clearings, brief forehead rubs, short chest presses with the base of his palms, and small expressions of acute pain that accompany the aforementioned symptoms. His throat clearings are understandable, as he's the one who talks the most due to his position as tutor, and naturally he can be stressed out by the quintuplets' overall academic stupidity, especially when Yotsuba's involved. But the chest presses? Unless tutoring the girls has brought him so much stress that he's starting to have respiratory problems, which would be a bit odd to say the least, those chest presses are markedly out of place in his usual tutoring behavior routine.

"Fuutarou," she calls out finally, unable to keep her urgent question bottled up any longer, and Fuutarou turns to her with drained, bloodshot eyes. "You're more...stressed out than usual. Is everything okay...?"

The nature of Miku's concerned question gets everyone's attention, and suddenly Uesugi finds himself once more the center of attention, though for a different reason than the past four hours. Even the formerly opposed Nino and Itsuki gaze back at him, now that Miku has pitched this kind of a question to him.

Taking a few seconds to contemplate, Fuutarou closes his eyes briefly to take a deep breath.

"I'm not sure if your dad'll appreciate me telling you this..." he says slowly, his black eyes still unsure of the consequences of what he's about to say, but they steel themselves suddenly as they rise up to look back at the quintuplets as a group. "...but...whatever, fuck that guy. I met up with him a few days ago, and he told me that he's adding another condition to my tutoring position."

"Condition? What kind of condition?" Ichika asks.

"If any one of you fails, I'm gone as your tutor."

At first, only silence responds to Fuutarou. And then -

"Oh, what the hell, then! All I need to do is fail my midterms if that's the case!" Nino snorts loudly, throwing up her hands to the air above her. "And we all know how good we are at doing that!"

**_"Don't you fucking dare, Nino."_**

A voice that only Nino has heard before crawls out of Miku's throat and pollutes the living room. The voice is husky and coarse, but more alarmingly, it's absolutely murderous - so much so that every quintuplet except for Nino and Miku can feel the hair on the back of her neck rise up in subconscious fright.

Hearing this kind of voice rear its ugly head again, Nino immediately locks eyes with her younger sister - only to find that those eyes of hers, the ones with blue rings and horribly dilated and empty black pupils, are back, in full view for everyone to see. Nino has to stop her, before everyone else sees them, especially not Uesugi, though it's probably too late.

But before she can scramble to calm Miku down -

"Relax, Miku, let's not blow up the house again."

Blinking at the sound of Fuutarou's firm voice, Miku turns to him again, her strange eyes gone as soon as they appeared. Clenching her fists, Nino, now realizing that Fuutarou may very well have gotten a glimpse of Miku's mutated eyes, tensely watches the two of them, but especially Fuutarou, to gauge what his reactions are. So far, though, their tutor doesn't seem to have noticed...

"Y-Yeah, let's not, um...let's not get into any big arguments here, with our midterms right around the corner..." Ichika raises her hands at Miku to also get her to calm down, but she still silently wonders to herself if Miku has ever sounded like that before. "And that's just how Nino talks, right? She's told us what she plans to do afterwards anyway..."

Miku lowers her face, causing her bangs to drape over her eyes completely, as she also realizes herself that Fuutarou may have gotten a look at those weird eyes of hers.

"...sorry...I just..." she mumbles so incoherently that the only word that Fuutarou can pick up is her first.

"It's fine. It's my fault, honestly, I shouldn't have told you girls that," he shakes his head slowly while scowling down at the carpet near the base of the glass table in front of him. "It only serves to add more pressure on you all when you already have enough as it is with me around all the time. I just figured I'd tell you since...I haven't been around lately and I feel like you all should at least know a bit of what's been going on..."

"But it is not as though you have been gone for a long period of time; it has only been two days," Itsuki points out too.

"I can't even use that as an excuse either, huh? Then yeah, I really _shouldn't _have told you."

"No, you're fine, Uesugi-san. You were honest with us, and...I really appreciate that," Yotsuba says reassuringly, offering another one of her signature warm smiles to her tutor, who looks back up at her just in time to catch the tail end of it, and just like the sight of Itsuki's pronounced breasts from earlier in the elevator, Yotsuba's comforting smile is yet another welcome sight for Fuutarou's sore and bloodshot eyes. "I'm sure we all do."

"Yeah, especially Nino. Now she knows _exactly _what to do on her midterms," Fuutarou grins darkly, jamming his thumb in Nino's direction.

"I-I was just kidding! I'm not going to _intentionally _fail them, alright!" Nino blurts out, feeling miffed by her new tutor's grin that she views as sarcastic. "Did you honestly think I was serious about that?"

Fuutarou nods. And it's not just him, either; all four of her sisters also nod along with him.

"E-Even you too, Itsuki!?" Nino cries out in shock.

"I mean, you're the one who's always opposed to Fuutarou-kun, no matter what he says or does," Ichika reminds her. "So of course when you make a threat like that, everyone's going to believe you."

"Okay, I'm _not _going to just bomb my midterms! There! That should be clear enough!" Nino hotly declares. "Papa would know anyway if we all just got straight zeroes on literally all of our tests, because for as dumb as we are, we at least can get _some _questions right!"

"Not enough, though," Fuutarou dryly remarks again, soliciting a round of uneasy giggles from the girls around him. Miku, having recovered enough emotionally to speak to her tutor again, faces him properly again.

"So...what do you think, Fuutarou? Are we really in that much trouble for Papa to set that kind of condition on you?" she asks.

"Even without that condition on me, you're all in some deep shit," Fuutarou retorts, still keeping his dark, sarcastic grin. "For all the studying that you all did for the past month and a half, your scores all barely got up past the passing threshold. I wouldn't exactly say that you're all going to pass your tests with comfortable margins, to say the least. And I haven't even gotten to these two yet with their scores."

"Excuse me, we've been studying on our own!" Nino again gripes back at him.

"'We'?"

"Yes! Both Itsuki _and _me!"

"I can believe Itsuki, but _you? _Since when have _you _ever learned to study on your own? Don't you usually just goof off with your friends at school or something?"

"What, just because I have more friends than you, you think literally all I do is hang out with friends all day? I study sometimes too!"

"Color me surprised then, did all that time sitting at the dinner table for the last month and a half get you into the mood for that finally?"

_"I would've studied on my own regardless, thanks very much!"_

"Okay, okay, let's break it up, break it up," Ichika claps her hands together a few times. "Nino, why don't you get started on dinner? And Fuutarou-kun, you should take a bath, since you'll be staying the night. If you need us to wash your clothes, we can do that for you real quick."

"I'll take the bath, but I'll pass on the laundry, I handle that on my own anyway," Fuutarou says, getting up to his feet slowly with a bit of a groan.

"Shouldn't he wait off on the bath until _after _dinner?" Yotsuba wonders aloud to Ichika.

"Well, we _all _need to take baths, and depending on who's in there, we'll all be taking different amounts of time to finish," the eldest quint mentions thoughtfully, though she smiles in Nino's direction as she's speaking.

"...and just why are you looking _my _way?" Nino frowns, pulling up a lock of her very long peach-red hair.

"Nothing in particular ~ "

"I'll be quick with my bath, then, if something like this's gonna concern you all that much," the young tutor reassures the girls.

"No, it doesn't, you should really take your time in there," Ichika turns quickly to the departing Fuutarou, who leaves the sisters to their own devices while Miku watches him head off to the large bathroom behind the kitchen. Noticing Miku gazing after him, Ichika leans in towards Miku this time. "Doesn't this seem like the perfect opportunity, Miku?"

Miku turns to her oldest sister, with Nino passing by to go to the kitchen and prepare a rather late dinner. "Perfect opportunity...? For what...?"

"Oh, you know..." Ichika points in the direction of the bath, and that's when it clicks in Miku's head, which turns red and shakes from side to side aggressively, causing her Audio Technicas to rattle around her neck.

"I-I can't do that...! What would Fuutarou think..." she mumbles quickly.

"Oh c'mon, you've got him right here, don't you? You have be more aggressive with how you approach him if you want to see anything come out of this."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Fufu ~ maybe _I _don't, but _you _sure do ~ "

"...uuu..."

* * *

Uesugi sits inside the spacious bathtub that looks like it could hold up to five people. As such, the rest of the bathroom is proportionally large - as one would expect of a bathroom of a luxury high-rise, specially one that houses a set of quintuplet sisters.

"Bathroom's fuckin' huge..." Fuutarou sighs aloud, leaning back against one end of the huge bathtub.

I just said that, motherfucker, let me do my job as a narrator.

Ordinarily Fuutarou is not the type to take a dip in the tub; given the usually busy person that he is, his view towards baths is that of a waste of time when he could simply take the alternative that is a quick and easy shower that takes less time, generally speaking. But at Ichika's insistence when she came up to the bathroom door to tell him to take a bath, not just a shower, Fuutarou didn't feel like going against her. After all, he's the one intruding on their house for tonight, and if she wants him to take a bath, he'll do so against his own preference; it wouldn't sit right with him if he went against the owners of the house, especially against the one who's the most mature among them.

Oh well. Since he's already here, he might as well take some time to relax, which is what Ichika wants him to do anyway, telling him to take a whole bath like this. So he slowly spreads his arms out and rests them across the side of the tub, letting his neck muscles relax and sag the rest of his head backwards comfortably.

But of course he can't _just _relax like this. As his arms spread themselves out and nestle down against the sides of the tub, Fuutarou's mind gets to work organizing his thoughts and the events of the past few days.

The detonator rune that he destroyed with his summoned knife two nights ago was indeed rigged to blow upon destruction or tampering, and in expecting it, Fuutarou was able to parry the force of the small magical explosion at the last second to protect his hands, face, and much of his chest. However, his parry was hasty, and as such he wasn't able to nullify the explosive force entirely, so the bottom layers of magical energy still hit him, injuring him across the center of his chest and leaving him with a nasty cut that spans across both of his own breasts. As large as the wound was, thankfully the magical explosion wasn't terribly concentrated; Fuutarou has reason to believe that whoever rigged that bomb only meant for it to maim and distract, not necessarily to kill whoever tries to defuse it, so the cut that he received from it wasn't able to pierce deep into his body and only mostly did epidermal damage instead, keeping his lungs safe and his ribs intact for the most part, though the ribs nearest to the cut naturally feel quite sore.

The explosion also happened to clip his smartwatch. He didn't leave it behind at home because he didn't feel like he needed it for tonight; he did so because he needs to get around to repairing it from the magical damage it's taken, on top of the physical damage too. He can repair it in both cases, but it's going to take him some time - hopefully he can come up with another alibi to give to Yotsuba to keep her from worrying about it.

He's taken the time to patch himself up so he just needs to deal with a layer of gauze around his chest to hold the magical stitches he's put on himself in place - correction, the gauze is there not to _hold _the stitches in place, but merely to _hide _them from view. Then again, his white dress shirt would've sufficed if hiding the magic stitches was all he needed to do, but just in case something happens that he'd lose his shirt in some bizarre circumstance that he can't imagine, that gauze is there.

Though, now that he's in the bath, none of that matters because obviously his shirt is off and he's also taken off the gauze around his chest with it.

Since the wound isn't exactly healed all the way, Fuutarou has made sure to fill the bathtub with just lukewarm water so that his wound won't get aggravated. While he did already take the time clean the wound when he treated it, there are still some dried spots of blood dotting the outline of the large cut, so Fuutarou has peeled whatever he can safely remove off and tossed the specks into the bathroom wastebasket so that they won't dirty the bathwater, on the strange off-chance that Ichika also asks him to keep the bathwater, which he wouldn't understand why.

As for the drugs...once the plastic explosives were defused the hard way, Fuutarou gathered all the metal cases and put them back in their long cardboard box to take to the hospital to store them there with Dr. Nakano's approval. Keeping small amounts of drugs in the adjacent abandoned buildings around their own office at Daikazoku Square is fine by Fuutarou, but a quantity like that is just nothing but bad news, especially if gangsters and drug dealers show up to their door because they've tracked the drugs down somehow. And he's already had enough of that with debt collectors in the past...

The biggest problem that Fuutarou needs to assess following that incident is the fact that his presence is now on the news. His escape on street-level was caught on tape by one of the on-board cameras from a nearby police car, so footage of him is now circulating through the news outlets, though he doesn't need to be worried about being identified under normal circumstances because the cardboard box, luckily, blocked his face and upper body from view of the camera. Even still, a description of his mage's outfit is now in circulation as well, though he can deal with that over time with large-scale silencing spells that will cause the city to slowly but eventually forget about his description, so long as he doesn't do anything to renew the public's interest in him.

But it's not the general public he's worried about, it's the bad guys. The gangsters, Rio himself. Now that his stunt is being reported and circulated, Rio knows without a doubt that Fuutarou is actively working to obstruct his or her progress in the city, and that's a huge advantage that Fuutarou has lost in his silent opposition to Shirazumi Rio. The wounded mage expects Rio to retaliate in some way, by either going after the quintuplets again, now that Rio will probably make the connection that the same mage who thwarted his plan of kidnapping the quints is the same guy who got on the news for interrupting the police's drug bust, even if Rio himself or herself isn't the one actually responsible for setting up that drug cache in the middle of the city, or by hastening whatever schedule or agenda that he or she's got in motion.

Fuutarou is betting his chips on the former, that the quintuplets will once again be in danger. Ichika's suggestion of having him stay over for a night couldn't have been more fortuitous, because it gives him the perfect alibi he needs to stay with them in the aftermath of his bungled investigation to ensure their safety from an attack, should one come.

Briefly running a hand across the magically stitched wound on his chest that is still healing, Fuutarou frowns to himself. Should the girls be attacked as he suspects, and it's Rio himself or herself, would he still be in good enough shape to fight? As Nino unwittingly demonstrated earlier with her slap, the wound is still quite sensitive and raw, and even the lightest of attacks would force a debilitating reaction out of him, and that's all Rio would need to take advantage of to make short work of him, and Fuutarou doesn't expect Rio to be a mere pushover as far as magical ability goes. At least it's only the pain that he needs to deal with; he himself isn't functionally limited at all, though perhaps some of his stronger attacks that could take a toll on his body would have much more immediate and worse repercussions for his wound.

While he soaks in the bathtub, deep in his own thoughts, the door to the bathroom opens suddenly, without warning, and Fuutarou glances up in time to see the door also close behind the girl who's just entered...only to immediately scowl irritably back up at his sudden visitor.

"...aren't you supposed to be minding the food right now?" he asks in disbelief at Nino standing at the door of the bathroom, her tense blue eyes fixed on the blue-hued stitches that hold the large cut across his chest closed together. The second quintuplet has since changed out of her school clothes and into her new Asahiyama High tracksuit for the sake of comfort for tonight.

"Food's going to take a bit to prepare, so you let me worry about that," Nino snaps back, but Fuutarou senses a distinct lack of animosity in her voice now, compared to their usual discourses throughout the day.

"Fine, I'll leave that to you, but just because _you're _the one barging in on _me_, doesn't mean I like that very much either."

"Shut up, this isn't _your _house. If I want to come into my own bathroom, I will."

"One of these days you're gonna wish you didn't say that, just saying." Fuutarou still scowls back up at Nino. "So what the hell do you want? You wouldn't just barge in here knowing I'm trying to take a bath without wanting to talk to me about something."

For a moment, Nino doesn't answer right away, because her tense blue eyes are glued to his chest, whose wound is barely able to peek out from the top of the water. Because Fuutarou hasn't used hot water to fill the bath, the bathroom air is clear and unfogged, allowing Nino to drink in every detail that she sees.

Fuutarou's body, save for his limbs, sports a large number of scars of varying sizes, in addition to the fresh new wound on his chest currently and will surely leave a scar in its place once it's healed too. Many of the scars are big, wide, and sprawling, like tire marks plastered over his skin, but a fair number of them are also much thinner ones, as though he's been slashed and stabbed many times. In a few places, there are even scars _on top of _scars, and from an angle, they almost look like a very weird tattoo of sorts, though a second look would clarify that this is not the case.

"So that's why you acted like that earlier today right before we got home, huh?" Nino folds her arms at her bathing tutor. "When I hit you on the chest like that."

"Yeah. Maybe next time you should be careful and not hit people carelessly like that."

"You can't blame me for that, I didn't know. That's your own damn problem for not taking care of yourself like Ichika told you to."

"Mm, you're not wrong there, so...thanks for the advice, I guess. Though, again, I have to wonder when _you_ started giving a shit about my health like Ichika or Miku do."

"I don't, okay? Don't get the wrong idea here, I'm just letting you know so that I don't have to keep listening to Ichika or Miku fawn over you like they always do."

"Fawning...? Well, I'm aware that they do care about me, but I think what they're doing is understandable, since I guess they see me as more than just a tutor..."

Leaning his head back again, Fuutarou closes his eyes while keeping his arms spread out on the side of the tub behind him.

"Anything else you wanna vent at me? I'm almost done with my bath, so - "

"You saw them, didn't you? Miku's eyes, that is."

Just as they close, Fuutarou's black eyes open again at the mention of Miku's strange eyes.

"...from when you joked about intentionally bombing your midterms, right?" he murmurs quietly.

"Yeah. So you did see them."

Fuutarou does not answer, so Nino takes this as a yes.

"You knew about them, didn't you? Answer me honestly."

"I did not, no."

"Liar, you didn't even show any kind of a reaction when Miku showed them. I was watching you at the time, don't even _try _to hide it."

"I'm not lying to you, Nino, I didn't know about this at all. Tonight was the first time I've seen Miku like that."

Hearing the solemn sincerity in Fuutarou's voice, Nino feels compelled to give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

"Then do you know what they are? Why does Miku have those kinds of eyes? Tell me."

"Before I do, tell me what happenned, if something did happen."

Nino pauses for a moment, wondering to herself if it's okay for her to disclose something that's involved Miku without her sister's knowledge, but for her sake, Nino resolves to see this one through.

"Yesterday, our homeroom teacher came in before class started to see if you were there to give you a stack of study guides for you to hand out to the class. You weren't there, so Yotsuba took them for you, and the teacher started talking smack about you, and that pissed Miku off really bad. She looked at him with those same eyes that you saw on her earlier when she cussed me out. I think...I think if I didn't stop her at the time yesterday morning, she might've...done something really bad."

The second quintuplet parts her arms from their armfold and puts her hands on her hips now.

"What are they, Uesugi? I've...I've never known about them until now. Miku said told me earlier yesterday after school that she's been hiding them from us for the past two and a half years, and the rest of us had no idea. Ichika, Yotsuba, and Itsuki have no idea either, though that might be different now after tonight."

"I'm not sure, though I can guess as to what they are with the limited knowledge about the situation I have now."

"Anything's fine. I just want an idea of what it is, because neither of us - me and Miku, that is - have any clue what they are."

"Sure. But before that, answer me this, and answer me honestly, just like what I did for you: are you _only _asking about Miku's eyes, or are you asking about them because of someone_ else's_, too?"

At this, Nino takes a cautionary step backwards, away from her tutor.

"...so you _did _know...you knew all this time...!" Nino bares her clenched teeth back at Fuutarou, who rolls his eyes.

"So you wanted to ask about yourself, too, right? And no, I did _not _know all this time like you think - "

"I don't believe you for a fucking second, Uesugi. I didn't want to ask you about this in the first place because you might act differently towards us, especially Miku, once you learned about our eyes, but now that you've asked me something like that, it's clear now that - "

"Then why the fuck did you even ask in the first place?"

"Because Miku showed them on her own on accident, and you were literally right in front of her! Of course you wouldn't miss something like that! And you're a mage, too, right? You probably feel something like that too if _I _can feel them, of all people!"

"Speaking of feeling, I felt the same about you earlier last weekend when I went into your room to wake you up. That's why I was reaching out to you right before you woke up, because I wanted to check to see what was wrong with you to be giving off such a strong magical signature like you were. Turns out you were alright, so I let it go - but I guess I still needed to worry about it."

"Yeah, because you probably already knew this about us. You're up to something, aren't you? Fucking spill it already."

"I'm telling you, I'm not hiding anything, I'm just learning about all this today. The only thing I've got to hide is the fact that the soup in the kitchen's going to boil over in about a minute if you don't go take care of it soon."

Having completely forgotten about their dinner that she's in the middle of preparing, Nino jumps a little in fright at Fuutarou's reminder.

"We'll talk about this again later tonight after we're done with dinner!" Nino hisses at him and turns to leave.

"Yo, hold up, one more thing," Fuutarou calls after her, and so Nino freezes before she opens the door and turns around to face her tutor one more time before leaving. "While at the moment I just don't know enough to say this with confidence, I do have a guess to what your and Miku's eyes are for now. But again, I'll elaborate further later after dinner - and after we study a bit more, of course."

"Ugh, more studying...?" Nino groans.

"Yeah, of course. Did you already forget what I'm staying over for?" Fuutarou smirks a little. "But I guess for now, I'll give you something to think about until we talk again later. Those eyes that Miku showed - they might be magical eyes. I don't know too much about them because I hardly run into them myself, but in the magic world, they're known as Mystic Eyes."


	31. Therapy

**A/N**

**I could have taken the time to go back and proofread the story like I said I would.  
**

**Well, the proofreading hasn't happened yet. One of these days it will, though. I'm sure of it. I think...I hope...**

* * *

"I'll wash the dishes; you girls wait for me at the table so that you can finish up your English assignment if you're all done clearing the table."

"I'll help you, Fuutarou."

"Okay, fine."

"Awwww, that's no fair, Uesugi-san! You're letting Miku help you?"

"Miku's the one who gets the best test scores among you consistently; think of it as best student privilege. That, and we've washed dishes together before, during that one weekend when Nino got rid of most of you from the house when I came over to tutor."

"Ohoho, Miku, you've been putting the moves on Fuutarou-kun already, huh? I see, I see ~ "

"Ichika, it isn't like that! I'm just trying to help..."

"Alright, enough fooling around, all of you. What kinds of snacks does everyone _not named Itsuki _want?"

"E-Eeeeeeh!? I-I don't get a say in that, Ninoooooo...?!"

"Because you ate all the damn snacks earlier this week!"

As Nino and Itsuki briefly argue between themselves about snacks, Ichika and Yotsuba head to the glass table to get a head start on the English vocabulary and grammar worksheet that Fuutarou has prepared for them to complete while the young tutor in question and Miku begin washing the dishes that they've used for dinner in the kitchen. Indeed, having done this once before, Fuutarou and Miku have allocated roles to themselves to more efficiently complete this chore: Fuutarou, with his dish-washing experience at restaurants, handles the washing and scrubbing while Miku takes the soapy dishes from him, rinses them thoroughly with hot water and sets them in the dish-holder so that they can dry.

"Fuutarou, you missed a spot..." Miku says after taking a dish from him and looking it over carefully, and Fuutarou sets down his current plate to sidestep close to the third quintuplet to take a look.

"Hold it tight for me..." Fuutarou mutters, and he scrubs the missed spot clean with his other hand supporting the plate from behind. Since Fuutarou doesn't just take the dish from Miku, he has to lean in close to her to clean the plate properly - and Miku, realizing how close his face is to hers, leans her own face slowly away from his - but not because she wants to.

Once her small bout with Itsuki is done, with Itsuki grumpily joining Ichika and Yotsuba at the table to do her own tutor-assigned English assignment, Nino enters the kitchen herself to begin preparing some after-dinner snacks.

"Whoa - done with dishes already?" Nino can't stop herself from expressing her surprise to see Fuutarou and her younger sister rinsing down the sinks, with all the dinner plates and utensils cleanly scrubbed and sitting in their racks to dry. "And you didn't even use gloves!"

Scowling a little as he washes his hands in hot water to rinse them of dish soap, Fuutarou turns off the water and shakes as much as water off his hands as he can.

"This isn't a lot of dishes; I'm not gonna bother putting gloves on for this," he replies.

Nino scoffs at her tutor. "You're really lucky you showed up on the night _after _I did the dishes so you had nothing else to wash. If I'd thought to leave the dishes for you to do tonight, I so totally would have!"

Fuutarou stares at her with no change in facial expression.

"...and?" he asks simply while wiping his hands a little on the back of his shirt, in anticipation of visiting the bathroom again to wash his hands properly this time with actual hand soap.

"W-What do you mean, 'and'? That's a lot of dishes, you know!" Nino breathes hotly, bewildered at this lack of reaction from her classmate. "That was a whole week of dishes that I had to go through by myself, from five people!"

"So what, you want me to tell you good job and give you a headpat for doing all that work?"

"N-No! I don't want you giving me headpats, you creep!"

Miku's mind immediately snaps to the memory of Fuutarou giving her a headpat that one time after one of their earlier lessons.

"Then you should really get your sisters to give you a hand. Miku helped me just now, why not ask one of the others too?"

"Okay, Miku helps me sometimes, but that's really only after I'm teaching her how to cook. Ichika's sleeping most of the time, Yotsuba's probably out somewhere helping somebody, and Itsuki's in her room studying or something!"

"Yeah, half the time it's _your _fault that Yotsuba's out there somewhere."

_"Shut up, will you!"_

"And besides, I told you I used to work at a restaurant when I was younger, right? Dishwashing was always a job I could do; it was a job nobody else wanted to do anyway. You think a week's worth of dishes from five people is bad, try just a day from an entire restaurant."

"D-Don't you try to real-world me! That won't get you anywhere, and it certainly won't impress me!"

"You used to work at a restaurant, Fuutarou?" Miku asks curiously, having never heard this one from her tutor before.

"Yeah, as a part time when I was younger. Oh yeah, I only told Nino that, didn't I..." Fuutarou turns back to Nino again, though. "Besides, why the hell would I even _want _to try to impress you? You're gonna try to drug me again, I bet. Got any more drugs that I don't know about somewhere?"

Nino suddenly lashes out to smack Fuutarou across the face, but he banks to the side to avoid the slap like an Indian ringneck performing its mating ritual and quickly hops past the two girls to avoid more follow-ups from the second quintuplet.

"Don't take too long picking out snacks, Nino!" the tutor calls over, as if tauntingly, as he ducks into the bathroom to wash his hands a second time. Nino, shaking a fist at him, makes a pouting face of her own in his wake.

"God, he's so annoying..." she grumbles, glancing at Miku. "How the hell can you even get along with him, Miku? I can't stand that guy..."

"Do you regret joining us for studying?" Miku asks her sister, offering a teasing little grin of her own.

"From the beginning! And wipe that grin off your face, will you."

"But weren't you the one who said that I look better when I'm smiling?"

"Sh-Shut up! You're getting the context wrong!"

Miku promptly leaves her sister to get their snacks ready and sits down with her sisters to begin her English assignment. Normally English is her worst subject and she absolutely detests studying for it, but with Fuutarou teaching them, studying English has become significantly more tolerable now. Of course, it might not be strictly because of Fuutarou's teaching ability alone that she finds it more bearable than before...

Fuutarou also joins the rest of the quintuplets at the table, but to his slight dismay, some of the girls haven't really progressed very far into their worksheets.

"What've you girls been doing? Just chilling?" he asks, checking each of the quints' sheets. Despite working on their sheets longer than anyone else, Ichika and Yotsuba haven't even gotten past the first couple of questions, while Itsuki is already a quarter way through her sheet, and Miku is practically already halfway on the first side.

"English is so haaaaaard, Uesugi-saaaaan..." Yotsuba whines miserably, pulling her face off her sheet that she's tried completing with her nose as her writing utensil.

"Even though you all did pretty decent when we were reviewing before dinner?"

"Well, that's the thing - we study better if you're with us," Ichika winks at her tutor.

"Oh, is that so? Then what's gonna happen during midterms, then? You're just gonna forget everything because I'm not next to you all while taking them?"

"Ah! That's right, that's it!" Yotsuba's green hair ribbon stands erect at attention again. "We don't need to worry about bombing our midterms because we'll all be in the same classroom! That means none of us'll forget anything Uesugi-san's taught us! This is perfect!"

"Yotsuba, at the rate you're going, your ribbon has a better shot at scoring higher than you will on your midterms," Fuutarou says dryly.

"We used to joke that Yotsuba's ribbon is actually part of her head, and it's taking all the nutrients that's supposed to go into her brain," Miku smiles a little, looking up briefly from her work. While she's talking, Nino rejoins the study group with a big tray of snacks - strawberry Pocky pouches, milk chocolate Milano cookies, and five warm cups of heated barley tea to help reset the palette after eating such sweet snacks. Miku, seeing the snacks, frowns a little at the lack of snacks that she actually likes. "Is this all we have?"

"I mean, we still have the green tea macarons in the cupboard, if you want those - " Nino begins to say, but Fuutarou is already getting up, presumably to fetch those macarons. "Hey, wait, Uesugi - "

"Just get started on your work, I'll get it for Miku."

"Nino, could you please help me with this question? I don't know what this word means..." Itsuki asks, holding up her worksheet at Nino across the table, who leans in and squints to read the question.

"De...ba...tuh...?" Nino grimaces at the word. "I...I don't know either."

"_'Debate'_. It's 'とろん' in Japanese," their tutor explains while returning with the box of green tea macarons that he hands to Miku, much to her delight. "That's definitely gonna be on your midterms, no doubt about it."

"How did you know where the macarons were...?" Nino asks suspiciously as her tutor sits down next to Miku at the side of the glass table.

"I saw you pulling snacks out from the upper cupboard as I was coming out of the bathroom. Figured they'd be in there, too. Big snack cupboard you've got..."

"Well, yeah...kinda need it, when you've got someone like Itsuki in your family..."

_"Ninooooooo..." _Itsuki's menacing voice rumbles towards them like rolling thunder.

"Maybe not the time for Itsuki jokes," Fuutarou advises the second quint and points down to her own empty worksheet, causing Nino to stick her tongue out at him and begrudgingly begin her work.

Having watched Miku wash dishes with their tutor and seeing how close the two of them were (read: in proximity), Ichika suddenly scoots over against Miku, forcing her to accidentally push into Fuutarou.

"Alright, pack in, pack in! Fuutarou-sensei, Miku has a question ~ " the eldest quint sings.

"I-Ichika...!" Miku hisses back at her oldest sister under her breath, with her face reddening from the forced contact with their tutor, who looks down at the two of them with concerned suspicion of his own.

Ichika ducks in close to her younger sister so that Fuutarou (probably) can't hear: "Ask him the thing we talked about at dinner. Now's your chance..."

"You had a question, Miku? Even if Ichika's the one forcing you to ask it..." their tutor and classmate asks, deciding to brush off Ichika's out-of-place behavior just now. "Your weakest subject _is _English, after all..."

"Um...y-yeah...I have...I have a question..."

Taking a quiet but deep breath, Miku readjusts her headphones that've been knocked slightly askew from Ichika's push a moment ago. Looking up at her tutor, she then deploys her question:

"...what type of girl do you like, Fuutarou?"

All the pencils that are writing, tapping, or rolling on their respective sheets of paper simultaneously stop. Like a clock that's run out of battery, the rest of Miku's sisters, save for the eldest, freeze. Perhaps most surprisingly, the quintuplet who's asked this question herself looks straight up at her tutor after asking, as if this is just another question that she's asking her classmate as part of their tutoring session.

"...and what exactly does that have to do with our midterms, might I ask first...?" Fuutarou slowly inquires back with a narrowed eye of puzzlement.

"Indeed, I actually cannot agree more! Miku, please refrain fr - " Itsuki begins to say out of embarrassment for her sister, but Yotsuba, sitting next to her, trumps her protest with,

"Suddenly I'm interested too! Uesugi-san, do you have a type? Like what kind of girl suits your fancy the most?"

Fuutarou quickly scans the quintuplets. Miku is looking up at him intently; Ichika looks like she's enjoying the quiet chaos that she's helped to sow; Itsuki is hesitating on what to do; Yotsuba is also staring back at Fuutarou with excitement; Nino...hasn't really reacted much and is quietly filling out her worksheet steadily.

At first furrowing his eyebrows at this unnecessary distraction from their work, Fuutarou suddenly gets an idea.

"Alright, I'll tell you my preferences in a girl. My top _five_, in fact," he announces, gesticulating with a bit of added flair, much to Ichika's, Miku's, and Yotsuba's varying degrees of delight. "But! There's a catch - if you wanna know that badly, I'll tell you them one at a time for each worksheet that gets done."

"So you want us to finish these worksheets first before you can tell us...?!" Yotsuba groans, reeling in her seat at the table a little, but with instantly renewed motivation, she bounces back and grabs her pencil with conviction. "You drive a hard bargain, Uesugi-san! We'll take you up on it!"

"I-I want no part of this! Please leave me out of this!" Itsuki says hastily, looking around at her sisters with a bit of panic, only to find that all of a sudden, her entire family is now busy jotting answers down on their respective worksheets. "Wait, even you too, Nino?!"

"I'm just doing my work here ~ " Nino shrugs simply, not even bothering to glance up at her younger sister. Isolated as such, Itsuki weakly goes back to her own worksheet.

"Oh, but we can still ask for help for some of these questions, right?" Yotsuba asks with a weak laugh.

"Yeah, of course. That's what I'm here for..."

Within about fifteen minutes, the quintuplets, one by one, finish both sides of their worksheets with a little help from their tutor, and with each one complete, Fuutarou keeps his side of the deal.

"I'm done," Miku announces first, perhaps not surprisingly.

"Alright. Then first up - a girl who's resilient."

"Same here," Nino follows Miku, again perhaps not surprisingly.

"Second - a girl who's energetic."

"I'm done..." Itsuki says slowly.

"Third - a girl who's hardworking."

"Here, here ~ " Ichika is next to finish.

"Fourth - a girl who's outgoing."

"And I'm last as always!" Yotsuba giggles, showing her finally completed worksheet.

"And fifth - a girl who's always willing to help. Give me your worksheets, by the way, I'll grade them."

As the quints hand their tutor their English worksheets, Yotsuba tries to remember all of Fuutarou's preferences in a girl.

"Always willing to help...outgoing...uh, hardworking, I think...I forgot the others..." the fourth quint thinks aloud while using her fingers.

"Energetic and resilient," Miku finishes for her.

"Man...you're basically looking for the perfect girl, then, aren't you, Fuutarou-kun?" Ichika smiles teasingly up at her tutor. "I didn't know someone like you had such high standards for a girlfriend."

"Yeah...should stand to reason that I've never fucking had one," Fuutarou chortles darkly.

"But you don't want one ~ ?"

"I need to worry about taking care of my family first before worrying about how I'm gonna pick up a chick, Ichika."

"Aw, c'mon, lighten up a little. Then how's this - what do you find cute in a girl? As in, do you like girls with long hair? Short hair? Black hair? That kind of stuff!"

"Ichika, we really mustn't ask him such personal questions like that, he's our _tutor_..." Itsuki protests yet again, but this time, Fuutarou is the one to calm her down.

"It's fine, I did use this as a way to get you all to do your work here," he points out while grading the quintuplets' worksheets with a red pen, using the traditional circles and checks to indicate correct and incorrect answers. He does make sure to write the circles and checks small though so that he can go over the incorrect answers with each of the quints. "Hair preference...if I had to choose, I think...I've always liked long hair."

Miku, who'd been looking a little dismayed at all the previously mentioned qualities that she didn't have, magically no longer looks dismayed; Nino looks up to blink at Fuutarou and in doing so notices Miku's eager reaction.

"Aww...that means I'm out of the running, aren't I..." Yotsuba groans, adopting the dismay Miku once showed.

"In the running for...what, exactly?" Itsuki asks in disapproval.

"Aha, so long hair's your thing, huh? Well, what do you know, you've got a girl with long hair right next to you ~ " Getting up and tiptoeing around the third quintuplet, Ichika lightly lifts up Fuutarou's unoccupied left arm and sets its hand down on top of Miku's head. "So? What do you think, Fuutarou-kun? Miku's hair feels super nice, doesn't it?"

Glancing over at the top of Miku's head, Fuutarou can't see her face because she's ducking it down so that he can't see the blush that she's got.

"I guess so. I'm not too sure what exactly I should be feeling, though."

"What, doesn't it get your blood pumping, at the very least?"

"Not really."

Pouting at Fuutarou's lack of tact, Ichika turns to her trusty sidekick of a quintuplet.

"Yotsuba, _CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECK!" _she rattles, pointing at their tutor.

_**"It's Yotsuba tiiiiiime!" **_the namesake quintuplet roars, and gunning her engines, she springs off the carpet to round the corner and dive at her tutor, who swiftly drops his red pen and rolls backwards to avoid the headlong dive-tackle from Yotsuba.

"Round two, huh, Yotsuba? And this time you've sold yourself out to the evil mastermind herself, Nakano Ichika!" Fuutarou once more speaks in an archetypal anime protagonist voice as he and the quintuplet in question both get up swiftly to their feet in their second showdown. "I can't have that happen here. I'll have you pay for your crimes!"

"The only one who must pay for his crimes is you, Uesugi-san!" Yotsuba counters, pumping her fists eagerly. "Surrender now, and I shall spare your life! Resist, and I can't guarantee your safety!"

"We'll see about that, Yotsuba!"

And with that, Fuutarou turns and makes a break for it. For the second time, Fuutarou runs around the first floor with Yotsuba nipping at his heels like a guard dog chasing out a cat burglar.

"...you told us about them doing this before, right?" Nino sighs as she watches the two of them do laps around the house, and Miku nods. "I guess this's what it'd be like if we could keep a dog and a cat around the house."

"A tutor really should not be goofing off like this..." Itsuki frowns deeply, munching on a bag of strawberry Pocky in the meantime.

"You're one to talk, Itsuki, watching them run around like that while munching on snacks. Is this like watching TV for you?"

"I mean, it _is _quality entertainment..." Ichika laughs as Fuutarou, intentionally pretending to trip again, lets Yotsuba catch up to him in the interest of time and gets tackled for his trouble to the ground, resulting in Yotsuba lying on top of him with her right ear conveniently resting on his chest.

Noticing where Yotsuba's head is, Nino takes a quick glance up at Fuutarou's chest - and sure enough, he's suppressing a noticeable grimace of pain that, to the others, probably can pass as a look of discomfort.

"Yotsuba, w-what are you doing now?! Please get off him, that is not something a student must do with a - " Itsuki begins to say, but then Yotsuba pulls her ear off her tutor's chest and immediately cries,

"Your heart's beating real fast, Uesugi-saaaaaan!"

"No shit, Sherlock, I was runnin' around with you this whole time!" Fuutarou barks back up at her, causing Ichika and Miku to laugh in the background. Nino, too, even snorts under her breath at this little element of manzai between the two of them. "Okay, that was enough screwing around - let's get back to work before Itsuki kicks me out of the house."

"I never said I would do anything like _that_..." Itsuki frowns indignantly back at her tutor as he and Yotsuba resume their spots at the table so that Fuutarou can finish his grading. "You are confusing me for Nino, are you not?"

"Well, you two _were _part of the Anti-Uesugi Fuutarou Coalition..."

"How the hell did you know we even had a name for that?!" Nino yelps out in surprise, staring back at her tutor in horror.

"Yotsuba told me about it. You know her - she can't ever keep a secret like that," Fuutarou thumbs over in Yotsuba's direction, who chuckles nervously and raises a hand behind her head in apology. "She sold you two out in exchange for some of the mandarins you had in the fruit bowl on the dinner table."

_"HOW CHEAAAAP!" _both Nino and Itsuki cry out in unison as Ichika and Miku once more laugh together at their sisters' own set of antics.

"Okay, done grading your worksheets..." Fuutarou says after a minute or two while the quints chat in the meantime, waiting for him to finish. "To the surprise of absolutely nobody...Nino did the best again with a score of 40."

The quintuplets let out a painful mix of reactions ranging from quiet cringes to loud groans as their tutor passes back their work. When Nino receives her paper back, just underneath her score, there's another number - 1.

"All this studying just to get these kinds of scores..." Ichika sighs, hanging her head in defeat after digesting the red 29 score on her sheet.

"I swear I studied very hard in English, too...!" Itsuki whines with a similar lament at her own score of 20.

"Were you even studying properly, then...?" Fuutarou asks the youngest quintuplet.

"Th-That is why I decided to give you a chance!"

"So I'll make the most out of that chance you're giving me. Let's start by going over the questions you got wrong - "

"Hold up, Fuutarou-kun, Nino's been studying English pretty hard lately, you know? She's been studying in her room at night lately, and she's studied so much that she's still managed to score the highest, even without your help," Ichika mentions enthusiastically as Nino looks away from both her older sister and her tutor.

"But English's her best subject; it's not like she needed to study that much to be the best among you girls at it."

"Oh c'mon, don't be like that. Here, I've even got proof..."

"Huh!? Wait, Ichika, wait, wait, wait, don't show him that, Ichikaaaa!" Nino cries out suddenly when she realizes what her older sister's about to do, but it's already too late, for Ichika has her phone out with the audio file ready to play, and her phone is already playing the voice file back by the time Nino dives for her sister's phone.

"What _I _wanna know is, why the hell do you have a recording of Nino studying English?" Fuutarou, bewildered at the fact that Ichika even has proof of her younger sister studying, reels a little with his eyes fixed on Ichika.

"I'll be honest, I used it as a way to convince Nino to come join us for this weekend," Ichika chuckles lightly.

"Ah...that's why?" Fuutarou nods firmly. "Good work."

As if this were all planned, Ichika and Fuutarou both raise their right hands and give each other crisp high-fives.

"Don't act as if you planned all this!" Nino blurts out in resistance. "Neither of you are _that _good!"

"Oh ho, but that's what _you _think. What if Ichika and I really _are _in cahoots?" Fuutarou projects to the second quint mysteriously, stroking his imaginary beard with posh authority.

Miku also begins to pout back at Fuutarou too. "Fuutarou, you let Ichika help you, yet you told me not to when I said I was trying to...?" she complains. "I see how it is. Meanie Fuutarou."

"Now, now, it all worked out in the end though, right? And also, Fuutarou-kun, you ought to praise Nino for all her hard work, right? Give Nino a headpat too!"

"Nuh uh, no way, no way! I'd rather _die _than let Uesugi pat my head like I'm his lapdog or whatever!" Strongly protesting, Nino cements her intentions by diving away from the glass table and lifting herself up to the long couch to get out of arm's reach of her tutor.

"Watch out when you go to sleep, Nino, Uesugi-san's hand might show up out of nowhere and give you a headpat while you're sleeping ~ !" Yotsuba catcalls creepily, and working off her tease, Fuutarou slowly reaches his hand out over the glass table towards Nino, even though she's safely out of his reach, while humming the Jaws theme, causing Nino to hiss like a cat back at him and kick at him with her feet.

"Um, can we _please _return to studying? It is late at night, and we really must wrap this up so that we can go to sleep!" Itsuki reminds everyone.

"But it's a Friday night, though? It's not like we have anything tomorrow," Ichika shrugs, but Fuutarou nods in agreement with the youngest quint as he resumes his seat again.

"No, Itsuki's right, I've been screwing around a little too much. Let's go over these answers real quick, shall we? Let's begin by me telling Yotsuba for the thirteenth time this week that you don't spell 'rice' as 'lice', goddamn it!"

Another round of hearty quintuplet laughter fills the warm Nakano living room.

* * *

"Eeeeeh...!? But - but Uesugi-san, we can't make a guest sleep on the couch here!"

"Don't worry about it, I've slept on worse. Besides, you're not the one making me sleep here, I'm doing it out of my own free will."

Studying is concluded for the night, and after about an hour of winding down consisting of another round of warm barley tea and some board games, the girls and their tutor are getting ready for bed, and Yotsuba, who's brought up the ever-important topic of where Fuutarou would be crashing for the night, is arguing with her tutor over the issue.

"But even still, we can't have that! What will our neighbors think if they hear about us letting a guest of ours sleep on the couch?"

"We have neighbors...?" Miku dryly points out.

"Yeah - last I checked, this whole thirtieth floor belongs to the Nakanos," Fuutarou shrugs. "Your nearest neighbors are like, three floors down or something because they haven't found anyone else to fill up the two floors below you."

"Y-You know what I mean, Uesugi-saaaaaan!" Yotsuba whines loudly, shaking her fists at her tutor and causing the hoodie of her bear pajamas to shake back and forth behind her neck.

"I don't see any problem with leaving him down here to sleep," Nino's voice calls out as the quint herself emerges from the bathroom, having brushed her teeth and otherwise prepared for bed. "Where else is he going to sleep, anyway?"

"He can take my bed," Miku suggests. "I can just spend the night with someone else."

Nino starts to frown at her sister's suggestion, but then, her expression lightens up. "Hm, yeah, sure, I'm fine with that," Nino nods quickly. "Just make sure to lock all your doors at night, everyone."

"I mean, don't we already do that?" Miku shrugs.

"Well, just in case you don't already. Don't want our doors unlocked during a night when Uesugi's over at our place, do we?"

"I really doubt locked doors can stop him, Nino..."

"I-If he tries anything funny and breaks into our rooms or anything, we can sue him for property damage! We should all have our phones near us too, just in case! That way, we can call Papa and let him know if he's - "

"Alright, calm down, Chris Hansen. None of you are even worth breaking into your rooms for, anyway," Fuutarou smirks.

"Th-That's because you've never had a girlfriend in your life, and you never will!" Nino retaliates angrily.

"Yeah, not when I've got the five of you on my hands - after I'm done tutoring you all, I'll be glad I never got a girlfriend in the first place."

"Then you stay that way! Hmph!"

Storming off and scaling up the stairs, Nino leaves the living room first and loudly shuts the door after herself; during her exit, though, Ichika, emerging from the bathroom next after Nino, calls out to Miku and Yotsuba.

"Itsuki's almost done, so you two can go get ready for bed," the eldest quint directs, and she turns to Fuutarou once her sisters comply and head off to the bathroom. "Come with me for a second?"

Silently following the oldest quintuplet sibling, the young tutor joins Ichika out on the veranda, closing the large glass door behind him to find Ichika leaning on the veranda railing and gazing up at the large stretch of black endless night sky over them.

"What's the occasion?" he asks her quietly, joining her briefly, though he doesn't quite see the appeal of staring up into an empty void.

"Oh, nothing much. I just wanted to ask you about how today went," Ichika smiles pleasantly back at her tutor.

"Surprising...I never thought of you as someone who'd go out of your way to ask me something like that."

To his small surprise, Ichika also gives him a little pout.

"Muuu. Fuutarou-kun, you can't just go around saying mean things like that to girls. Nino's right, you know? You won't ever get a girlfriend if you keep acting like this."

"Me getting a girlfriend aside, what did you want me to talk to you about?"

"But I just said it?"

"Oh, you were being serious about that."

"Geez! There you go again, being mean."

"Sorry, it took me a moment to realize you were being serious. I'm not used to you being serious..."

"Is it because of all the teasing I've done to you in all our study sessions?"

"Oh, so you're at least a little self-aware."

Ichika hangs her head in defeat. "You're never going to stop being mean, will you? You could at least try to be a little _less _mean - after all, Nino and Itsuki showed up for tonight, didn't they?"

"They did, yeah. And if you're to be believed, you were the reason why they even decided to join in the first place, even if how you did it _was _pretty shady..." Fuutarou gives a rather evil grin. "But I liked it. A little backstabbing never hurt anybody."

"Not only does that statement sound _really _wrong, but it wasn't even backstabbing to begin with. The only backstabbing that happened was Nino telling Itsuki to join us."

"I guess you're right." Fuutarou also leans on the railing, and Ichika, having taken her arms off the railing, resumes her own lean. "Today was...a handful, hah. It was bad enough trying to teach the three of you who've been with me since the start...but with those two added...hoo boy."

"But you expected to teach all five of us from the start, right? Like you were initially contracted to."

"Yeah, but going into it I figured it wouldn't be easy. Now I know it's going to be an absolute nightmare."

"We're trying our best, okay? Cut us some slack."

"I already was, not outright forcing Nino and Itsuki to join us earlier."

"Then why didn't you?"

"Didn't I explain that one before? I didn't want to alienate you girls; I wasn't able to make a good first impression, and doing anything that might jeopardize our relationship would've sealed Nino's and Itsuki's opinions of me before I could even get the chance to do my job."

"But it's not as though you could've convinced them to join otherwise; the only reason why they were here tonight was because of me."

"Yeah. You really helped me out there, not gonna lie."

"Fufufu..." Ichika smiles victoriously up at her tutor. "Then it looks like you owe me one."

"As much as I hate to admit it, yes, I do."

"Do you really dislike me that much, Fuutarou-kun...?"

"I don't _dislike _you, I just don't know what to think of you."

"Hey, what's _that _supposed to mean..."

"Everyone else acts in a way that lets me form a solid opinion of them. Nino doesn't like me, especially not when I'm in your house, but she's at least a nice enough person to give me a hand in some stuff. Miku likes me being around, and she's pretty cooperative in whatever I do. Yotsuba's cooperative too and she's a nice girl, but she's pretty zany, and she's nice to a fault. Itsuki doesn't like me either, and up 'til now, she's been pretty against everything I've tried to do."

"And what about me, then?"

"Well, the fact that you're not trying to kick me out of your house is great, for starters..."

"That's...a pretty low bar, I think."

"Not as low as you think if Nino used to be the one setting it most of the time, but I digress. You were there from the start too, taking my lessons...so I appreciate that. But despite that, you gave me a bit of a Yotsuba vibe - you'd goof off sometimes, not really pay attention, fall asleep in the middle of a lesson, and as of late not even bother to show up sometimes because of your part-time."

"Ehehe...sorry about that."

"So you'll excuse me for getting the sense that you don't fully feel invested in working to get your grades up."

"I'll be working on improving, Sensei, don't you worry about it."

"Sure hope I don't need to."

"Then how about Nino and Itsuki today? How was it, actually teaching them?"

"Not bad, surprisingly. I thought they'd be a lot snarkier and grumpier to me than they were, but they were actually manageable. Maybe they really _do _care about their midterms..."

Ichika turns to smile at her tutor. "Those two might act like that to you, but they're good girls. All of them are, really."

"I've yet to see it..."

"You will eventually, I'm sure of it. Given how long you're stuck with us..."

"Hey, if I didn't _have _to be stuck with you all for an entire year, I wouldn't have chosen to either."

Sighing heavily, Ichika leans back on the railing. "Does Raiha-chan have to deal with this kind of grumpy Fuutarou-kun every day too? I hope you don't act like this to her."

"She does, unfortunately."

"Oh dear...I pray for her well-being in the future..."

"She'll be fine, don't worry. Her grades are good, unlike yours."

"Aaaaah! You actually went there! Fuutarou-kun, you dummyyyyy!"

"Sorry, I couldn't resist."

"Was that another low-hanging fruit, then?"

"Yeah. I'm not much of a jokester, so I gotta take every easy joke that I can get."

"Hmph. At least you admit it."

Fuutarou straightens out his back and folds his arms, surveying the view of the city from their high-rise.

"I just hope that those two will stay, even after midterms...even if that's just a shot in the dark that I have. And I can't rely on your generosity or one of your sisters' to help me out this time."

"Just keep doing what you're doing. You're an earnest guy, and a hard worker. So long as you keep doing what you're doing, you'll be good...everything will be okay," Ichika says reassuringly.

"You think so, huh...?"

"There are some things that I can do, Fuutarou-kun, but at the same time, there are things only _you _can do, too," she murmurs comfortably. "So all you need to do is do them."

Ichika once more smiles pleasantly up at her tutor, which Fuutarou gazes back at for a moment.

"Huh..."

"...what is it?"

"...nothing much. It's just...the five of you were basically all born at the same time, so I didn't think that mattered all that much. And you didn't really give the vibe up until now, so that didn't help either."

Ichika feels a large hand rest on top of her head.

"But...I guess you really are the eldest, huh?"

Simply looking a bit confused, Ichika tilts her head to the side a little, much like her sisters would.

"...and what exactly is _this _guy doing?" Ichika asks, pointing up at Fuutarou's hand on her head.

"Weren't _you _the one who said to do this?" Fuutarou pulls his hand off the quint's head anyway.

"But I didn't do anything."

"You were the one who got Nino and Itsuki to join us. I think that's a pretty huge favor you've done for me."

"Is it...? It's nothing special, really..."

"Well, if you say so...by the way, it's pretty cold out, so we should head inside. Don't want you catching a cold the weekend right before your midterms..."

"It's cold? Doesn't really feel like it..."

At this, Fuutarou, who was about to head back inside, suddenly whips around and puts his hand gently but firmly against Ichika's forehead before she has a chance to react. Ichika inhales a little sharply at his sudden action, but she does nothing other than close her eyes when she feels his hand press against her head for a second time.

"Your temperature certainly _is _warm, but it doesn't feel like it's because of a cold or fever. Are you embarrassed somehow?" Fuutarou asks directly.

"W-W-Why would I be...!? I'm fine, there's - there's nothing wrong!" she stammers quickly.

"Oh, you must be one of those girls who gets all embarrassed because a boy touches you directly or something. My bad, I forgot you used to go to an all-girls' school..."

Wanting to object and tell her tutor that this isn't the case, Ichika realizes that it's probably for the best if she lets Fuutarou sit on his assumptions.

"You can head in first. I want to stay out here for a little longer," she says instead, gesturing towards the interior of the house.

"Sure, just don't stay out here too long."

"I won't, I won't."

Watching her tutor head back inside, Ichika turns to face the city again, her cheeks circulating pulsing warmth through them.

* * *

Nino and Miku listen to the last bedroom door close for the night outside. Already cuddled together underneath Nino's blanket, sharing the bed space with all of Nino's plushies and stuffed animals, the two sisters, pretending to have gone to sleep, listen to the ticking of Nino's nearby alarm clock in the darkness and silence of her quiet room.

Of course, it doesn't stay totally quiet for long, once the penthouse enters its deep sleep for the night.

"...let me guess," Miku whispers to Nino, lying on her side to face her sister in bed, "you walked in on Fuutarou while he was taking a bath."

"I-It wasn't - it's not like that...!" Nino hisses back quickly, but she, too, makes sure to keep her voice down. "Don't make it sound like I was trying to do something weird..."

"I wasn't trying to...you're the one who's assuming that I was...but that's besides the point. You talked to him about our eyes, didn't you? That's why you wanted me to come sleep with you for the night, right?"

Nino nods. "Uesugi said that he'd talk to us about it once we all went to bed."

"How do you know?"

"When he passed me my worksheet back that he graded for us, he wrote '1' underneath my score. I assume he wants us to talk to him at one in the morning."

Miku turns to look at the alarm clock that's also sharing the bed with them - it reads 12:52.

"Eight more minutes, huh..." she murmurs, settling back underneath the covers again. "...but is he going to come to us to talk, or do we need to go to him?"

"Uhhh..." Nino hesitates, realizing that she doesn't know that part. "I...I don't know...he didn't say..."

"Mm..."

"...you don't sound very concerned about that."

"It's Fuutarou." Miku lifts her head up off her half of Nino's pillow for a moment so that she can tuck in her hair more comfortably for the next few minutes. "I'm sure he'll let us know somehow."

Peering with a small frown, not that Miku can see it in the present darkness of their room, Nino takes a deep breath first.

"...Miku, be honest with me," she says slowly, "but what...what exactly do you see in Uesugi that makes you like him?"

"L-Like...?" Blushing before she can hide her face, Miku is very glad that Nino can't see her face like this at the moment either. "I don't...I don't _like _him..."

"No, like, you totally do, you don't need to hide it from me. Don't forget that I've basically been sitting in on almost every one of your lessons with him. I see how you've been acting around him. And I can tell you for a fact that over the weeks, you've definitely opened up to him more and more. Like, c'mon, Miku, Ichika and I are the ones who hang out with people the most; you don't think we'd be able to tell if one of our own sisters, whom we live with and have lived with for all our lives, is starting to have feelings for a guy?"

Unable to think of anything to refute Nino's observations, Miku slowly tucks her head in, as if that'll help her hide from Nino at all.

"I'm sure Ichika's noticed this too, but she just hasn't told you about it, so I did. Honestly, this's what I was afraid of, Miku...that something like this was going to happen. That bastard..."

"Don't blame Fuutarou..." Miku responds quickly, feeling a sharp stab of motivation to argue against her sister. "He didn't do anything in particular to...you know, make us like him. I just...I just...well..."

"You just what?"

"I just, um, feel...comfortable...around him. Almost like...okay, let me put it this way, I...I get a similar feeling whenever he hangs out with us as I do when it's just the five of us. I don't know...what it is yet. I want to know...I want to find out."

Miku feels Nino's hand firmly grip her top shoulder.

"You can't trust him still. No matter how much of that kind of feeling you get when you're with him, you can't let that make you forget that he's still someone we didn't even know until barely two months ago, no, not even two months ago."

"I can ask the opposite about you, Nino. I get that you don't like him because to you, he still seems like an outsider, but clearly he's not just an 'outsider' to us anymore." Miku reaches up with her left hand and firmly grabs her sister's to remove her hand from her shoulder. "He protected us from those bad guys at the warehouse. He's kept us safe during our trip to Honolulu during Golden Week. He's been tutoring me, Yotsuba, and Ichika for the past two months to help us improve our grades. Yeah, we might not have known him for very long, but to think that he's still an outsider...why are you so against him, still?"

Miku is at first only met with silence. Then...

"Something feels...off, about him. I'm not sure what it is about him either. I'm not just worried about him because he's an outsider. I'm worried because he himself might pose a threat to us one day."

"...I never knew you were into anime too, Nino. You've been holding out on us."

"I-I _don't__! _I'm not a goddamn otaku like you or Yotsuba are! Where'd you even get _that _idea form anyway?!"

"Because you sounded like someone out of some kind of anime just now..." Miku proceeds to perform a flawless imitation of Nino's conjecture a moment prior. "_Something feels...off about him. I'm not sure - "_

"O-Okay, okay, shut up, shut up! You can stop now, you can stop!"

So Miku stops.

"You can make fun of me all you want, Miku, but you can't take away from what I'm trying to tell you. You might have feelings for him, but you mustn't let that stop you from seeing him for what he is."

"And that is?"

"A mage. A dangerous one, at that." Nino leans in closer to her sister. "Hasn't it ever crossed your mind what would happen to us if he, or someone like him, were to be contracted _against_ us? As in, his job was to come after us somehow?"

"If you're trying to argue the same thing that you did from before, earlier this week - "

"I'm not, this is an actually legitimate concern, isn't it? _Especially _now that we know that we're not exactly normal ourselves!"

A soft knocking silences both of them because both quintuplets freeze up and huddle together at this uncharacteristic, sudden knocking at their door - until they realize that it can only be from one person whom they should have been expecting.

"I'll get the door..." Miku mutters, and she rolls out of bed to open the door slowly to find, sure enough, Uesugi Fuutarou standing in the doorway, having already changed into a different set of clothes to spend the night in, which only amount to a clean white tee and a pair of frayed red basketball shorts.

"Hey. Nino's inside, right?" Fuutarou, also whispering, asks Miku, who nods and steps aside to let him in, closing the door softly after him so that the other quintuplets won't be aware of what might be going on.

When she does, Fuutarou gestures for her to stand back, and he raises his hand up quietly to cast a large blue rune that silently embeds itself into the door. He repeats this action, with the two quintuplets inside the room with him watching silently, for each wall of the room, including the floor and the ceiling - and then does it all again.

"Okay, I've sealed the room from the inside so that we can just talk normally like this and have the lights on and it'll still be fine, we don't have to worry about waking the others up," the young mage informs the girls while he turns on the lamp sitting on Nino's desk for some illumination.

"Tch...magic sure is convenient, isn't it..." Nino grumbles.

"Yeah, and you're taking advantage of it right now."

"I know, you don't have to point it out to me."

Taking a seat on Nino's desk chair, Fuutarou watches Miku climb up onto the bed again to sit down on the edge, with Nino also sitting up on her bed to face him.

"If you're not comfortable with me being in your room again, we can head downstairs to the living room and talk there," he suggests.

"Well, you've already taken the time to, uh, seal my room, I guess...just don't make it long."

"Yeah, it's late at night, I was gonna try to keep this short anyway. So..."

Putting his hands together, Fuutarou gazes intently at the two quintuplets.

"Judging by your lack of reaction, Miku, I assume Nino's already told you why I'm here?" he asks the third quintuplet first, and she nods back at him. "Okay, that saves me a bit of time then. Just for the record, Nino was the one who walked in on me in the bathroom."

"Did you _really _need to mention that...?" Nino hisses angrily at her tutor.

"Well, just in case Miku gets the wrong idea, but anyways, yeah, that's besides the point. The point of why I'm here is to discuss your eyes." Fuutarou parts his hands at this time. "If I may, and if it's not an inconvenience to either of you...can you show them to me?"

"Why? Why do we need to show them to you?" Opposing the young mage's request immediately, Nino lurches forward on her bed to eye her tutor with deep suspicion. "You've already seen what Miku's look like. And...not to mention, you can already see mine, can't you?"

Fuutarou eyes her back with an equal force of intensity counter her suspicion.

"Do you go to a doctor to ask them to see what's wrong with you, and then when they ask to see what's bothering you, you tell them no? Then what the fuck was the point of even asking me to talk about it?"

"You can fucking talk about it _without _having to see them, can't you?"

"Nino, it's really not that big of a - " Miku tries to intervene, but Nino shakes her head vehemently, not having any of Miku's own backtalk.

"Let me handle this, Miku," Nino says firmly to her sister before facing her tutor again. "Talk first. Tell us about these, uh, 'Mystic Eyes' or whatever you called them earlier. _Then _I'll decide if we should show them to you or not."

Pinching the middle of his forehead in stressed disbelief, Fuutarou sighs heavily. "Alright, fine, have it your way, then. But can you at least explain to me the symptoms? Or what's been going on and such? How your eyes first came to be? I at least need to know these things so I can try to determine if they really _are _Mystic Eyes."

After deliberating to herself, Nino reluctantly relents. "Fine, I guess we should at least let you know that much. My eyes used to be blue like everyone else's, but during the first year of junior high, in like the first month or so, my eyesight suddenly worsened out of the blue...no, I wasn't trying to make a pun, by the way. It happened so suddenly - I remember looking up at the blackboard and finding everything to be blurry and unreadable. And then later, when I got my eyes checked to see how badly they'd worsened, I realized that the color of my eyes also changed from blue to purple. It bothered me so much that Papa took the time to get me a special set of contact lenses that changed my eye color back to blue. That was the first sign, but I didn't know it was a sign until super recently - on the night that you gave me the keycard that Papa gave you, that night."

"What happened that night?"

"I woke up in the middle of the night, at around like two or three in the morning, and my eyes felt like they were burning. Like, they hurt a lot. They stopped hurting on their own after a few minutes, but it was...it was like the worst shit I'd ever felt. And normally I'm pretty good around heat and hot stuff since I cook a lot, you know? So I was...I was scared and...and surprised, since I'd never had that happen before. It happened again the following weekend...the day you showed up on Sunday to tutor everyone in the morning."

"We also had this one incident earlier this week while you were out, Fuutarou..." Miku also adds, looking at her sister next to her to see if she'll try to interrupt her like before, which Nino does not, surprisingly enough. "I, uh..."

"Nino told me about it. The part where you wanted to attack our homeroom teacher, right?"

"Well...yeah, that happened, but..." Miku gulps, "...I was going to talk about how...how I dragged Nino out of anger into an alleyway on our way home because she was confronting me about what happened that morning..."

Fuutarou's eyes widen with urgency upon hearing this.

"..._this _I don't know about," he mutters seriously, leaning a bit forward in Nino's chair. The shift in tone towards seriousness is palpable in his voice, causing the two girls to subconsciously sit up at attention. "What happened?"

"She stared right into my eyes with her, uh, Mystic Eyes, I guess," Nino explains. "And then...seeing them, my eyes started acting up like they did before."

"And...that's when I learned that...Nino...also had weird eyes of her own," Miku mumbles dejectedly, lowering her gaze. "I let my own eyes out then because I wanted to scare Nino into being quiet so that she wouldn't bother me. If I knew she had special eyes of her own, I wouldn't have...done something like that..."

"They're hardly _special_, they've done nothing but bother me..." Nino tussles her hair a bit impatiently. "But that's what happened, in a nutshell."

"Do you know when your eyes first came to be, Miku?" Fuutarou asks the third quint.

"Mine? Uh...well...I had this...this one accident in junior high...about halfway through our first year..."

"What kind of accident?"

"I'll explain, she doesn't like talking about it - " Nino at first jumps in, but Miku shakes her head quickly.

"Let me explain...it's something I have to explain on my own," she insists, and so Nino backs down. "Um...do you remember what I told you back in Hawaii, Fuutarou? About how I used to be bullied because my classmates thought that I was the teacher's pet and everything?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"So...there was a bully in my class, and one day she and her friends decided to play the, uh...I think it was called the 'knockout game' or something."

At this, Fuutarou winces a little. "Yeah...I heard about it at the time. Let me guess, they knocked you clean out?"

"Those bitches fucking punched her right in the back of the head during lunch!" Nino snarls with seething, smoldering fury as Miku nods slowly at her tutor. "They stalked her until they knew where she'd go to eat lunch and when she was alone, they rolled up on her and knocked her out! The rest of us were wondering where she was, and Yotsuba went out and found her unconscious in one of the hallways near her homeroom!"

"And she got shipped off to the hospital because of that?"

Both quints nod with different degrees of emphasis.

"After that happened, my eyes...they started becoming...weird," Miku mumbles pensively, looking down at her lap and the floor as though her eyes themselves are becoming heavy with emotion. "I started experiencing...what Nino was talking about."

Fuutarou nods slowly, like a therapist listening to the woes of his clients.

"Hm...alright," he concludes, muttering to himself again.

"So? Do we have these 'Mystic Eyes' that you told us about? And if so, what do they do?" Nino demands.

"Again, let me repeat myself that since I've never really had the chance to study Mystic Eyes or work with people who have them, my knowledge about them is both limited and purely theoretical," Fuutarou clarifies once more. "But if you're willing to let me take a closer look at your eyes, I'll be able to tell with a bit more confidence."

"Nino, just let him see them. Like he said earlier, what's the point of asking him about them if we don't even show them to him first?" Miku points out to her sister, who finally caves again.

"Fine, I get it, I get it...here."

Both quintuplets, in the relative darkness of the room that is lit only by the dim desk lamp on Nino's desk, shut their eyes for a second before reopening them, and Fuutarou finds himself gazing back at two pairs of eyes from which he can sense small but unmistakable signatures of mana. Nino's cosmic purple eyes with blue rings heatedly peer back at him, while Miku's cold, dilated black pupils with their outer blue rings shyly peek out from behind her peachy-red bangs.

"...I've never seen actual Mystic Eyes up close, but someone I worked with in the past said that if I ever see them or run into people who have them and they show them to me, I should be able to tell," Fuutarou says slowly, getting a good look at both pairs of Mystic Eyes. "And...assuming my lack of experience dealing with them doesn't get in the way, those sure seem like Mystic Eyes to me."

"What are they, then, Fuutarou?" Miku asks, and Fuutarou can sense the slight tinge of fear in her voice that makes it quiver ever so slightly.

The young mage closes his eyes to rack his brain of what limited knowledge he has on the matter.

"If I recall correctly...Mystic Eyes are special magic eyes that act as another conduit for magical ability. They're very rare, as you can probably tell because I've personally never seen anyone with them before, and they're probably even rarer than they've ever been due to the decline of magic these days. But I know that they're mutations of Magic Circuits that are located around your eyes, and they can be acquired both naturally and artificially - so you can be born with them, which is natural, or have them develop because of a traumatic event or by straight up replacing your eyes with artificial ones that have some sort of magical talent built into them, which is artificial.

"Mystic Eyes are very powerful and widely feared in the magical world because, like I said, they're a natural outlet for magical power. Think of them this way: normal people only have two hands, so let's say that if the more weapons you could use, the stronger you are, then naturally people would use two weapons, one in each hand, right? Well, Mystic Eyes are a free third or even fourth arm and weapon that some people have. And because they're a physical part of your body and thus connected to the rest of your Magic Circuits, once you get the hang of how they work, they're supposedly a very intuitive way of using magic, since, unless you're fully blind somehow, you use your eyes all the time in everyday life anyway; it's not like you need to learn how to use your own eyes properly. Depending on what they are, and how strong their effects are, they can range anywhere from being nice little augments to a mage's magical power to being straight up cheat codes that give their owners a colossal advantage in a fight, should they choose to use them."

While Fuutarou is explaining all this magical jargon, he realizes early on that his audience probably has no idea what he's talking about, as they're just normal girls who happened to stumble upon their Mystic Eyes, but since they asked for an explanation for what their eyes are, he at least wants to say this much.

"You two are wondering whether or not you're mages like me, right?" Fuutarou asks quietly, and the two girls nod, with Miku doing so first. "Then let me answer that for you now: yes, you are. There's no doubt about it - you're mages, both of you. I feel like that one big dude in that one movie who finds that kid in glasses with the weird scar and tells him 'You're a wizard!' or whatever."

"Your weird jokes aside, we're really mages? Like, as in, the same as...as you?" Nino asks slowly as well.

"The exact same, yes. It's not like there are 'types' of mages - there are different types of _magic _that you can use, sure, but as far as mages are concerned, it's either you are one or you're not."

"But we've lived our lives like normal people all this time. You're telling me my life's basically one of those animes that Miku and Yotsuba watch where I wake up and suddenly realize that I've been a mage all this time?"

"If you develop Mystic Eyes at all in your life like this, that means you've always been a mage. Normal people _can _actually develop Mystic Eyes, but those kinds of cases are supposed to be really rare from what I'm aware of...but that might be the case here, to be honest. Either way, the fact that you did develop those eyes means that yes, you've been a mage all this time. I told you before that normal people can become mages too, right? I'm one of them, in case you forgot."

Nino's lip trembles as she listens to her tutor delivering this revelation to them.

"...Uesugi, tell me this. And tell me this _honestly_," she whispers, "but...does...does Papa know...about us...?"

"I don't know. I may have worked with your dad for a while, but he likes to keep to himself most of the time. So it's a toss-up on whether he knows about you and Miku being mages; I never bothered asking him for much detail about my contract with you girls."

"But he hired you to keep us safe from other bad guys, right?" Miku mentions.

"Yeah, but your dad's in a position of power in this city that would've easily made him privy to the magical side of the world, right? As far as I'm concerned, he could've hired me anticipating a mage setting their sights on you quints, which we know for sure is actually the case. Maybe he hired me knowing who you girls really are, maybe he didn't. I can't, like, _force _my own client to divulge information that he has no intention of sharing unless it's critical information that directly pertains to my responsibilities."

"But us being mages like you's something that's super important, isn't it?" Nino asks.

"Is it, though? Think about it, I never knew about your Mystic Eyes either until very recently. And even now when I do, neither of you ever trained to be mages, and just because you have Mystic Eyes now and I've told you that you're mages, neither of you know how to fight like one. I still have to defend all of you, regardless of your familiarity with magic or not, mainly because you have no familiarity of it to begin with."

"All of..." Miku also leans in towards her tutor. "Then does that mean...Ichika, Yotsuba, and Itsuki...all of them, too...?"

"I won't deny that there's a high possibility that the others may also have Mystic Eyes," Fuutarou nods solemnly. "The five of you are quints; perfectly identical ones, at that. It might be one thing if only one of you developed Mystic Eyes, but now that both of you are here with them, chances are, the others either have them too, or theirs are still dormant for the time being. Have either of you felt anything from the others yet?"

Both girls shake their heads.

"So this really is your first actual exposure to magic, excluding myself, of course..."

"Fuutarou, do you think that whoever's after us...they're after us because of our eyes? Because...because you said before that normal people...there's no reason for mages to come after normal people. Our eyes are the only thing that's making us..._not _normal people. So...?"

"Yeah, they're probably after those, but I don't know for sure. They might not even know that the five of you are even mages to begin with, because I sure as hell didn't until recently and I've been tutoring three of you for the past two months, almost. You've been hearing about the recent kidnappings in the city on the news or whatever? Whoever's responsible for those clearly doesn't care that they're targeting normal people."

Nino leans back in her bed. "I'm still having a tough time wrapping my mind around the fact that all this time, _that's _what our eyes were..."

"It's not that surprising. Again, remember what I said a month ago - two mages can walk by each other out in the streets and not even know they just passed another mage. And, in this world, even normal people like me can learn how to use magic if they discover that it exists. It's rare that normal people with no magic bloodline or background actually become anyone relevant, but it can happen."

"...it's not like we have any kind of...special family background, either," Miku mumbles into her knees, which she's got tucked up against her chest again, as she's prone to do during long conversations like this. "Mama certainly never let us know about any of this..."

"Then...then what are our eyes even supposed to do?" Nino then asks, as would be the natural conversation flow. "Like, what can we do with them?"

"That I don't know. I said earlier that you can use them to perform magic...some of the strongest magic that's possible, in fact. I've been told that Mystic Eyes are held in such high regard that if you have them, no matter who you are, whether you're just a normal person or someone with actual magic relevance, they're a sure sign that you're a strong mage. Let's see...if I remember right, there's stuff like Mystic Eyes of Charming, which let you make someone become attracted to you...Mystic Eyes of Illusion, Mystic Eyes of Enchantment...those are some of the more common ones, I think...but as for what yours specifically do, that I can't say because there are supposedly a ton of different types of Mystic Eyes that can exist, and as someone who's just an observer, I won't know until you figure out how to use them and see them in action for myself."

Fuutarou points sternly at the two Nakanos.

"But don't you let that get to your head. You might be mages, and for now it may come as a shock to you two, but with time you'll get used to it since it's not like your lives are changed _that _much, at least not yet, so you might be tempted to play around with your eyes to see what exactly it is that you can do. I would highly advise _against _that, because now's not a good time to be doing that for reasons I need not mention. Keep them to yourselves for now."

"What about our sisters? Is it okay if we tell them?" Miku asks.

"I'd say...no, don't let them know. Only let them know if you can tell that they've gotten their Mystic Eyes too, because I don't want the others to start panicking like maybe you two have, but until then..."

"So basically what we've already been doing," Nino concludes.

"Right. But even then..."

Grunting a little as he gets up, Fuutarou glances down at the girls on the bed as he turns to leave.

"...even if you do find out what your eyes do, I would advise against becoming actual mages."

"W-We never said that we would!" Nino gripes back at him. "Stop assuming those kinds of things! I don't know about Miku, but personally, I _hate _the fact that I have deal with these!"

"That so? Then maybe I don't need to worry about you as much."

As he's heading for the door, Miku asks one last question.

"...why do you want us to _not _become mages, if we already _are _mages?"

Fuutarou's hand stops at the doorknob.

"...you can still live normal lives, even as a mage. It's actually living like a mage that I don't want you to do, because that shit isn't worth it. That'd be hell you're walking into if you do. Good night, you two."

The door closes with a soft, almost eerily silent click.


	32. No Bullying

4:13 AM.

Such is the time displayed on Nino's alarm clock when Miku awakens groggily next to her older sister in her bedroom. Nature is calling - perhaps that was to be expected with how she and Nino stayed up longer than usual at night talking to their tutor about their newfound identities as mages and their recently discovered (but not acquired) Mystic Eyes.

Robotically, the third quintuplet grunts with a bit of discomfort at having to leave the warmth and comfort of her sister's bed. Nino, quite the deep sleeper herself, merely stirs a little and rolls over onto her left shoulder before continuing to snore quietly into the wall next to her bed when Miku gets out, so Miku unlocks and opens the door to head down to the bathroom.

While washing her hands after doing her business, Miku briefly lets them sit underneath the running faucet. She can't remember the last time she'd had to make a bathroom run in the middle of the night like this that didn't involve feeling like she'd just come out of watching a horror film. Maybe she's not meant to remember such a time to begin with.

Climbing back up the stairs, still half-delirious with sleepiness, Miku heads to the bedroom and lets herself in, closing the door softly behind her and locking it, as is her habit. Her night vision, briefly blinded by the bathroom lights, is slowly returning, so she can at least make out the layout of the room as she drags her feet through it to reach the side of the bed. She lifts up the covers and pulls herself in, draping herself with the covers again and cuddles up with the occupant of the bed who's already sleeping there at the time of her departure for her late-night sojourn.

Her spot on the bed doesn't feel very warm, even though she'd just been sleeping here...maybe Nino's just hogging up the middle of the bed. But then again, that can't be right...Miku has enough space on her side of the bed, and it's not like she's about to fall off the edge. That, and Nino seems a bit more muscular than Miku last remembers...has she been working out lately?

Too sleepy and tired to pursue the answers to this hazy nebula of questions that begins to cloud her mind, Miku closes her eyes for good in the darkness and slips back into her sleep.

* * *

"By the way, girls, do you know where Miku went off to?"

Morning in the Nakano household. Nino, the first one up, dutifully as always even on a weekend at seven o'clock sharp, has prepared breakfast consisting of mini-omelettes, fresh blueberries, fluffy white rice, seasoned greens, and toast and is bringing over the first few plates for her sisters while the rest set the table with utensils and dinner mats on which to put them and their plates.

"Miku? Come to think of it, she's usually pretty good on waking up on her own..." Ichika wonders aloud, looking up at the second floor where their bedrooms are.

"You told her to go sleep with you for last night, didn't you?" Yotsuba reminds Nino as the girls sit down together to eat breakfast.

"I did, but when I woke up, she wasn't there. If she were, I would've woken her up with me to help me out with breakfast, since I'm teaching her and all that," Nino explains, once the girls have given their cultural thanks for the food that they are about to partake in.

"Hmm, that is very strange indeed. Where could that girl have gone off to?" Itsuki wonders aloud as she is the first to take a big bite out of her first mini-omelette.

"Did you check her own room yet? Miku has a tendency to go to the bathroom during the middle of the night: I hear her walking up and down the stairs sometimes since my room's right at the top," Ichika suggests. "She might've gone to the bathroom and then gone straight back to her own room by mistake since she's half-asleep, but that's just my guess."

"I already checked; Uesugi locked the door to Miku's room before going to sleep," Nino shakes her head. "Honestly, having the nerve to lock the door of someone else's room that you're borrowing for the night...how much of a dick can he be?"

"Oh c'mon, don't be like that, Nino, it's Uesugi-san we're talking about here," Yotsuba chuckles a litttle to help Nino settle down. "I'm sure he's the kind of person who might have trouble sleeping with other people around him nearby or something. He _is _spending the night in a place that he's not used to sleeping in, after all."

"That's right, that's right," Ichika nods sagely in agreement. "Fuutarou-kun's quite the introvert, you know? So of course he'll have introverted tendencies. Miku does the same, after all, locking her door at night when she goes to sleep."

"I mean, we _all _should have, with Uesugi in the house and all. Actually, no, I call bullshit on that, he fucking sleeps in class every single day, doesn't he? So clearly he shouldn't have any problems sleeping around other people he doesn't know!"

"But this time's different."

"How so, Ichika?"

Ichika lets out quite a mature giggle. "How so? Well, don't you see the four of us? Of _course _any healthy high school boy would have trouble sleeping when he's got five jaw-droppingly beautiful and sexy classmates surrounding him in the other rooms, wouldn't he?"

"He's...really not the type of person to care about that, I don't think," Nino retorts.

"Oh, he isn't? Then why are you always so concerned about him being in the house? You didn't like the idea of him staying over a night either, right ~ ?"

"Shut up, Ichika! And that's still besides the point; Miku's gone off somewhere and she hasn't texted us or left us a note or anything telling us where she's gone," Nino sighs, trying to shift the conversation in another direction.

"Um...I don't mean to, uh, make everyone panic, but...could it be that something...something happened to her...?" Yotsuba asks sheepishly to her sisters, looking up from her food.

"If that were the case, then Fuutarou-kun would already be up and about searching for her since that's kind of his job, right?" Ichika points out for her sister.

"What about Uesugi-san himself?" Yotsuba asks.

"Still sleeping, remember? For someone like him, he sure is a heavy sleeper," Nino scoffs a little before munching on her slice of toast that she's buttered.

"Again, cut him some slack. He's been super busy the past few days - to the point where he couldn't even crash at school like he usually does," Ichika reminds them. "Don't be so harsh on him; I'm sure he's got a lot going on besides us to worry about."

Nino remembers the stitched wound that stretched across her tutor's chest that she saw after walking in on him intentionally in the bathroom, so she says nothing on the matter.

"Speaking of Fuutarou-kun, how was the tutoring session last night? Was it good?" the eldest quint asks curiously, smiling brightly over at the two former members of the Anti-Uesugi Fuutarou Coalition.

Both Nino and Itsuki glance at each other uncomfortably, as if silently seeing if the other wants to talk first, before parting their gazes just as quickly.

"Just be honest with yourselves; it's not like Fuutarou-kun's here to hear you talk about him," Ichika says gently.

"You never know...maybe he's doing another one of his magic tricks to listen in on us in our own house," Nino grumbles suspiciously.

"I mean, he certainly _could_, but I don't know if he'd be the type of person to go _that _far..."

"You never know, do you? I didn't know _you _were recording me through the wall when I was studying English on my own at night, so if _you _can do something like that - "

"Okay, now you're just being paranoid."

Clearing her throat, Itsuki decides to be the bigger woman between her and Nino and speaks up seriously. "I will admit that, after having studied with him for a day, I can see his skill as a tutor and why Father hired him for us. However, I do feel that his style of teaching is a bit...overbearing for my tastes."

"Well, he kind of _has _to be, right? If you think about it," Yotsuba shrugs. "We're all so dumb and bad at studying that we _need _to have stuff repeated to us over and over and over again like he's been doing to us. You see it whenever Uesugi-san yells at me for forgetting how to spell 'rice' and 'lice' every time it shows up on a test. If he's not drilling us like that, we won't remember anything."

"To add to that, we're all so used to studying by ourselves - well, I guess we can only really say that about you or Miku, and I guess a bit of Nino too," Ichika tacks on. "So that kind of reaction is understandable - you're going from being able to study at your own pace to now suddenly having someone dictate your pace for you."

"It's not the pace that bothers me, it's just how he makes himself sound like he's always right that pisses me off..." Nino remarks.

"Well, isn't that, like, _supposed _to be the case? He's our tutor, after all. You can say the same about all the teachers we've ever had."

"Yeah, but at least some of them make sure to not sound like stuck-up jackasses in the process."

"Does Fuutarou-kun really sound like a stuck-up jackass to you...?"

"Yes."

Ichika sighs defeatedly as the sisters continue their breakfast with a few more minutes of peace.

"I'm sure...I'm sure we'll all get used to Uesugi-san teaching us," Yotsuba murmurs hopefully, surveying the dinner table at her sisters quickly. "I'm not saying that...you know, it'll happen in just a few days. It took me and Ichika a while to get used to it too. But once you are, it's really fun!"

"Perhaps so...but even still, I have my doubts," Itsuki also gives a bit of a sigh after finishing her omelettes and is now working on her toast that she's saved for last.

"If it's only about him being overbearing and you really don't like it that much, you can always just talk to him about it. I'm sure he'll listen to what you've got to say," Ichika encourages her youngest sister.

"Listen to what I have to say?" Itsuki gives her oldest sister quite the incredulous smile. "What a joke. Do you not remember when I told you about what happened between me and Uesugi-kun during our Golden Week vacation?"

"Yes, I still do. But I'm sure he'll behave differently now, now that he's finally able to teach you."

"I am not as sure. Uesugi-kun comes off as the kind of person who uses his experience as a sort of...podium of authority on which he stands to look down on other people around him, just because he is a...a mage, or whatever he is. And letting him teach us yesterday, I got that exact same sense from him."

"He's not like that, Itsuki. He just...comes off that way to you, probably, because, um...I don't know how to describe it..." Yotsuba fumbles for words as she struggles to vocalize her argument, and thankfully Ichika comes to her rescue.

"He only seems that way because of what he's normally like, right? Pretty cold, curt, doesn't have much to say most of the time, always acts and behaves super efficiently."

"Yeah, uh huh, it's exactly that! But if you spend more time with him, you can tell that that's not what he intends to sound like at all. He just wants to help out as much as possible. He only _sounds_ overbearing and...and strict because he wants to make sure we get everything that he's teaching us."

"That sounds really contradictory..." Nino remarks again, still staying on the sidelines to let Itsuki battle this one out on her own.

"But it's true!" Yotsuba insists, but to her dismay, Itsuki still shakes her head, unconvinced.

"I am...still unsure. While I am not against you or Ichika or Miku if you have gotten used to his tutoring by this point, I am not sure if I can be like any of you in this instance."

Then, a little idea pops into Ichika's head.

"Sure you can, Itsuki. And I know just how to do it..." she says with a smile, and she reaches over to Itsuki sitting next to her at the dinner table to begin managing her hair.

"E-Eh? Ichika, what are you...?" Confused at her eldest sister's actions, Itsuki sits still for Ichika so that she can finish her amateur hairstyling.

"I'm saying you can be one of us too if you want to be. Look, all I have to do is just change your hair around a little bit and...ta-da ~ ! Now you're Miku!"

When Ichika steps back out of her chair to stand behind Itsuki, the youngest quintuplet sports a similar style of hair to Nakano Miku, mainly imitating Miku's bangs-covering-the-eyes aspect.

"Whoaaa! Itsuki really _is _Miku now!" Yotsuba gawks widely with amazement.

"Ichikaaaaa! I was being serious here, you know!" Itsuki cries out in indignation again, and Ichika apologizes quickly, giggling all the while.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry! It was just an innocent quintuplet joke and I had to make it since it was the perfect opportunity!"

"Ichika!"

Nino's sudden controlled shout grabs the rest of the quints' attentions as they look over at her, realizing that she's looking pretty serious about the matter as well. Now that she's gotten everyone's attention, the second quintuplet swiftly stands up from her seat at the table, rounds the corner to walk behind Itsuki herself, and then reaches for her hair like Ichika before her.

"You parted her hair the wrong way; Miku has it going the other way," Nino explains, correcting Ichika's mistake and draping Itsuki's bangs the opposite direction so that they properly cover her right eye just like Miku's. "And look drowsier, Itsuki, you have to look like you don't give a shit about anything."

"Oh, and this ahoge is getting in the way too - it's gonna be a dead giveaway," Ichika adds, trying to flatten out Itsuki's cowlick before resorting to simply tucking it underneath a lock of her hair behind Itsuki's head.

"Please do not play dress-up with me right now!" the youngest quint cries, perhaps understandably, but her older sisters finish just as soon as she demands them to stop, and Yotsuba, who sits across from her at the table, claps her hands excitedly.

"Wow, you _really _look like Miku now. If you just match how she talks, Uesugi-san wouldn't know the difference!" she laughs.

And once again, Ichika gets an idea from her sister's remarks and leans in mischievously towards Nino.

"Miku isn't here right now as far as we know, so wanna see if Fuutarou-kun can tell them apart?" she asks her younger sister, who balks at her silently.

"Are you serious...? I don't think he'll fall for a trick like this...he's a mage and all..."

"Yeah, I know, but still, we're identical quintuplets, and we've gone around masquerading as each other before just to mess with people, especially before we entered middle school. Just for old time's sake, let's see if Fuutarou-kun falls for it and mistakes Itsuki for Miku. Maybe he'll treat Itsuki as nicely as he does to Miku."

"I-I do _not _like the sound of that one bit!" Itsuki blurts out from below.

"But like, he already knows that we're identical quints...there's no way he _won't _see through this right away," Nino still doubts.

"Oh c'mon, let's just have a little bit of fun. You should be all for this, given how you usually act towards him, right?"

"Ugh...fine. At least it's not me going in there."

"Are you selling me out _again, _Nino?!"

"I don't know what you're talking about, lalala ~ "

_"Ninooooooo!"_

* * *

Like a car turning on its lights, Uesugi Fuutarou's black eyes open mechanically to signal his awakening.

Blinking a few times to help his returning vision adjust properly, the young mage can immediately sense that he's slept much longer than usual simply by the fact that his head isn't pounding his brain into oblivion the moment he wakes up, or at least not as much as he's used to. But then again, it's not very difficult to get more sleep than his usual average - _especially _when he's got the luxury of sleeping in a proper bed and not any other bed that usually goes by other names, like a chair, a desk, the floor, or against a wall somewhere.

Well, it _is _the weekend...and he's made sure to clear his schedule to leave Friday and Saturday open so that he can tutor the girls all day on both days, so sleeping in at least has no immediate repercussions, other than maybe Nino yelling at him for oversleeping. It's not like she doesn't already yell at him for every other little thing that she finds fault with that he does anyway, so by that point it's more of a drop in the ocean for him to deal with. Ninety-nine problems, indeed - Fuutarou wonders if Jay-Z ever had to deal with quintuplets.

Sighing softly through his nose, Fuutarou decides to indulge in this very rare luxury of sleeping in and lets his head tuck in a little more on the pillow...

...before his forehead bumps against someone else's.

Pulling back his head so that he can properly assess his situation, the young mage beholds the pajama'd body of Nakano Miku sleeping calmly in front of him, lying on her side. So that's who he sensed entered his - or rather Miku's - room in the middle of the night...Fuutarou's subconsciousness was able to detect her presence, but because it didn't sense any disturbing aura from it or any other kind of threat from it that would tip him off to awake immediately, Fuutarou took the risk of assuming it was just one of the quints and kept sleeping, as he hasn't had good sleep in a long while. Turns out it was Miku - which would probably make sense, given that it's her room he's borrowing for the night.

Fuutarou's accidental bump against Miku's forehead also happens to wake the girl, and Miku, too, groggily reopens her eyes, merging from her second stretch of sleep of the day.

Not sure of what to do, since he's never been in a situation where he's woken up to find a girl in the same bed as his, Fuutarou watches Miku carefully, beginning to anticipate several outcomes that this touchy situation can lead to. He does notice as Miku opens her eyes that they are their normal blue, so he doesn't need to worry about them messing with her sleep, at least not when he's around.

Miku's eyes lock gazes with her tutor's for a solid three seconds. She blinks three times as well, as if ascertaining that what she's seeing is not just the vestiges of a pleasant dream but actual reality.

"...is that you, Fuutarou...?" she mutters sleepily, her voice cracking a little along the way.

"Yeah. I thought you were spending the night with Nino?" he replies, also keeping his voice down. He magically checks for presences outside; the rooms around him and the second floor immediately outside Miku's room seem empty, so it's safe to assume that the girls are probably all downstairs eating breakfast or something.

"...I was...I had to...use the bathroom...I guess I...ended up...back here..." Miku continues to murmur sleepily, in such a way that Fuutarou can tell that she hasn't quite regained all her senses yet.

But that swiftly changes when she stops talking. Fuutarou watches her blue eyes snap open in extreme alarm, and as he suspects, her cheeks begin to bubble with red embarrassment as she just now begins to grasp the exact kind of situation she's in.

"...Fu...Fuu...tarou...?" she whispers hoarsely. Her voice is now breaking even harder than it was before.

"はい、ふうたろうです," the boy in question replies curtly.

Upon hearing her tutor speaking to her from mere inches away from her own face, Miku bolts from her bed. Or, at least she tries to - she attempts to push away from Fuutarou to sit up on her side of the bed, but her bed, unlike Nino's, isn't big enough to properly accommodate two people, so she barely has the space to work with to do so - and she ends up tumbling over the edge onto the floor.

Well, she would have fallen to the floor behind her, if it isn't for Fuutarou reacting swiftly and grabbing hold of her left arm and tugging her back up to the bed. But in so doing, Miku thus soars back into the bed - and is stopped by bumping lightly against Fuutarou, ending up even closer to him than when she was when she woke up.

"...I get that it's a bit surprising to find yourself in the same bed as your classmate, but try to not jump out like that, you're gonna hurt yourself and your dad's gonna kill me," the young mage whispers, practically right into Miku's reddening ear. "Or even worse, dock my pay."

Fuutarou's usual dark humor, ironically enough, helps break her emotional gridlock, though naturally she's still feeling another type of way being so close to her own tutor, and in her very own bed of all places.

"...getting a cut paycheck is worse than dying to you?" she asks quietly back.

"By a large margin. Docked pay is the stuff of nightmares." Fuutarou shudders a little, though how much of it is actually serious, Miku is still unsure.

The way she's ended up back on her bed has placed her in hugging range of her classmate, with the top of her head right underneath Fuutarou's nose. All Miku can see herself is the upper half of Fuutarou's thorax, covered by the plain white shirt that he's worn to bed. Now that they've exchanged a few words and she's wide awake by this point, Miku can't help but notice how much warmth she feels Fuutarou's body giving off. It's not just her own embarrassment or the body heat that the two of them have been building up together underneath the covers throughout the night; his body feels like a small electric heater that's been put on its lowest heating setting.

"...Fuutarou, are you...sick? Do you have a fever...?" she finds herself asking softly before she can stop herself and think about what she ought to say.

"No, I'm not sick. You must be feeling all the body heat from me, right?"

Miku nods.

"Mm. Here's another little magic lesson from me, then, as much as I said I'd rather not get into that kind of stuff, but a mage has what are called 'Magic Circuits', which I mentioned briefly earlier this morning before going to sleep to you and Nino; they're a sort of...pseudo-nervous system that exists in a mage's body that allows them to use, well, magic. Specifically, it works by converting your own Life Force, or Od is the specific terminology, into magical energy. You need to have Magic Circuits in order to be a mage, and if you don't, you can't use magic, and thus you can't be a mage. At least, generally speaking...in reality it's a lot more complicated than that, but that's the simplest I can make it for now."

While Fuutarou is explaining Magic Circuits to her, Miku slowly realizes that she's been thoroughly captivated by every time that Fuutarou has taken the time to explain something magic-related to her or her sisters.

"But long story short, since magical energy is produced by a mage's body via Magic Circuits for that mage to use and make runes, spells, or whatever with, the process of running Od through those Circuits produces heat as a byproduct, pretty similar to how a computer's power supply generates heat as it's working to keep the computer on."

"...so...all your body heat right now..." Miku looks up slowly at her tutor before shyly ducking her chin back down after realizing again just how close their faces are to each other. "...it's...because of all the...magic that you're using...?"

"Right. I maintain a lot of spells and runes and such at the same time for all sorts of reasons...security and surveillance, mainly, and I've explained before what I use those for. Normally, mages don't use magic _all _the time; they only produce and use whatever they need during the times they actually need it, and in those normal usage cases, the heat that their bodies produce is pretty negligible and not even worth thinking about. To go with the computer analogy I made already, it's like turning on your computer, using it for a few hours, and then turning it off properly; nothing should really happen to the health of the computer if you use it like that, right. But just like how you can leave a computer on all the time, a mage can also constantly be using magic. It gets pretty tiring after a while, even dangerous depending on how much magic you're constantly producing and using and how physically fit you are, but it is doable."

"Then is that why you're always so tired whenever you're at school with us?" Miku asks quietly but sharply; even with her voice in a whisper, Fuutarou can feel her words cut through the air between them, even though there's not even that much to begin with.

"Not really, that's more because I'm running around all over the place and I'm getting worn out from actual physical activity. I've optimized my magic so that it doesn't really bother me, and the only real side effect I have to deal with is this excess body heat I produce, which you can only feel if you're right up next to me like you are."

Miku doesn't answer him for a few moments, causing Fuutarou to silently wonder if he's made Miku angry again, so he lets her be...until he feels her arms slowly drape around his own and pull her towards him to close what little distance between them remains.

"...I don't want to doubt you, Fuutarou," she mumbles quietly. "But...in the case that maybe...you're saying these things so that I won't have to worry, please don't...hurt yourself like this. Please don't work so hard just because of us."

Fuutarou's perpetually tired eyes gaze past the top of Miku's peachy-red hair as it draws closer and out of his cone of vision, save for the very top of her head.

"I can't do that, Miku. I don't believe in half-assing a job, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem, even if it's just something like tutoring. That was the whole thing that Itsuki and I fought over, remember?"

"But you don't have to go so far for us...you don't have to be doing everything that you're doing just for us..."

"Why not? If I feel like putting in a certain amount of work that I feel is appropriate for a job, I'll do it. I feel that going to these lengths is, in fact, what I need to do. I know this might sound a bit cold on my part, but frankly, your own inadequacy, or feelings thereof, are not relevant in how I want to do my job."

"Okay, well - maybe I shouldn't say anything about how you should do your job, but still - having to come to school every day so tired and exhausted like that, having to run around the city or whatever it is that you said you do - and then still doing all your class president work, your schoolwork, _and _tutoring the five of us on top of all that...?"

Fuutarou feels Miku's arms squeeze him a bit more tightly.

"Is that all...really worth it...?"

"...you give me too much credit, Miku. Homework and all that class president stuff is a non-factor; that doesn't bother me at all."

"That still doesn't take away from the fact that you have to sleep in class every day because that's normally the only time you even _get _to sleep."

"Maybe so, but for _your _part, you don't even know the extents to which I'm working. Maybe I could just be bullshitting you about how much I'm exactly working; maybe I'm not actually working that hard at all and I'm only making it seem like it. I did tell you in the beginning that mages aren't trustworthy, right?"

"Then if I asked you to tell me everything that you're doing for us so that I'd have a better understanding of it all, would you?"

"No, because again, frankly, that's none of your business."

Silence is Miku's next response. Fuutarou feels Miku's arms begin to relax on their pressure against his own.

Then, he hears a small sniffle - a bit of a runny sniffle, in fact. That can mean only one thing, but just to make sure, Fuutarou glances down at Miku's face.

Sure enough, she's crying silently. The first few tears have already glided down the side of her face onto the sheets beneath them.

"...do you hate us, Fuutarou?" Miku asks, her head remaining still so that she talks into Fuutarou's collarbone. "Was Nino right about you...?"

"I don't hate you," Fuutarou swiftly replies so that there can be no doubt to be wedged between their words.

"Then why won't you let us worry about you?" Miku slowly wipes the tears from her eyes. "You stayed the night with us when Ichika texted you to, so why...?"

"Stuff's been happening in the city...dangerous stuff. I fucked up during one of my investigations, and so I decided to take Ichika up on her offer so that I could make sure nothing would happen to you girls over the weekend."

"...so wait, the tutoring...the tutoring you did yesterday...?"

"That was only half the reason. I mean, it's always been only half the reason, but yesterday it was a lot more apparent than usual."

_"That's what I mean!"_

Without warning, Miku digs her face into Fuutarou's chest - right onto the gauzed injury that afflicts Fuutarou on his chest. The sudden application of pressure on the magical stitches he's put on himself there drives nails of pain through the area, causing the young mage to inhale sharply on reflex. The boy tries to stifle his reflexive reaction, but there's little he can hide about that when Miku is right in front of him, and she quickly pulls her face away to look up at her tutor.

"D-Did I hurt you...? Are you hurt somewhere?" she whispers urgently, her eyes wide in alarm that flicker back and forth from Fuutarou's face to his chest and back again; the tears that they have been quietly shedding have immediately dried up in her alarm.

"Yeah, but...it's fine, don't worry about it - "

But Miku isn't having any of it this time. Sitting up in bed over her tutor, who rolls over on his side of his bed to follow her gaze, the third quintuplet, with a stubborn frown firmly etched on her face, stares down her roommate.

"Fuutarou, show it to me," she says softly, but her voice has lost its usual meekness and aloofness. Rather, it sounds more in line with the kind of voice she used to lash out at Nino the previous evening when the latter joked about intentionally failing midterms next week.

"And what if I refuse?" the tutor talks back.

"I'm not letting you leave this bed until you show me," she answers in kind. "Please don't make me say it again, Fuutarou. **Show me where you're hurt."**

Her last sentence is accentuated, again without warning, with a blink of her eyes, and Fuutarou finds himself staring straight up into a pair of small, icy black and blue snowballs of death. It would appear to the high school mage that Miku's mastery over her Mystic Eyes is far more developed than those of Nino's, for her to activate them at will like this, while Nino's handling of them was noticeably clumsier and more awkward - understandable, since Miku's probably known about her eyes for a good few years.

Even still, even when facing the mysterious Mystic Eyes of one of his students, Fuutarou finds the gall to chuckle a little.

"You realize what you're saying to me right now?" he mentions up to Miku. "Telling me to show you something on me, when we're both in _your _bed, in _your _bedroom on a Saturday morning?"

Fuutarou is merely halfway through his words when Miku's face once more pops red, as red as the hair on her head. The mage watches the sight of Miku's Mystic Eyes physically tremble and quake, and when she blinks, they've instantly reverted back to their normal selves, her Mystic Eyes retreating into their magical depths.

"...why...why did you have to...put it..._that_...way..." she stammers, her voice full of soft-spoken embarrassment as her usual meekness returns with a vengeance.

"I mean, I don't mind showing you, of course. All I'm doing is asking you if that's what you _really _want," Fuutarou chortles, also sitting up with Miku, who inches away from him, now made hyper-self-conscious about the things she's been demanding from him for the past few minutes.

"Aaaaaa, aaaaaaaa...!" Miku whimpers, quickly turning her back to him as if Fuutarou were about to show her something nice, but she still makes sure to keep her voice down. "Fu-Fuutarou's a pervert, a perveeerrrt!"

"Oh, _I'm _the pervert? And who exactly was it that said all that stuff like, 'Show it to me', 'I'm not letting you leave this bed until you - '"

"Eeeeek! Fuutarou, sh-shut up! Shut uuuuuuuuuppp...! ! !"

Clasping her hands over her ears as tightly as she can, Miku feels her face burn like a glowing charcoal as she's subjected to Fuutarou's amused chuckles behind her that she can still hear despite her best efforts. She quietly resolves to herself that she'll start wearing her headphones even when she goes to sleep so that she'll always have them on hand.

"Sorry, I couldn't resist teasing you. You know I always do that to Itsuki and Yotsuba whenever I can," the boy apologizes quickly. "But it's good to know that you've got a cute side to you too."

Slowly turning back around to re-face her tutor, though with another one of her solid pouts, Miku grumpily gazes back at him.

"...telling me I'm cute isn't going to work," she informs him, continuing to pout and be grumpy. "You big meanie."

"Well, it's more because I enjoy watching people show a side of themselves that they don't normally show, but...that's a story for another time. I believe you wanted to see this, though...excuse me for doing this, by the way..."

In one fluid motion, Fuutarou reaches down and silently pulls off his plain white shirt, revealing the light layer of bandages around his chest. Miku's eyes once again contort slightly with horror as she realizes that besides the white bandage, there is an alarming plethora of scars muddying his chest and abdomen, the same ones that Nino saw in the bathroom the night before. Fuutarou doesn't stop there, though - he reaches back to disable the sealing rune that's holding the bandages tightly in place, and he catches the gauze as it's falling down.

"Three days ago, I was investigating a pretty big police raid on a drug cache. It was the same night when Ichika texted me to come over and stay for Friday night with you guys," Fuutarou explains as Miku's eyes scan the long wound across his chest. "I snuck in to check out what was going on for myself, and it turned out that someone had planted a magic-based bomb there, probably to kill the police officers and anyone else in the area. So I tried taking it away from the police scene, but I got caught on the way and had to run somewhere safe to hide and then try to defuse the bomb. But I couldn't defuse it easily, so I ended up having to detonate it safely so that we wouldn't have to deal with an even worse explosion, and I got caught by a bit of it, and this is what I got out of it."

Fuutarou watches Miku stare intently at his wound for a few moments.

"...in case you're wondering, I'm fine now. I just need to wait for it to heal, and when you pressed up against it, it hurt a bit." The young mage waits for a response from Miku, but she doesn't give one right away. "...are you _that _interested in a dude's body or something?"

"I'm...I'm not," Miku says quickly, resuming her pout back at him. "It's just...I'm...well..."

Fuutarou looks back down at himself. "Oh, you were looking at the scars."

Miku gives him a tiny nod, and she watches Fuutarou put the bandages back on and then pull his shirt back on.

"Well...I did say that being a mage is hell. Not literally, but...it's a rough career choice. Would totally not recommend...they don't even offer classes for it in university, that's how bad of a career it is."

"Your jokes aren't funny, Fuutarou."

"Damn. I thought you out of all the quints would appreciate my realist humor the most."

"What's _that _supposed to mean..."

"Nothing in particular. But I _am _serious when I tell you that being a mage is not what you want. You've seen the damage it's done to me here." Fuutarou leans against the wall up against which Miku's bed is placed.

"Then why did you become a mage, Fuutarou?"

"I didn't have a choice back then. My family was in deep shit...debt, mainly. My dad at the time was also involved in some, uh, let's say...less than savory business, and so when he quit that to reform himself, they sent people after him to harass him and such to try to pressure him into coming back."

"Like Yakuza stuff?"

"Something similar, I suppose, I don't have the details since that was before my time. I discovered that I had some magic potential when I was young, luckily enough, so I capitalized on that and became a mage to help pay the bills and to keep the guys who kept bothering us away." Fuutarou looks straight back at Miku. "I didn't become a mage because I thought it'd be cool, Miku, before you get the wrong idea. I did it so that I could protect my family. My dad, my sister...my mom too, before she passed away, at least."

"Eh?" Miku blinks at her tutor. "Your mom...passed away too?"

"Yeah. It was actually when she died that I decided to commit to becoming a mage," Fuutarou explains quietly. "Because back then, back when my mom was still around, she could support the family by selling bread that she baked for us to local bakeries and markets in our area that would buy them for resale. But when she died in a traffic accident, I knew that, since we were already poor back then, I needed to step up and start doing something. Magic was the only thing I had, and magic was the only thing that could let a kid like me back then earn any money."

He takes a moderate sigh, letting the back of his head rest against the wall behind him.

"Working as a mage is pretty tough, I'm not gonna lie. Not trying to sound like an old dude here, but I've worked a lot of odd jobs in my time...nothing that I've done's as tough as being a mage is. It's very cutthroat and tragic - not many people become mages and live for very long, and it's probably not wrong to say that they're not meant to. I've seen a lot of kids like myself try to become mages for whatever reason they got, and most of them don't really get anywhere. Half of them would die, the other half would quit after realizing just what it means to get involved in the magic world..."

Miku slowly blinks back at her tutor, who then matches her gaze, as if inviting her to talk as well.

"Is part of the reason why you're so nice to us because you empathize with us?" she asks. "Because you also know what it's like to have lost your Mama?"

"Hm? Oh, no, not...not really, no," Fuutarou denies casually with a shake of his head. "I do my best to keep family matters and work stuff separate wherever I can. Yeah, I guess I can empathize with your girls' situation, but that's not what's motivating me to tutor you all."

"It's cold, hard cash, isn't it."

"Bingo." Fuutarou gives her a short series of golf claps. "Very well done, a hole in one for Nakano Miku."

"Ichika suggested that I should be part of the golf club at school. She said golf seems like my kind of sport..."

"It could be, golf's more about concentration, performance, and execution rather than physical endurance. But yes, I'm motivated by those juicy yen bills, those big ol' numbers on my checking account. The more the better so that I can buy Raiha whatever she wants."

The two schoolmates once more settle down into a downy silence as their next round of thoughts is being prepared warmly.

"...you're an amazing person, Fuutarou," Miku says softly, looking down at the sheets on her bed between herself and her tutor. "Doing all that...I couldn't possibly imagine myself being in your shoes."

"Didn't I tell you not to take everything I say at face value? You don't know if I'm spoonfeeding you lies, or how much of it's just bogus lies."

"But you're not that kind of person. You don't work this much just so that you can get your little sister what she wants; you don't tutor idiots like me and my sisters as much as you have just for the money."

Miku's eyes lift up to meet Fuutarou's again.

"You sure about that?" he asks her directly, and she nods with her own form of reserved but self-confident assurance.

"Yep. You care about us, Fuutarou, whether you tell me it directly or not. All I ask is that you let us do the same for you, like how you've stayed with us for tonight so that you can get some proper rest."

The young mage smiles a little with a curt little nod of his head.

"We'll see about that, I suppose. But for now, we've got a bigger problem on our hands..."

"What problem...?"

Fuutarou points to the door. "I think one of your sisters is coming up to check on me. I don't think they know where you are right now."

Gasping lightly at the situation, having totally forgotten about what her sisters are doing, Miku tenses up and turns towards the door as well; outside, they can hear one of the quintuplets clearly climbing the stairs due to the lack of soundproofing in the walls.

"What...what should we do, Fuutarou? I completely forgot..." the third quintuplet asks hastily.

"Well, it's more like, what should _I _do...Nino's gonna fuckin' rip my damn head off if she finds out we spent the night together," Fuutarou groans as he leaps a little off the bed while scratching his head.

"I know, I'm more concerned about you right now."

"Eh, they'll find out one way or another. I'd rather just come clean and get my head-ripping over with."

"But then Nino might end up quitting your tutoring..."

"Ah shit, you're right...this might actually send her over the edge...hm...well, we don't have time, so let me do this...and..."

Fuutarou casts a quick Presence Concealment spell over Miku, a weak one that should remove her presence so long as she doesn't say anything or make any drastic movements.

"Just stay where you are, I'll try to figure something out," Fuutarou whispers over to her as he goes to the door and opens it first before whoever's coming up the stairs has a chance to reach him.

Stepping out onto the second floor, pretending to yawn to convey an air of just having woken up, the young tutor finds Nakano Miku facing him at the top of the stairs. Mentally, the sight of Miku's face in a second place other than her own bedroom makes Fuutarou do a double-take, but he quickly realizes that this is another one of the quintuplets, and that the others are playing a trick on him by sending one of them to go wake him up while looking like Miku, at least with how her hair is done. Her different set of pajamas is already a dead enough giveaway, too. The question is, though, do they know already that Miku spent the night with him? No, that can't be it, otherwise Nino would've woken them up by kicking Miku's locked door down...

"Erm..." the fake Miku blurts out, also surprised to find Fuutarou walk out to her like this. Just by her tone of voice alone, Fuutarou can immediately tell that it's Itsuki, but he decides to play along.

"Oh, hey, Miku. Sorry...I overslept, haven't had a good night's sleep in a while," Fuutarou grunts a little, still feigning some tiredness and stretching to get some of it out. "Did you eat breakfast already? Smells like it downstairs..."

"Uh, um...well...y-yeah..." Itsuki, posing as Miku at the moment, mentally scrambles to remember how Miku usually behaves and tries her best to impersonate her, but to her own deep embarrassment, she's forced to realize how bad she is at impersonating her own sisters, as she probably does it the least among them. "I was sent - er, no, I came up to see if...you were awake yet or not..."

Fuutarou can plainly see how much Itsuki is struggling to pose as Miku, and as such he's unable to resist getting a good laugh out of this. So he squints down at the fake Miku, taking a few steps over, and Itsuki instinctively steps backwards, unsure of what Fuutarou is up to now.

"You sound different, Miku. Are you sick? Need me to take a look at you?" Fuutarou offers, drawing close to Itsuki, who starts shaking her head frantically.

"N-N-N-N-No, I am - I'm completely okay! I don't need a ch-checkup...!"

Downstairs, at the dinner table where the rest of the quints are clearly watching the shenanigans unfold, Fuutarou can hear a pair of suppressed snorts and giggles which spur him on to tease Itsuki a bit more.

"You sure about that? At least let me take your temperature, it'll only be a second," he says casually, reaching up with a quick hand before Itsuki can dodge out of its way to gently brush the fake Miku's bangs to the side and put his hand on her forehead.

Inhaling quickly at the sensation of Fuutarou's rough hand pressing lightly against her forehead, Itsuki, also suppressing her first reaction to yelp at her own tutor touching her like this, which she believes is absolutely improper behavior between tutor and student, forces herself to bear with it with squeezed eyes, as she's posing as one of her sisters at the moment and doesn't want to ruin her image to their tutor.

After a few moments, Itsuki reopens her eyes slowly, wondering what's taking her classmate so long to check her temperature, and she finds Fuutarou gazing directly into her own eyes. The sight startles her, but for some reason she can't pull her eyes away - Fuutarou's deep black eyes, like the dark nighttime sky, are somehow mesmerizing and captivating, even though there shouldn't be anything particularly interesting about them.

Fuutarou makes a little grin with an upwards twist of the corner of his mouth. It doesn't appear that Itsuki has any such Mystic Eyes of her own.

"Your eyes are exquisite today as always too, Miku," he whispers under his breath, but there's no mistaking what he's just said, at least from Itsuki's perspective.

As soon as those words slip into her ears, Itsuki feels her heart skip a beat.

Then the situation that she's in just now dawns on her. Uesugi Fuutarou has his hand on her forehead, with his face inches away from her own, gazing deeply into her blue eyes, after telling her that her eyes are beautiful as always.

Itsuki's cheeks also begin to pop as her tongue and vocal strength begins to disintegrate on the spot. "...w...wha...Ue...sugi-kun...what are you saying...?!"

"AH!" Fuutarou recoils backwards quickly, letting go of the youngest quint's forehead as he points dramatically back at her like a spiky-haired attorney in the courtroom. "That isn't Miku, Miku doesn't call me 'Uesugi-kun'! The only one who does is Itsuki! Did you try to trick me just now by posing as Miku, Itsuki!?"

At this point, the quints watching the situation unfold from downstairs can contain their amusement no longer, and Ichika, Nino, and Yotsuba all burst out in hilarity-ridden laughter when Fuutarou quickly figures out that he's being duped. The combination of Fuutarou's swift deduction and the laughter from her sisters at the dinner table yank Itsuki back down to earth as her face fully transforms into a bright, undeniable shade of red.

"N-No, no, U-Uesugi-kun, wait, please, please wait, I can explain - !" Itsuki tries to explain herself, but Fuutarou continues his dramatic act and turns ninety degrees away from her with his arms crossed and his chin turned upwards.

"I don't wanna hear it! You tried pulling a fast one on me by pretending to be Miku so that you could get all close and personal with me like Miku sometimes does, huh? Bet! But I ain't havin' none of it, you can't trick me! Congratulations, Itsuki, ya played yourself!"

Unable to handle both the continued laughter from her sisters downstairs and Fuutarou's damning accusation, even if none of it is by any means true, Itsuki can do nothing other than purse her lips together and let her pure, unadulterated embarrassment gush from her cheeks and her eyes in the form of tears that begin to line her lower eyelids.

But before she can start crying outright -

"Fuutarou, you're having too much fun with this."

To his horror, and to the shock and surprise of the rest of the quintuplets, Miku, who dispels the weak Presence Concealment rune that he's cast on her to hide her presence from her sisters by talking, raises her hand as soon as Fuutarou turns around to see her behind him and whacks him lightly on the middle of his forehead with the side of her hand in a karate-chop motion.

"Bad Fuutarou," she adds with a wry little smile.

Sighing because of what's about to happen, now that Miku's betrayed him, Fuutarou stares back at the culprit, who smiles cheerfully back up at him. While it's quite the beautiful smile coming from her, now is _not _the time that he wants to see it.

"No teasing my sisters, okay? Bullying is bad," Miku says back at him, still maintaining her wide smile.

"Goddamn it, Miku," Fuutarou groans, just as he turns around to find Nino, who's somehow teleported up to the second floor in the span of two and a half seconds, standing in front of him with her right fist in a blur right in front of his face.


	33. Hypocrisy

**A/N**

**Ryder: I simply based the magic system in this fic off Nasuverse magic lore because that's the one I'm most familiar with, which, for a nerd like me who barely watches sports, is like saying I know basketball the most because I happen to watch that the most. However, I may "customize" Nasuverse magic elements to better fit this story...whatever that means.**

**Quick apology for the unintended break, I've been working on rebooting another one of my fanfics, Fate: Recourse Light. Do go check it out if you're able.**

* * *

"Hello, sir, welcome to Starbucks! What can I get you today?"

"Uh, yeaaaah...let me just get a, uh...let's go with the Smoked Butterscotch Latte, please."

"You got it. What size would you like that in?"

"Uh...make it short, please."

"Alright, that's your total right there. What's your name, sir?"

"Fuutarou."

"Thank you, just wait for your name to be called for your order."

"I'm, uh, paying by gift card, if you don't mind..."

"Certainly not. There you go, sir, enjoy the rest of your day."

"Thanks..."

Taking his receipt from the coffee chain cashier, Uesugi Fuutarou treads slowly away to take a seat at an empty, high-standing two-seater table nearby the orders counter where another worker is distributing finished orders to customers waiting for their drinks and other purchases.

It's been a long while since he's set foot in a coffee shop like this. Fuutarou has always enjoyed coffee establishments such as this, for the smell of coffee is very pleasing to him. It's a heavy scent, but at the same time relaxing and calming. If only coffee as a drink were just as effective in what it's supposed to do as well - his body doesn't seem to understand what on Earth it's supposed to do with caffeine. But on second thought, given how long his days normally are and how infrequently he drinks coffee or other beverages with such stimulant agents in them, caffeine is practically pointless...

But it would appear that today is one of those once-in-a-blue-moon occasions, as his last six hours at the hospital assisting Dr. Nakano with another surgery operation has netted him an old Starbucks gift card, passed onto him by the Doctor. He said that one of the nurses gave it to him as a thank-you gift for a lunch that he'd bought for her the previous month when the nurse accidentally forgot her purse, but Dr. Nakano himself naturally didn't really see himself putting it to use, as he's perfectly content with the coffee he makes in his own office. So Fuutarou found himself leaving the hospital with a new Tokyo Black Starbucks giftcard preloaded with 3000 yen.

As it was only roughly four in the afternoon at the time he left the hospital for home, Fuutarou decided to treat himself and stopped by a Starbucks chain in the city before heading home, and now here he finds himself, sitting at a small but tall table for two, waiting for his Smoked Butterscotch Latte. He's never had anything other than a simple coffee, from free coffee counters at hotels or coffee shops alike, so he's rather curious about how this "latte" drink will taste...he's only ever heard about these kinds of drinks from classmates, schoolmates, or random passersby during his city travels.

While he waits on his name to be called, Fuutarou lets his mind wander, as it often does whenever he needs to wait for something. Nino, as expected, did _not _take kindly to learning that Miku had accidentally returned to her own room in the middle of the night after using the bathroom and mistakenly slept with her tutor (nothing X-rated, mind you) thinking she'd returned to Nino's bedroom, and it took Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba a full half an hour to calm Nino down and make her see reason that Fuutarou couldn't be held liable for the mishaps that unfolded yesterday morning, although they couldn't defend him when it came to how he so mercilessly teased Itsuki for posing as Miku under peer pressure from her own sisters.

Speaking of Itsuki, she certainly hadn't been in a talking mood with him for the rest of that Saturday. After they ate breakfast, Ichika suggested they go to the library to study for a nice change of pace, which everyone, including Fuutarou himself, agreed to. But even when they got there, Itsuki remained quiet the rest of the day, not asking any questions during his tutoring or the like. It were as if both Nino and Itsuki reverted to their pre-tutoring attitudes towards him, with the caveat that they still reluctantly came along with everyone else to study with Fuutarou, despite the shenanigans that he may or may not have been directly responsible for.

Fuutarou reaches his right hand up and rubs the middle of his forehead, right in between his eyes. Nino's wrathful punch to his face was a goddamn good one, the young mage is forced to admit - for how fast Nino flew up the stairs to pop him in the face like that, her punch was wonderfully executed, packing a fearsome amount of power streamlined with incredible accuracy to deck him square in the middle of his face. It was so strong, in fact, that Nino's middle knuckle managed to break the skin in between his eyebrows and draw a bit of blood.

He already knew about Nino's hidden strength before, back when they first met, when Nino threw a barrage of punches at his back in an effort to chase him out of the penthouse, but this last punch he's received from her serves to refresh his memory on this fact. Just how and where the hell did Nino learn to throw hands like that? Perhaps he's already thought this before, but Nino really doesn't come off as a girl who'd be able to pack a monster of a punch like she can. Sure, she's got the emotional drive and personality for it, and Fuutarou's already heard from her sisters that she's the one who usually went out of her way to make sure her sisters were safe from bad guys around the city back when they were still attending Kurobara, but her punches are like those of a seasoned fighter, and it's not like Nino goes out every night looking for street fights. The only exercise she really puts herself through is yoga or something, if what he remembers hearing her sisters say about her is correct, and that's certainly no Yotsuba levels of exercise, or even Ichika's, who he knows normally goes jogging every Saturday morning.

Could it be Nino's hidden talent as a mage bleeding through and manifesting in that form, in the ability to throw potentially deadly punches like that with no prior martial arts or even plain fighting experience? Eh, Fuutarou hesitates to make that leap of a conclusion...and even if that were true, that'd be a colossal waste of magic talent. Not that he even _wants _any of the girls, much less Nino, to try to actively develop their magical talent, assuming the rest also have their own...

But a small part of his mind doesn't want to let go of this seemingly ridiculous notion, because if he wants to talk about ridiculous, all he needs to do is look at himself. In a world like this where those born into very old magical families whose bloodlines run hundreds, even thousands of years into the past enjoy incredible innate magical power and talent, an ordinary person like himself who just happened to find that he could utilize magic at a young age would have never been expected to make anything significant out of it, yet here he is, using magic to oversee this city and work at the city hospital. So what's to say that the same couldn't be happening to Nino right now? He might laugh at this rather odd manifestation of Nino's undiscovered magic talent, assuming that's really what it is, but who knows...

...well, as he's mentioned before, he'd rather not let things get to that point. These girls...the quintuplets would _not _survive in the world of magic; they're far too sweet and kind for such a cutthroat, lawless side of the world. But now that he knows that both Nino and Miku very well may possess Mystic Eyes, a rare form of innate magecraft renowned for the potential power that they provide, and that those two girls in question also are aware of it themselves, Fuutarou isn't confident that he'll be able to keep the gates shut on them forever. Even still, though, even if his own confidence alone isn't adequate regarding this situation, he has the added assurance that Dr. Nakano will be royally pissed if he ever finds out that he's allowed his daughters to delve too far into the magic world. While the girls' father has never explicitly discussed such an outcome with him, Fuutarou knows him well enough to predict what his reaction would be in such a situation. And for as much as he can't get along with him, while Fuutarou doesn't really care to be on his good side, he certainly would rather not be on his _bad _side.

So engrossed is Fuutarou in his own thoughts, as sometimes tends to be the case whenever he lets his mind wander like this, that when a sudden but soft stream of artificial wind brushes into his ear, the young mage tenses up immediately and jolts upright in his tall seat, whipping to his right to identify the source of the potential threat.

"W-Whoa! Ahaha, I didn't expect you to have that kind of reaction! I guess there really is a first for everything, huh?"

Nakano Ichika, giggling at a reaction she's never seen her tutor make before at her surprise attack, stands beside the small two-seater circular table at which Fuutarou has seated himself waiting for his latte.

"...it's just you, huh," Fuutarou scowls a little at the eldest quintuplet, calming his somewhat rattled nerves down once he sees who's responsible. At this, Ichika, too, pouts lightly at him, which Fuutarou notes is also a rather rare reaction on her part too, since her sisters are the ones more prone to defaulting to that type of facial expression whenever they deal with him.

"We happen to run into each other at a Starbucks of all places, and _that's _all you've got to say? You're no fun," Ichika feigns a grumpy mood, but she still hops onto the other seat across from her tutor to join him.

"No fun? But you had fun just now seeing me react like that."

"Shucks, you found me out."

"Well that didn't take long."

"It's not like I was going to stay grumpy with you for a long time. My name isn't Nino, remember?"

"Yeah, but you _are _still quintuplets."

"Aw, c'mon, you know we all have our nuances and differences by this point. You're a super observant guy, too - and you kinda _have _to be, so you can tell us apart, can't you?"

Fuutarou gazes back at the pleasantly smiling Ichika, remembering the private chat that he had with her on Friday night out on her veranda, about how she really does feel like the oldest quint. And now that he's found himself running into Ichika - or perhaps it's the other way around - he notices that this kind of environment, the inside of a coffee shop, matches her personality and the atmosphere she puts up about her perfectly. Little wonder, then, that he sees her frequently with a frappucchino or another coffee-based drink outside their home.

Ichika notices that his gaze at her is lasting a little bit longer than usual and widens her smile.

"What is it, Fuutarou-kun? Does Onee-chan look a bit cuter to you today?" she begins to tease him a little.

Fuutarou closes his eyes. So that's how it's going to be, huh?

"...what if I said yes?" he counters.

This unexpected response takes Ichika by surprise, but remembering how he'd acted towards Itsuki yesterday when they got her to try to pose as Miku, the eldest quint doesn't let this sudden out-of-character moment from her tutor shake her.

"Then I'll have to keep doing whatever I did, because clearly it's doing its job if it's even got someone like you to notice," she responds in kind.

"But you just said that I'm a pretty observant person, didn't you?"

"Normally, normally. But when it comes to girls, you just don't give much of a crap, do you?"

"Got me there," Fuutarou concedes.

"Then there you go. But no seriously, do I look cuter today?"

"You're the same as always. But now that you mention it, your voice sounds a little strained today."

At this, Ichika _really _gets rattled as she, too, sits up straight in her tall chair in a bit of alarm.

"Er, y-yeah...I just got off work, you see. A coworker buddy of mine usually gives me a ride back home, but today he had to other things to take care of, so I had to walk home today. I decided to stop by and pick up a drink, and to my surprise, here you were."

"Similar story with me; I got called into the hospital to help your dad, so I was there for the last six hours and just got off. Your dad gave me a Starbucks gift card that he got from one of the hospital staffers, and he said he didn't need it and so he passed it on to me. Figured I'd use it here on my own way back home."

"I see, I see. This is what they must call fate," Ichika nods sagely, crossing her arms to assume a pose of self-informed wisdom. "Though, I think Yotsuba's better with this kind of thing..."

"You say fate, I say happenstance."

"What, like randomness?"

"Yeah. Random number generator, RNG, as westerners would say..."

"Random...number...generator...what, does it spit out a bunch of numbers or something?"

"I guess. _What do the numbers mean, Mason...?!"_

Fuutarou hears his name called at the order counter, and leaving briefly to collect his order, the young tutor returns with his latte in hand.

"Whoa ~ ! A butterscotch latte, huh? I thought you only ever drank straight black," Ichika remarks, able to identify her friend's drink with a single glance.

"I decided to be a bit fancy today. I've always been a bit curious about all these other fancy drinks that places like this have..." Fuutarou, still standing by the small table, takes a sip of his latte through the straw. Ichika, watching him take a sip, leans in a little, suddenly becoming very curious as to how her classmate would react to a drink he's never had before.

"So? How is it?" she asks, carefully watching his face, which doesn't really change much, so she'll have to rely on his words instead.

"Mm...not bad. It's quite good, in fact."

"Aha! You must _really _like it then!"

"Well, I don't know about _really _liking it, though..."

"No, no, you do, you do. Because you usually just say stuff like 'not bad' or 'I don't mind it' or something; you've eaten dinner with us at our place after tutoring enough times for me to notice. The only other time you've actually taken the time to say that something was good was when Nino made curry udon one night for dinner. And you said it just now, too!"

Fuutarou, taking a slower but longer sip of his latte while listening to Ichika's observations, lowers his drink once she's done saying her case.

"Curry udon _is _my favorite dish, after all." The young mage gives his student a small, wry grin. "Talk about being observant; you're quite good at it yourself."

Unused to receiving a genuine complement from Fuutarou, Ichika hesitates a little, her eyes shifting a bit away from her tutor.

"Ahaa...it's...it's nothing special, um...you've been hanging out with us for long enough that I just kind of...naturally pick up on stuff like that, you know? I didn't really do anything..."

Initially having planned to leave the store immediately after grabbing his drink, Fuutarou silently changes his mind and resumes his seat across from Ichika. Even he's a bit surprised at himself, as it's not like him to stick around in a place like this just to talk to someone he knows, but the combination of factors on hand - his unusual visit to a coffee shop, his unconventional choice of beverage, his "fateful" encounter with Ichika who also happened to stop by the same coffee shop that he entered for a drink of her own, and his perception of Ichika fitting satisfyingly well into a coffee shop ambience - compel him to stay so as not to waste this chance. Though, a chance to do _what_, he's not really sure of himself.

"Well, you say that, and then you have Yotsuba who's got just about as much observational skills as a goldfish sometimes," Fuutarou snorts with a sarcastic little smirk that he casts to the side.

"Oof...using Yotsuba as a bar, somehow I feel like you're making fun of _me _instead."

"Let's just say that was collateral damage."

"I bet it was intentional, too."

"I cannot confirm or deny."

Ichika's name is also called, so Fuutarou waits for to her return with her own drink, just as she'd done for him, and she promptly rejoins him.

"What kind of drink is that?" the young tutor asks, tipping his own plastic drink slightly towards Ichika's.

"This? It's a grande non-fat milk pistachio deep mocha deep cream frappuccino with chocolate syrup," the oldest quint smiles brightly. "It's my favorite!"

"...sorry, say that again?"

"The drink name? A non-fat milk pistachio, deep mocha, deep cream frappuccino, with chocolate syrup, grande." Ichika makes sure to decelerate her speech and partition it into segments so that Fuutarou can better follow.

"Why the fuck does it sound like you're studying for a test when all you're doing is ordering a drink?"

"Gosh, you don't have to put it so bluntly!" Ichika yelps lightly, immediately latching her lips onto the top of her straw to take a big sip of her loaded frappuccino in indignation. "You're a real meanie sometimes, you know that?"

"Sorry, but I can't help but think that when you have trouble memorizing Japanese warlord names that aren't even a quarter as long."

"Th-Those are different, okay!? Sengoku-period warlords and Daimyo aren't coffee names!"

"What if we pretended that you were ordering coffee drinks the next time we study, except instead of actual drink names, we replace them with names of Sengoku warlords?"

"Ew. That'll ruin my image of coffee forever, so please don't."

"I'm going to tell Miku you said that."

_"Don't you dare."_

Snorting louder this time, Fuutarou ducks his face and hides it with his right hand, much to Ichika's chagrin, and she reacts by turning in her seat a little to face away from her classmate, grumpily sucking through her straw to drink her frappuccino.

"You girls are still studying hard, right?" the tutor asks Ichika, once he's gotten over his own joke. "Remember, midterms are this week, on Friday.

"Yes, we are. We _are _taking these midterms seriously, you know," Ichika grumbles, still clearly miffed at Fuutarou.

"And what about you? You sound like you've spent some time at your part-time. Hopefully that hasn't cut into your studying today."

"It won't. As a matter of fact, you just reminded me."

Turning swiftly to face Fuutarou wholly again, Ichika drops her grumpiness to tell him, "Would you like to come over to help us with an overnight studying session again, just like on Friday?"

"Another one? Ugh..." Fuutarou rolls his eyes just a bit. "It's not that I'm _against_ it, but - "

"Of course you're not. You got to sleep with one of my precious, cute sisters, after all ~ " Ichika teases her classmate back a little.

"Goddamn it, I thought we already explained ourselves yesterday about what happened..."

"Hahaha, I know, I know, I'm just messing with you."

Sighing, Fuutarou takes another sip from his latte. "Anyways, it's not that I'm against it, but I'm worried that if we keep doing that, you girls are going to end up relying on study sessions like that where I have to stay over. And besides, that won't always be possible for me schedule-wise, I just want you to know that."

"I know, you don't need to tell me. But I just wanted to put the idea out there."

Leaning back in his seat, Fuutarou takes a deep sigh. "And now that you have...the studying we did on Friday and Saturday certainly _did _have some positive results when I tested you girls at the end on Saturday. So there _is _merit to doing a cram session before Friday..."

"I thought you told us that cramming isn't an effective way to study?"

"Normally it's not, but everyone learns differently. Some people actually _can _get away with cramming the night before and pull off high scores on tests, and while I wouldn't exactly say the five of you would count as them, you _did _show some improvement when we blitzed through the study material in the library yesterday. So I'm willing to give it a second shot to see if it might actually work. I highly doubt it, though."

"All we need is a chance, Sensei. Just give it to us, and we'll work our magic!" Ichika winks at Fuutarou, pumping her left arm in a flex not unlike Rosie the Riveter.

"Well, at least your spirit's commendable. Fine, I'll bite - tell your sisters that we'll have a last-minute overnight cram session the day before midterms. But don't let that be an excuse for everyone to suddenly slack off, I'll still be showing up every day before then."

"Yeah, yeah, as always." Ichika also sips from her own decorated coffee. "How's your face, by the way? Nino punched you really hard, didn't she? It was a bit scary when we realized you were bleeding because of it, Miku looked like she was just about ready to make her catch some hands of her own."

"I'm fine, mainly because I already know by this point that Nino can throw a mean-ass punch. Remember the first day I showed up?"

"Oh yeah, right, she kept punching you in the back, I remember, I remember. Even still, her going up there and then hitting you like that was a bit extreme..."

"Yeah, Nino and extreme go hand in hand."

"Ehehe...yeah, sorry that you need to keep dealing with her like that..."

"It's fine, I just assume it's part of the job description by this point."

"What, that you're dealing with five potentially dangerous high school girls?"

"I mean, yeah, in a sense."

"How so?"

"That you'll drain me of all my sanity because I can't get over how dumb all five of you are."

"_Aaaaaaaah, _Fuutarou-kun went off and said it again! Fuutarou-kun, you meanie! I bet you secretly enjoy calling us dumb, huh? You sleep at night dreaming of all the chances you can get that you can call us stupid in revenge for all the hours you have to spend tutoring us, huh?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Ichika, of course I wouldn't do that."

"You wouldn't?"

"Yeah, because I call you and your sisters dumb all the damn time, so I don't _need _to dream about it at night!"

"Geh! F-Fuutarou-kun, you're - you're the worst villain I've ever met! I hope you swallow a thousand needles, wherever you can find them."

"Wow, talk about harsh when you're out here practically telling me to go kill myself."

"Hey, like you said, I'm not the oldest for nothing. Gotta have a few fangs myself handy in case I need them."

"You sure didn't have them a month ago."

"A month ago...? Oh, you're talking about..." Ichika suddenly frowns deeply at her tutor. "C'mon, you're really gonna hold that against me? That was something else entirely, okay..."

"Sorry, didn't mean to bring up old scars like that. Forget I said anything."

After glaring a little bit at her classmate, Ichika relaxes a little with a small sigh.

"Speaking of old scars, actually, how's your chest doing?" Ichika taps her own chest, just above her breasts, and this draws a piercing look from her tutor.

"...how did you know?" he asks, though he can guess the answer.

"Nino told us about it on accident after we were done studying in the library, when we got home. I asked her a second time why she hit you so hard like that - "

"You didn't need to, c'mon, I said it was fine. Sure, it might've come as a surprise at first, but we all know Nino was gonna act like that the moment you all realized Miku spent the night with me on accident."

"Ugh, okay, I get that, I know, but just listen...! I asked her a second time after we came back home from the library because I wanted to make sure I could get an honest answer out of her, since the last time I asked her at that point, you were still with us. And so while we were talking, she happened to mention how you got yourself hurt at some point, and then Miku confirmed it, saying that she told you to show it to her that morning."

Scratching his head a bit more roughly than usual, Fuutarou lets the corner of his mouth contort uncomfortably. "You really shouldn't be making a big deal out of this. Especially not with your sisters."

"I'm not, I never said I did." Ichika glares a little back at her tutor, and this time Fuutarou can sense real anger being thrown his way from her direction. "If anyone, it's _you _who's making a big deal out of this. All I did was ask you how you're doing, but when I first mentioned it just now, you gave me that same look that you had a month ago when you went around beating up the guys who were, you know."

"Weren't _you _the one who said not to bring that shit up?"

"Yes, but I think it's a little bit more relevant here, don't you think? Besides, you're trying to change the subject."

"Says the girl who does that constantly when we study, but I get the point." Fuutarou sets his half-consumed drink down on the small table calmly. "If you _must _know, it's almost fully healed at this point. You don't need to worry about it for me, and I'm not saying that just to get you off my case."

"Well, now that you have that kind of attitude, it's kinda hard _not _to think that you aren't," Ichika points out.

"And so what am I supposed to do about that, then? Just _not _get hurt? Kinda tough with the kind of shit that I have to deal with outside of tutoring."

Sighing exasperatedly, Ichika leans forward in her seat towards her tutor. "Look, I'm not here to try to make any comments about your other job and what kinds of dangers you get yourself into, that's none of my business and I understand that. You show me the same courtesy in regards to my own part-time job, after all. But the fact of the matter is that you're still our tutor, and if you end up hurt, you might not be able to come by to tutor us. You missed two days of school last week, right? Along with a day of tutoring on Thursday, and I'm betting it was because of whatever happened that hit you on the chest like Miku said had happened. What if the next time you get hurt, it's serious enough where you have to stop coming over to tutor us for a while? Not only are _we _gonna fall behind in our studies, but you can't do your _other _job of, you know..." Ichika lowers her voice so that the other customers in their area won't hear her, "...making sure we're safe, and all that..."

"First you tell me you're not trying to comment on my job, and then you end up doing it anyway," Fuutarou drawls dryly. Luckily he's got a drink to rejuvenate his dry voice.

"I know, but in this case I have to, because when _you _get hurt, you're not just affecting yourself, but you're affecting the rest of _us,_" Ichika gestures at herself. "Whatever it was that you were doing before you met us, that can't fly now. You're not just working or fighting or whatever just for yourself and your family; you have me and my sisters on your hands too. Don't you realize this?"

Fuutarou doesn't answer for a moment; instead, he merely narrows his eyes down at Ichika, who returns the favor.

"Yes, I have. Thanks for letting me know, Ichika," the young mage murmurs solemnly and slowly. "Is there anything _else _you wish to add?"

"Yeah, there is, in fact, just one more thing. I think by this point, Fuutarou-kun, we've known each other and spent enough time together that we're not just student and tutor anymore. Like, you can tell with how we talk and treat each other when we study; ignoring what she did to you yesterday morning, even Nino's been getting more manageable around you these days as long as you don't do anything to provoke her, whether it's your fault or not. What I'm trying to get at with this is that while I can't speak for my sisters, to me personally, you're a friend. So of course if I hear that you've gotten hurt, I'm gonna ask you about it. What kind of friend would I be if I didn't at least do that?"

Folding his arms, Fuutarou tilts his head somewhat. "So you're basing that off the notion of friendship. Then it makes sense why we're having this bit of a standoff between each other, because as you can imagine, I don't have this thing you call 'friends'."

"And you're sure you're not saying that just to be edgy?"

At this, Fuutarou swiftly pulls his left hand out from his chest and places it quickly on the tabletop between him and his student, and a faint blue rune suddenly expands and passes through the two of them to create a small, simple bounded field in which the words that both of them speak will be confined to their immediate vicinity only, within the boundary of the rune that he's deployed.

"Do I have to remind you what I do mainly for a living, Ichika? I'm a mage-for-hire, essentially a modern-day mercenary who freelances his magic and skills to the highest bidder. I always ensure my clients the best possible performance I can offer, and to do that, I make sure to let them know that I'm willing to do whatever they ask of me by any means necessary. What does that mean? I kill people. I steal things. I do things that would immediately antagonize me in the eye of the public if people were to find out. As a result, this job of mine doesn't normally allow for the luxury of having friends, because the risk of having your friends one day turn into enemies the next is too real and too big to justify trying to make them in the first place."

"What about your family? Raiha-chan, your dad?"

"They're my family, of course. Then sure, fine, let's say that they're my friends, and I suppose they are. But saying my family are my friends is like saying you graduated elementary school, like, no fucking shit, I sure as hell _hope _you managed to graduate from there."

"I don't know...there are _some _families where being friends with your family isn't always an option."

Fuutarou rolls his neck slowly in frustration as Ichika stares back at him defiantly.

"I would hope that you only think that towards your dad and _not _towards the rest of your sisters," he sighs heavily.

"Well, yeah, obviously, that's what I was trying to refer to."

"Then at least we're on the same page there. But everything else, I don't think we are. I imagine that you'll take some serious offense at this, but while you may think of me as a friend, I can't say the same."

"Why, because to you, we're just your clients? Your customers?"

"Clients, mainly, yes. I'm a mage first and foremost; that's how I earn my keep. Even if this contract that I have with your family to tutor you and protect you is quite unusual for me compared to my usual spectrum of magework-related contracts, at the end of the day, it's still a job, and I intend to treat it as such. And as such, I'm not here to make friends; I'm here to do my job."

"Bold of you to say that, with everything that happened so far, and especially yesterday."

"I won't claim liability for that. Might I also remind you that me staying over at your house was _your _idea; if you never asked me to come over, none of that would have ever happened."

"But you still came over anyway, even though you could've refused."

"Part of the reason for that was because after the incident that happened that gave me my chest wound from last Wednesday night, I realized that there was a chance that you girls could've been in danger, so you asking me to stay over lined up perfectly with me wanting to keep a better watch over the high-rise to make sure nothing happened to you. It was basically just a really convenient set of circumstances. So yeah, strictly speaking, you're right, I _could _have refused, but it was more efficient for me to just stay the night with everyone so that in the event of an emergency, I'd be literally right on the scene if anything happened."

Ichika gives herself a moment, peering down quietly at her standing frappuccino, before looking back up at her tutor.

"You don't think of us as friends? Like, at all?" she mutters irritably. "Maybe we've only known each other for two months, just about, but you've taught us for all that time, day in and day out, spent hours and hours with us, and you still have that attitude of treating this like a job? What's with that..."

"I believe I've already explained to you why that is. I'll spare you a repeat of it, though."

"But do you _have _to be so...so caught up on treating this as a job? We're _classmates_, Fuutarou-kun. Doesn't that...like, doesn't that _mean _anything to you?"

"I have roughly twenty other classmates; I just happen to spend a lot more time with you five."

"Yeah, exactly! And you don't think that difference in time spent with us compared to everyone else means anything?"

"Not when I can't be sure that what we've got going on right now is going to last for any significant amount of time."

"...what do you mean by that? Dad told us that this was going to be a year-long contract, at least."

Fuutarou taps his chest, where his almost fully recovered wound is located.

"I thought you knowing about this would've given you some perspective on this, but I guess not, so I'll lay it out straight to you: I'd rather not get myself involved in the process of making friends when I live a life where I don't know if I'll be coming home in one piece. And not to mention, what friends I _do _have, in my case my sister and my dad, I don't know if something might end up happening to them too."

Setting his elbows on the table to lean a bit towards his student as well, Fuutarou icily narrows his eyes back into Ichika's defiant blue ones.

"I get that our situations differ to the extent that I don't expect you to understand where I'm coming from or even what I'm getting at exactly with this; our paths just happened to cross at some point in time and because of that, now we have to deal with each other for the next year, tentatively speaking. But while I'm not against you seeing me as your friend, I'd like to ask that you don't try to force your opinion of me or your viewpoint on 'friends' down my throat like this. It's not like I'm trying to be mean to you and your sisters by calling you all my clients; I only mean that in a professional business sense, because that's what you are, and you shouldn't be getting any unnecessary implications from that. Because the moment I start seeing you all as something more than just clients, and more of like, say, friends, that's when the trouble starts; that's when I won't be able to do my job as I'd like to, and not to mention in this case, your dad's going to probably fire me instantly the moment he hears about us being a bit closer than we should."

Still not terribly impressed by Fuutarou's speech, Ichika slouches in her chair somewhat while taking yet another sip of her drink.

"You're really _that _much of a loner, huh? Scared that if you make friends, you're gonna lose them or something? Or maybe you're scared that if you get too close to us, we might betray you or something?" she scoffs loudly, rather...obnoxiously.

"Scared...if that's how you want to put it, then sure."

"Sheesh...you sure as heck seemed like one when we first met you, but I guess I wasn't really expecting you to actually _be _one, too."

"...did I not just explain to you why that is?"

"You did, don't get me wrong. But you said it yourself, didn't you?"

Fuutarou keenly watches Ichika sit up in her chair again, and her piercing blue eyes widen slowly, unblinking.

"'I don't expect you to understand where I'm coming from'. That's what you said, wasn't it? So if you never had any expectations from me in regards to this, why are you so surprised right now? I'm just a normal high schooler who loves sleeping, drinking frappuccinos, and hanging out with my sisters. I don't know about anything magic-related or shit like that, outside of a few instances. So if you yourself don't even believe that I have the capacity to understand the kind of situation you're in right now, why should I bother? That'd be a giant waste of a time, right? And didn't you say that you didn't want to get us involved with your other job, or just magic in general because it's supposed to be, like, super dangerous and stuff? Then why should I care about that edgy stuff you keep talking about when I could be spending my time being what I've always been, a carefree schoolgirl?"

Ichika's face is frozen in place, eyes wide open, with only her lips moving - lips that are slowly curling into a distorted smile of sorts.

"Weren't you supposed to be the smart one, Fuutarou-kun? Or did I catch you trying to bamboozle me with the way you like to talk, making yourself sound like you have some sort of moral high ground, just because you come from a less fortunate background and set of circumstances? Because I don't give a fuck about all that, Fuutarou-kun, partly because _you _were the one who said that we shouldn't, and the rest because _I _also know what it feels like to come from a shitty situation; my sisters and I all do."

"Oh, sorry, I wasn't aware that _you _had to live through your younger years knowing that one mistake would mean the end of your life," Fuutarou retorts, controlling the amount of venom that he himself injects his words with.

"But does that matter? What, are you trying to _compare _our situations now? Trying to rank them to see who suffered more? All that does is further prove my point about how you like to talk in the way that you do, doesn't it?"

The longer Ichika talks like this, the more Fuutarou feels his own fists clench, as his fingers flex slowly but dangerously, as if preparing for a fight. His own rising emotions aside, why is Ichika suddenly acting like this? She's never been _this _antagonistic towards him before...

"Then why are you so adamant about this whole friend thing? Yeah, we got along just fine, at least before today, and I _guess _get your whole friend thing a bit better, but you've said a few times before that I'm always being a dense bully who likes yelling at you and your sisters for getting a question wrong while we study."

"Oh, so you _are _aware of it..."

"Like I had a fucking choice, Ichika. Why are you trying so hard to get me to see you as friends?"

"Because you already _do!" _Without warning, the eldest quintuplet slams her drink on her side of the table, causing a few globs of deforming whipped cream to jettison themselves out through the top hole of the plastic cover. The distorted smile on her face is now instantly gone. "Don't you fucking get it, Fuutarou-kun!? Why I'm so angry at you right now!? It's because you keep saying one thing and then doing another; you say you don't think of us as friends, yet you teach us, hang out with us, buy stuff for us sometimes, whatever! And it's not like you've only been over once or twice, no, you've basically been with us _every day _outside of weekends, and nowadays you've been coming over on weekends too because of midterms! Okay, maybe you - you've never had that many friends so maybe you don't really know what friends usually do or whatever, but come _on, _you at least know what 'friends' are, so hasn't it ever crossed your mind that maybe, just _maybe, _we're all friends here?"

"Not Nino or Itsuki," Fuutarou laughs scathingly.

_"That's besides the point! _They've been getting better recently, actually, so if you keep this up, I'm sure they'll slowly start treating you like a friend too!" Ichika jams a finger in Fuutarou's direction, pointed straight towards his face. "I can't stand people who pull the kind of shit that you're pulling, saying one thing and then doing the exact opposite or something else entirely that they didn't make any mention about. And in your case, you're _treating _us like friends, but you're saying that you don't want to think of us like that. Seriously, what gives, Fuutarou-kun? Does your job seriously scare you to the point where you can't make _any _friends? Like, _at all? _Surely you can find some people whom you can call friends, people whom you don't need to worry about turning against you or...or hurting you or backstabbing you or anything like that? Like, you already have some people like that, and they're your family! So if your family are people you can trust, then that means you can do the same for other people! I'm not saying you should just go around making friends with _anybody_, obviously you're not that type of person, but at least for _us_, you can't trust us, not even a _little _bit? Not even with all the time you've spent with us and stuff?"

Quietly sipping his latte all throughout Ichika's rant, Fuutarou waits for her to finish.

"And what exactly do _you _seek to gain from it?" he asks in a low voice, still holding his latte close for a quick follow-up sip. "What does getting me to call you and your sisters my friends going to do for you?"

"What do I _seek to gain _from it...? Oh come _on_, it's not like _everyone _needs to be one of those 'friends with benefits' types!"

"I'm not even talking about being friends with benefits; the fact that you're getting so worked up about this whole thing seems to me that there's something in store for you, something that you stand to gain from getting me to call you my friend. It's most likely not anything physical, like, clearly you're not trying to get money from me or get any kind of favor from me, so it must be a personal one. Or am I wrong?"

Ichika crosses her arms hotly back at her tutor. "Fine, you're not wrong, it _is _a personal reason, but it's because I'm trying to look out for you. It's what I was saying in the very beginning!"

"So much for not caring about what I do for a living."

"Is there something wrong with being concerned for the safety of someone I consider my friend, Fuutarou-kun? This has nothing to do with your job as a mage; since you got hurt on the job, can't I express my concern for you and check on how you're doing? I'd do the same thing for any of my other friends! So why do you feel like you have to keep everything to yourself? You look after us, you work to keep us safe, you even treated Itsuki when she got her nose hurt from back then - hell, you work in the damn _hospital_, doing surgeries and whatever else with Dad, right? You do all these things, you work so hard for both us and other people, and yet you can't even handle a girl like me asking you if you're alright from the cut you got last week? I can't believe you right now, Fuutarou-kun."

As she's wrapping up her spoken sentiments, Ichika smoothly slides off her chair to get on her feet and gathers her bag and half-drunk frappuccino with the very long name to turn around to face in the direction of the door. But just before she exits the range of Fuutarou's boundary rune, she stops.

"If that's how you're going to be, then stop coming to teach us in our home. Since we studied together in the library yesterday, we can meet there from now on, but I don't quite fancy the idea of letting people who refuse to call themselves my friend into my house, no matter the circumstances. If you show up at our house again, I _will _call Dad to tell him to call off your tutoring contract and tell him that your work isn't satisfactory, and that we need a new tutor."

Fuutarou lowers his latte. His seat is already facing the same direction as Ichika, so he doesn't need to move much to see her off.

"...is that a threat?"

Ichika turns her neck slightly so that Fuutarou can see a portion of the right side of her face.

A bright golden gem shines where her blue eye is supposed to be.

**"Try me, Uesugi."**

Fuutarou's body locks up instantly. Like rigid joints of a machine that have rusted too much to move, Fuutarou's joints refuse to budge, and this includes his vocal chords, preventing him from even speaking. So he's forced to sit in his chair, immobilized, and watch the eldest quintuplet remove herself from the scene, with the jingling of the doorbells at the exit sounding her departure.

It takes a good five minutes before the immobilization effect finally wears off, and Fuutarou quickly checks himself to see if anything else is wrong, which there is none, at least not that he can tell. Draining the rest of his latte slowly, Fuutarou dispels his boundary rune and pulls out his phone to send a quick text message to Dr. Nakano, typing in the message with one thumb.

Once he's sent this message, Fuutarou eyes the door briefly, his own eyes narrowed, before getting up to toss away his empty cup and head home himself.


	34. Senbei

The quiet click of the penthouse door sounds off behind Ichika, who pulls off her shoes, stacks them up in their usual spot against the side of the wall before stepping into the house, and makes her way to the living room, where she tosses her bag onto the shorter couch and flops on her back on the length of the longer couch perpendicular to it. Taking a deep sigh through her nose and resting the back of her right hand over her eyes and forehead, Ichika closes her tired eyes, as if she's about to go to sleep right here in the living room.

But contrary to usual Ichika behavior, the eldest quintuplet doesn't fall asleep on the spot.

The house sounds quiet for a late Sunday afternoon...or perhaps it's already early evening. Nino wanted to go see a movie today, and Itsuki mentioned something about going with her to watch, so they're probably still at the movie theater or stopping by some other places on their way back home if the movie's already done. Yotsuba might be outside as well, giving a hand to her friends or clubs at school as she often does. Miku is probably in her room, playing games or watching anime or something...doing the usual otaku-ish stuff.

The loud hustle-bustle of the streets of the city...the car engines, car horns, chatter of pedestrian conversations, the voices of her friends and coworkers at work, the ambient music from the Starbucks, heck, even the breeze that's been gracing the city today...and last but not least, the babble of her four quintuplet sisters...

All of it - absent. For this rare moment in the Nakano penthouse, Ichika is alone, with nothing but silence to call her companion. It's a heavenly sensation, one that Ichika knows she doesn't get a lot of, mainly because she typically falls asleep too quickly to allow herself any such time to enjoy the gift of silence whenever she's able to.

Not that she feels any more alone than normal.

Pulling her hand somewhat off her forehead to open her eyes and dreamily gaze up at the tall ceiling above her, Nakano Ichika lets her lips part and rest agape as she breathes with her mouth, softly...and calmly.

As her hand pulls away and the schoolgirl opens her eyes correspondingly, her left eye is the usual blue, as is her ri -

Her right eye shines subtly with a divine golden aura, with no more trace of blue left in them. But it's not a solid shade of golden - breaking it is a ring of black, surrounding the constricted pupil that faithfully remains blue, as though it is clinging desperately onto the previous image of Ichika's right eye. This ring of black, from afar, appears to be a solid enough ring - but up close, it becomes clear that rather than being a solid shape with the absence of color, it is instead many individual lines of black that revolve around the blue dot of a pupil like an asteroid belt.

Blinking slowly with her exposed right eye, Ichika watches the ceiling with deliberate intent, the same kind of intent that a house cat would employ watching the rest of the house from a high perch. It would seem that once again, she's let herself get carried away.

And it _had_ to happen to the worst possible person she could let it happen to.

Groaning lightly, Ichika presses her right palm over her eyes, mainly over her mutated right yellow one. She's not sure when her eye changed...the start of elementary school, maybe? But all she has is a wild guess.

Ichika knew that she was always a little...special. Even during the quintuplets' younger days when they truly were identical sisters, dressing the same, talking the same, having more or less the same preferences, and always hanging out together, Ichika always acted with one foot outside the box, deviating from her sisters to establish her own individuality even from those early ages, but not to the point where it would betray their collective identity as quintuplets. Evidence of such deviant behavior included stealing little trinkets from the rest of her sisters like candy and toys, claiming first dibs on snacks and gifts and using her first-born status as rationale for it, and leaving people she didn't like stunned on the ground, unable to move. These little pieces of evidence for her deviance could easily and conveniently be considered to be the initial signs of an emerging personality that Ichika would grow into in the years to come, so no one, not even her sisters, would suspect otherwise.

...leave people stunned on the ground, unable to move?

Ichika still remembers the day that their mother first told her that she was the oldest, and the context behind that situation. The quintuplets at the time had been curious about the exact order of their ages, because _someone _had to be the oldest and _someone_ had to be the youngest, and they wanted to know for knowing's sake. But they had been very shy about asking their mother about the topic, though Ichika doesn't quite remember why they were so nervous about it at the time. But eventually they did ask, and that was when Ichika first learned that she was, in fact, the eldest quintuplet.

She remembers feeling a kind of...pride for being the oldest. While she didn't let it show so that she and her sisters could continue being the cute set of identical quintuplets who ran around doing everything from being the sweetest five kids in the world to causing havoc and being a collective pile of little shits, Ichika never relinquished that soft-spoken pride of being the eldest sibling. And she wasn't satisfied with just _knowing _that she was the oldest; she wanted to _show_ people that she was the oldest. She just didn't know how to go about doing that, or if she even should at all.

Their mother's death was the catalyst for that eldest-sibling sentiment to finally come to fruition, because by that point, even at nine years old, Ichika knew that their family's situation wasn't great up until recently; while she probably didn't fully grasp the concept of "poor" at the time, she understood that their mother passing meant that there would be no one to take care of them in the same way that she did, and their father being away at work all the time certainly wasn't going to help the situation.

So Ichika took it upon herself to become her sisters' surrogate mother. Nino may have promised to make sure to keep all five of them together, and Itsuki may have physically told them that she would take over for their late mother to be their new mother, but Ichika was the first to truly act upon it. Long before Nino gained her notorious reputation for being a hot-blooded, streetwise schoolgirl who'd fiercely defend her sisters at the drop of a hat during middle school, Ichika was that guardian, making sure that her sisters were safe and quietly dealing with possible threats to them out of sight whenever possible whenever they presented themselves and looking for part-time jobs to help prepare her for life after school, assuming she could even finish school in the first place.

As aforementioned, Ichika doesn't know when her eye turned this way as it is now; she doesn't even know when she was able to control it like she can now, or when she learned to do so. It was one of those natural things that just...happened. The first incident of this was back when she and her sisters were temporarily participating in a kids' soccer league, in which one of their team coaches, whom Ichika had noticed was eyeing them abnormally frequently to the point of ignoring the other kids just to watch them play, told Ichika to meet him with her sisters because their father had apparently called him and asked him to give them a ride back to their house. Ichika, knowing that that was a blatant lie because their father never called anyone he didn't know, met him alone, without telling her sisters, intending to deal with him by herself, just without knowing how.

It would have been a tragic mistake, as that soccer coach had seized her in an attempt to drag her to his car - but before Ichika knew what was happening, the kidnapping attempt didn't last for very long, because the coach was on the ground, unable to move at all.

Perhaps Ichika was in possession of this kind of power for all her life; maybe it developed on the spot, right when she needed it the most. Either way, starting from that point forward, she knew that she was truly a bit different from the rest of her sisters, because she had a kind of power that only she knew about, like she was straight out of a manga, and that difference became the source of her pride. It was the one thing that separated her from the rest of the pack, the thing that made her truly unique from the four other sisters who were otherwise the exact same as her.

And so she kept using this power in similar manners: when Yotsuba developed a reputation for being a club-hopper, as in she bounced around constantly from one club to another without ever committing to one to get in the graces of as many of the upperclassmen throughout the school as possible, Ichika confronted the girls who were the cause of the initial waves of such gossip. When Miku became hospitalized from the "knockout game" that was played on her by several of her bullies at school, she tracked them down to threaten them to never do that again. Whenever she or her sisters would be confronted by scary guys around the city, Ichika was always there to make sure that they didn't come back to harass them again. Even after Nino built her reputation as the quintuplet who refused to take any bullshit from anyone, Ichika was still there, protecting her sisters by confronting the people who gave them trouble head on to get them out of their lives, whenever she felt it was necessary.

However, she did all this with a twist: none of her sisters know anything about this. None of them have any idea that it's because of her, or at least a big reason why, that the people who preyed on them before, whether they be their schoolmates or strangers around the city, have largely left them alone. That's in part why Nino gained her reputation as the most hot-blooded quintuplet among them, because Ichika never revealed hers and never had to share it with her younger sister.

She doesn't mind having her thunder stolen like this...it's not something to be proud of in the first place, anyway. She's quite aware without having anyone else tell this to her face that going around hunting people down like that of her own accord, this vigilantism of sorts, could very well be considered a bad thing to do, even if all the people she's done this to are fully deserving of it. She doesn't know what this power that she has can do - all she knows is that when she focuses on someone's eyes with her own, she casts some sort of...spell over them of sorts, which can leave them in a stunned state, as if their whole body's instantly developed lockjaw and remains that way for a few moments, and the effect either buys her time to escape from them or gives them a good enough scare to make her seem a whole lot more threatening than she really is. Quite conveniently, such a spell also allows Ichika to alter her victims in such a way that they stop doing what she wants them to but simultaneously forget that she was the one who compelled them to do so, as she discovered after she "took care" of Yotsuba's gossipers, so all she needs to do is make sure that she isn't seen by third parties whenever she employs her power. She can do other things with it, but leaving people temporarily incapacitated like this and be left unaware that she was the culprit is by far her most common use of it. Whether or not it has any other after-effects or additional side effects, Ichika doesn't know, and she's never made a conscious effort to find out because all the people she's done this to are people she couldn't care any less about.

Rather, she doesn't want her sisters to know that she possesses this sort of power, that her right eye holds some kind of mysterious power that she's been keeping a secret from the rest of them for the past however many years that it's existed. At the time when their mother died, when she first resolved to look after her sisters in their mother's stead, Ichika never imagined that this was how she'd go about it. Sure, she was thrilled to have this power at first, something that very clearly didn't seem normal for a nine-year-old girl to have, but the novelty of it wore off each time that she found herself using it. With each bad person that she felled with it, the more she felt herself becoming someone she was not, if that makes any sense; Ichika slowly began to develop the sense that this power is somehow foreign, and that she was never intended to have it, though obviously she still hasn't been able to figure out why it makes her feel this way.

No need to watch anime with Miku and Yotsuba whenever they have their anime nights when she's already living in one.

So this power of hers that helped cement her feeling of uniqueness and individuality that segregated her from her sisters became the same reason why she felt she was distancing herself too much from them. She wanted to feel unique and one-of-a-kind, yes, but not to the point where she didn't even feel like she was a part of the gang anymore; she still wanted to roll "with the boys", so to speak, or in her case it'd be "with the girls". She didn't want to feel like a freak. She didn't want to feel left out. And sure, she knew as they grew older and began to establish their own personalities and quirks, especially after their mother's death, that they would eventually all have to go their separate ways, but Ichika didn't want to splice herself off quite like this; this wasn't how it was supposed to happen.

That's why...at the warehouse...

And yet, she maintained her vigilantism anyway. She kept going to her part-time jobs, eventually landing on one that she likes the most and seems the most promising in terms of pay and future career choice. After all, Ichika promised herself that she would be the one to look after the girls after their mom passed. Sure, Itsuki might _say _she wants to become their new mom, figuratively speaking, and Nino might have the reputation for keeping the sisters safe, but it's Ichika who's working to become their breadwinner; it's she who's going out there and doing the dirty work of dealing with the people who'd try to make moves on them. Ironic, then, that the very same power that threatens to destroy her sense of sistership with her siblings is the very same power that's helping her maintain it.

All the same, though, Ichika still doesn't want her sisters to know. She's fine with taking a sideline for her sisters for the sake of becoming able to support them if there ever comes a time when their father stops doing so for whatever reason; she's fine with being known as the constantly narcoleptic, carefree frappuccino-drinking freshman whose seemingly biggest concern in life is how long the line is at Starbucks. Just so long as her sisters don't know that she's a freak, everything else is fine...

...or so she thought. Halfway through their final year at Kurobara, Ichika awoke when Miku knocked on her door during the middle of the night, asking if she could spend the night with her. Ichika had never seen Miku so rattled and spooked before, to the extent that Miku was physically trembling even though it was still late summer. And that's when Ichika noticed that there was something off with her sister's eyes - and that's when she discovered that she wasn't alone, that she wasn't the only freak in the household to have a weird eye.

Now, Ichika has conflicting feelings about it all. Should she reveal to Miku that she's in the same boat, as a fellow possessor of weird eyes? The initial answer to this was no; so far, Miku has no idea that Ichika wields her own little dirty secret. But if Miku can develop them, then perhaps the rest of her sisters can...maybe it's something genetic; they are identical quintuplets, after all. Hell, maybe her other sisters already have their own eyes, but they're just keeping theirs a secret from the rest of them too, just like she is. But is she willing to risk revealing everything that she's done on a precarious gambit of finding out if the rest of her sisters have weird eyes like she does? And for what, exactly? Simply for the reassurance that she isn't the _only _freak in the house? That if _all _of them are freaks, none of them have to feel any different from each other?

Freak, huh...that's the word she used to describe herself all this time. Until recently, it never occurred to her that "freak" was a weird way to spell "mage".

And speaking of mages...

Ichika has never tried using her power on someone she knew was a mage. She didn't intend on doing that to him initially specifically because she knew that Fuutarou-kun was a mage, because once he revealed his status as one to them, that's when Ichika learned that she, too, must have been a mage all along. While it's clear that he was telling the truth when he told them that two mages could walk by each other on the street and not even know, Ichika figures that this wouldn't exactly hold up well if she ever had to use her power on Fuutarou-kun himself.

But he was being such an edgy, annoying little idiot back at the coffee shop. Going on about how he doesn't want to make friends...sure, Fuutarou-kun is clearly in a worse situation than her, she won't dispute that. But is his life really _that _bad that he can't even consider making friends with the girls he's tutoring, especially after all those hours of tutoring and such? Is he so busy and self-concerned that he won't even let someone like her be concerned about his health? And what's with that kind of attitude, refusing to reciprocate someone's sentiments about being a friend? It's not like she's asking him out or anything like that, all she cares about is being friends! And to think that he can't even handle something like that...

Even just thinking about their rocky conversation makes Ichika's right eye glow dangerously.

Ichika cups her hand over her right eye that's flaring up until it can return to normal. Ordinarily, she wouldn't have let herself get so agitated in that situation; it's not worth getting all angry like that over a mere conversation, as the social skills that she's developed over the years have taught her. But not only is Fuutarou-kun someone close to her, but Ichika herself has been through a lot; Fuutarou-kun may be poor, but Ichika and her own family were also, at one point, very poor. Fuutarou-kun may go around being busy with his magework and such, but Ichika knows how that feels as well, being out late at night tracking down people who have wronged her sisters in significant enough ways to make her journey into the night to come after them.

Perhaps Fuutarou-kun has more on his plate than she does, but even if that is the case, Ichika knows better than anyone else what Fuutarou-kun does and what he's going through, and he acts as if his position and situation is something special. If the oldest quintuplet has anything to say about it, it's that it's not.

So she lost her temper and cast her spell on him to leave. But to her silent horror, she didn't get the same feedback from Fuutarou-kun that she would normally get from casting her eye onto other people; she felt as if only half her power went through to him, but the other half was blocked by...something. From his reaction, it seemed like his body was physically affected by her incapacitation spell, so maybe that was the half that worked - perhaps Ichika should assume that her tutor is quite aware of what she's done, or tried to do, though obviously she couldn't stick around to confirm whether or not he does.

What should she do now, in this case? If Fuutarou-kun knows what she's tried doing to him, then what would he do? Report it to their dad? Maybe Nino always being suspicious of him is starting to make sense. What if he wasn't _just _sent here to tutor them? What if he was sent here for other reasons as well? As a matter of fact, was Fuutarou-kun's behavior back at the coffee shop all just an act, a ploy to bait her into using her eye on him so that he could confirm if she had any sort of magical ability? He's certainly smart enough to think of doing so - after all, the best actor is the kind who never lets their audience realize that they're acting, at least not in the moment. What if she's just let herself walk right into his trap, and now he knows without question that she's also a mage whose only talent stems from the power that's vested into her right eye? But then again, what would he even do with that knowledge?

No...it's not "what would he do", the question should be "what _could _he do". Fuutarou-kun knows all five of them fairly well by this point; he knows where they live, how to get inside their high-rise, where they are at all times...he even has runes inside their house, ostensibly for additional home security. He goes to the same school as they do; hell, they're even classmates at that, even after being transferred a week into the new school year when the quintuplets normally should have been split up into different classes. He probably even meets with their dad more times than the girls themselves do.

The more she dwells on this, the more Ichika spooks herself, realizing that their classmate and tutor Uesugi Fuutarou-kun has an uncomfortably chilling amount of access to them and their lives. And for all the stuff that he's told her back at the coffee shop, as edgy as it all seemed, he's probably not lying about any of it - if he wanted to, he could step in and systematically ruin their lives in indescribable ways before any of them can realize what the hell is going on. And he was able to get all this in a mere two months. Yeah, Fuutarou-kun did bail her and her sisters out of a tight spot back at the warehouse, and clearly their dad also trusts him enough to the point where he was willing to give him a spare keycard to their own penthouse, but Ichika can't help but feel her stomach tie itself up into a bit of a knot knowing that a boy they didn't even know two months ago is now such a huge part of their lives.

Could Nino be right all along about him...? But even if she is...even if the perceived threat that Fuutarou-kun could pose to them is very real...

One of the doors opens on the second floor, which lets out the previously muffled pair of voices coming from one of the rooms so that Ichika can now hear them properly.

"...aaaaa, he was so cool fighting with two swords like that! And with Asuna with him ~ they're like the coolest couple ever ~ !"

"You think so?"

"Aw c'mon, Miku, I know you don't like that show very much, but still, doesn't that sound so cool to you? Having a boyfriend like that who fights with you and stuff?"

"But I can't fight..."

"That's besides the point, though!"

Miku and Yotsuba climb down the stairs to fix themselves some snacks after their anime binge day, as this will be their last day off before studying for the rest of the week before their midterms at the end of the week, and upon descending, they spy Ichika lying on the long couch in the living room.

"Ah, Ichika, you're back!" Yotsuba calls out to her while still on the stairs, but Miku adopts a more concerned tone when addressing her.

"You look tired, was it tough at work today?" she asks as she approaches their oldest sister, while Yotsuba trots off to the kitchen to make drinks and grab snacks.

"Mmnnn...something like that," Ichika groans a little, sitting up on the couch once she's made sure that her right eye is back to normal. "I just ran into Fuutarou-kun on my way back home at Starbucks..."

"Starbucks? He, uh...doesn't seem like the type to go there..." Miku thinks aloud, wondering to herself why someone like their tutor would ever have a reason to go to a place like that. "Wait, he likes coffee, doesn't he? But it's probably a bit too expensive for his liking..."

"He said Dad gave him a Starbucks gift card. Apparently he got it from one of his coworkers and he just passed it off to Fuutarou-kun because he'd never have a need for it. At least, that's what Fuutarou-kun said."

"Oh..."

Ichika wants to ask her sisters what they've been up to, but given their little conversation while coming downstairs and one of the big reasons why Miku and Yotsuba in particular like to hang out together, the answer is rather obvious. That, and...Ichika feels the itch to talk about their tutor a bit more, if only to vent out the rest of her frustrations regarding him safely.

Reading the somewhat perturbed expression on her oldest sister's face, Miku leans in a bit closer to Ichika.

"...is something bothering you, Ichika? Did you, um...maybe have a fight with Fuutarou?"

Hearing this, Ichika jolts a little, sitting back upright with a surprised look on her face facing her younger sister.

"H-How did you know...?" she asks, a little spooked at the scary accuracy of Miku's guess.

"...it's not often you come home looking like that, and it takes a lot for you to," Miku answers softly. "So when you mentioned Fuutarou and meeting him at Starbucks...I figured it might be because of him..."

"Even though I've never had a fight with him before this?"

"Well...that seemed like the most likely explanation. It could've been something else, I don't know...and who knows, you might've had a fight with him before...you told us that you've run into him a few times before randomly around the city, right?"

"Er...yeah, that's...that's right..." Ichika scratches her sideburns awkwardly. "You're too smart for your own good, you know that, Miku?"

"My test scores don't quite reflect that, though."

"Oh, it's always test scores with you. Has Fuutarou-kun gotten you hooked on studying all the time?"

The two of them share a few giggles as Yotsuba joins them briefly to give them some Shirley Temples, complete with cherries on top.

"I'll be back with the snacks ~ !" she says cheerily after dropping off their drinks and retreating back into the kitchen, leaving the two others alone again for now as the sounds of cupboards swinging open and shut and the clatter of a tray tumble out of the kitchen.

Miku glances back at Ichika while Yotsuba is making a ruckus on the other side of the floor.

"What made you get into a fight with him?" Miku asks calmly.

"You aren't mad at me for getting into a fight with him?" Ichika asks in return, briefly diverting Miku's initial question. "Given how close you are with him."

"C-Close...I'm not _close_ with him," Miku blushes suddenly, pursing her lips back at her older sister.

"Aww, c'mon, you know it, don't you?"

"Geez, Ichika...but seriously, I'm not. We get into fights all the time, don't we? Like between me and Nino, Nino and Itsuki...even Yotsuba and I have our disagreements here and there."

"Well, that usually stems from the animes you watch."

_"I'm just trying to make an example here."_

"I know, I know." Ichika's smile slowly wears off, however. "...it wasn't...like a..._big _fight or anything. We just had a little...disagreement, like you said."

"Over what?"

By this point, Yotsuba returns with her tray of snacks consisting of seaweed senbei rice crackers, grape Hi-Chew, and dorayaki, and seeing the others and sensing that they're having a serious conversation of sorts, the curious Yotsuba joins them and sets the tray of snacks down next to them on their side of the glass table while she takes a seat on the carpet next to them.

Ichika sighs moderately, taking a rice cracker for herself and thanking Yotsuba for providing for them. "Well, we started out just talking normally, right...and then I asked him how he was doing with that injury Nino told us about that he had..."

Miku's eyes flash with the sight of Fuutarou's magically stitched wound across his chest at the mention of it.

"Oh yeah, Nino told us about that, didn't she? How's Uesugi-san doing? I hope he's okay," Yotsuba pipes up with concern.

"He's doing fine; he said it's almost all better."

"So what was the problem?" Miku asks.

"He got all...how should I say...he got all defensive when I asked him how he was doing," Ichika explains, allowing some of her festering frustrations from earlier that day bleed into her voice. "Like, when I asked him how his injury was doing, he was all...what did he say...he said something like, 'oh, how did you know', and he stared at me like this."

Ichika tries her best to emulate the look that their tutor gave her back at the coffee shop.

"And then he went on about how I shouldn't be making a big deal out of this, and that I shouldn't bother worrying about him or his injury or whatever." The eldest quintuplet frowns deeply, pursing her own lips a bit angrily. "Like, seriously, what's with him! I just wanted to ask him how he was doing, and he gets all pissy like that. Miku, you should tell him off at some po - "

Suddenly, Ichika hesitates. She's just remembered that Fuutarou-kun could very well remember the conversation they had back at Starbucks, but she currently has no way of knowing, so if Miku does actually talk to him about it, it'll be a coinflip to see whether or not he actually does remember. But the fact that Uesugi is a mage tilts the odds in his favor and not in hers - either way, Ichika changes her mind mid-sentence, as she'd rather not make Miku get involved too.

" - er, on second thought, maybe you don't have to," she quickly corrects herself.

"...I wasn't going to tell him off for anything, but out of curiosity, why did you want me to do that anyway? Just because I'm the one who gets along with him the most?" Miku asks.

"Yeah. But like I said, you don't need to...I forgot to say that I told him to keep our little fight today just between the two of us so that the rest of you don't have to get dragged into this. You know Nino's gonna jump at this chance to give Fuutarou-kun some flak when he's already gotten enough from me."

Munching on a dorayaki herself, Yotsuba swallows her mouthful to speak up. "Uesugi-san's just that kind of person, isn't he, though? Someone who doesn't want people to be concerned over him."

"Well, I get that, but there's gotta be a limit to that, right?" Ichika turns to Yotsuba. "My whole argument against him was that we've known each other for just about two months now - "

"Month and a half," Miku corrects her.

"Okay, month and a half, whatever. But we've spent so much time together with him already; like, think about the amount of time that you'd normally spend with someone whom you've known for a month and a half and think about how much of a friend you'd consider them to be."

Miku and Yotsuba exchange a quick glance at each other.

"Uhhh...maybe _we're _not the best ones to ask that to, y'know...?" Yotsuba smiles awkwardly back at her eldest sister.

"Yeah...you and Nino are the ones who go around making friends. The rest of us don't really bother," Miku agrees.

"Oh c'mon, it's not rocket science or anything!" Ichika sighs exasperatedly. "My point is that we've spent enough time with him in such a short period of time that I think it's fine for us to consider us friends with him. You can at least agree with me on that one, right?"

Both of her sisters nod, and Ichika accepts a dorayaki from Yotsuba who hands it to her.

"But Fuutarou-kun kept going on and on and on about it, how I shouldn't be concerned over him, that, uh, what else did he say...that he'd rather not have to spend time trying to make friends because he's too busy with his mage stuff..."

Miku lowers her own half-eaten rice cracker, as she's avoiding the Hi-Chew candies. "What _I'm_ more interested in is the fact that you even let yourself get bothered by something like that to this extent, Ichika. Normally you wouldn't really care about stuff like this and just let it go or ignore it..."

"Uh huh. Ichika's always the one who steps in and breaks up Nino's fights with either you or Itsuki. So it's pretty rare to see you be the one who's bothered by something," Yotsuba also agrees.

Ichika can't help but smile sheepishly at her sisters.

"So it's really _that _big of a deal that I'm talking like this, huh? Onee-chan can have moments like these, too."

"We know. That's why we're here for you, just like how you've always been there for us," Miku smiles warmly back at her older sister. "But what about Fuutarou? You didn't yell at him, did you?"

"Well..." Ichika quickly recalls her leaving the Starbucks after attempting to hypnotize her own tutor. "...we just...yeah, we just kind of...argued back and forth, and then I got fed up enough and just left. That's all, really..."

Miku and Yotsuba quietly eat their respective snacks for a minute.

"It does feel a bit weird to know that you two got into an argument like that," Yotsuba notes thoughtfully. "Usually you two get along just fine. So to hear you talk about Uesugi-san like this..."

"It can happen, Yotsuba. Remember yesterday, when I accidentally went back to my own room and spent the night with him? When we woke up, we talked for a little bit...and I can understand how Ichika got frustrated with him."

Ichika smiles in amusement. "Oh, did he act the same to you like he did to me? What did he say to you?"

"Well, he didn't like...say anything that would make me argue with him. It's just, uh..."

It's Miku's turn to remember her own encounter with her tutor, specifically the moment when she demanded him to take off his shirt so that she could see where he was hurt.

"...er, yeah, let's just...um...forget about that..." Miku trails off lightly, her cheeks beginning to glow with embarrassment as she tries to turn away, but Ichika, spying a chance to tease her, pounces on the opportunity.

"Whoa, whoa, hold up there Miku, you got something _juicy _to share with us, don't you? C'mon, why don't you share it with us ~ " she coos after Miku, who turns a full one-eighty degrees to put her back to her oldest sister.

"Hm? Huh? What's going on, did Miku do something with him?" Yotsuba asks with the innocence of an elementary schooler, so Ichika turns to her to spell it out for her.

"Think about it, Yotsuba: Miku spent a night _sleeping _with Fuutarou-kun. In the same bed. In _her _bedroom."

Finally, the implications click in Yotsuba's head, and Yotsuba, too, feels her face flush for her own older sister Miku.

"Aaaaaaaaahh...! M-M-Mikuuuuuu, n-naughty things like thaaaaaat...not okay, not okaaaaay!" Yotsuba cries out in a small voice that squeaks like a mouse as she wags her finger in Miku's direction.

"I-I didn't do anything _n-n-naughty _with him! I didn't have any intentions like that whatsoever!" Miku desperately tries to defend herself, but Ichika doesn't let up the pressure.

"Oh no? But you're the _closest _to him by far out of the five of us. And you always look _so happy _whenever he shows up, always giving him that _angelic _smile of yours that you don't ever give the rest of your beloved sisters ~ " Ichika even clasps her hands together in romantic fashion.

"Ichikaaaaaa...!"

After sparing a few laughs at Miku's expense, Ichika and Yotsuba both take a swig of their Shirley Temples.

"I do agree with Yotsuba, though," Miku mentions as they're taking a drink. "Fuutarou...is just that kind of guy. He does stuff on his own...and he likes it that way. He's basically been like that the whole time we've known him, if you think about it."

"I guess so, but still...to me, that doesn't excuse him from saying stuff like how he doesn't want to bother becoming friends with us. Maybe it could just be me overthinking things, but that doesn't stop me from feeling a bit...irritated, I guess, at him," Ichika admits. "If you were there in my shoes, what would you two have said back to him? How would the two of you act if Fuutarou-kun told you two that he doesn't want to think of you two as friends?"

Again, Miku and Yotsuba exchange passing glances.

"Well, I'd...probably get mad too!" Yotsuba freely admits, offering a wide but shy grin of her own. "But to be fair, I want to listen to his reasoning for it. I'm sure he's not saying that just to be mean; he doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd do something like that. Like, you know how he's always being all efficient and stuff? And he's even said himself that he's not the best around other people, so he's probably not conveying his feelings in a way that we can understand, but it makes sense to him or something, I don't know. But I'm confident that he has a good reason why he's saying stuff like that."

"Yotsuba's right, I want him to explain himself to me first, and he probably does have a good reason. But even so, even if he does have a good reason, Fuutarou does care about us. Even if he doesn't admit it himself, I'm sure that he thinks of us as something along the lines of friends...even if to him, we're not exactly at that point yet," Miku nods.

"But what if everything he's doing's just one big act?" Ichika pitches to her sisters. "What if he's only pretending to care to get you to think that about him?"

"Whoa, whoa, calm down there, Nino," Miku smirks a little, causing Yotsuba to laugh shortly at her joke.

"I-I know I'm sounding a little bit like Nino right now, but seriously, especially now that Fuutarou-kun's said those things to me, what if he's serious about that? And he very well may be, it's Fuutarou-kun we're talking about, after all!"

Miku continues to smile a little after her smirk. "Even then, Ichika, I wouldn't want to put him down for what he thinks. If his reasoning were bad, then sure, we can criticize him all we want for it, but like you said, it's Fuutarou we're talking about; he wouldn't say something like that unless he has a good reason to. And since I want to give him this benefit of the doubt, I'll let him think what he wants...but at the same time, I'd want to work to show him that we _can _be more than just student and tutor, that we _can _be friends wherever we meet. At school, around the city, at home, on vacation, wherever. If Fuutarou is willing to put in the time and effort to teach us and get our grades up, then we can teach him to open up a little bit more, can't we?"

"Ooooh! I like that, I like that! That's a great idea, Miku!" Yotsuba exclaims. "That way, it's a learning experience for _all _of us! That's wonderful, isn't it?"

"Hmm...I _do _kinda like the sound of that, actually..." Ichika rubs her chin thoughtfully as well.

"Even though you just came back from yelling at Fuutarou?" Miku asks mischievously.

"Eh ~ it is what it is. What's he going to do about it, you know?" Ichika laughs cheerfully in response. "He deals with Nino's crap all the time without even flinching; I think I'll be fine too."

"Hey, even Nino's changing too. You notice how she isn't yelling at Uesugi-san as much these days?"

"Ah yeah, that's right, that's right ~ now if only we can get that stubborn Fuutarou-kun of ours to change his own attitude and start seeing us as his friends too, and everything'll be fine ~ !"

"By the way, Ichika, it sounds like you're really invested in getting Fuutarou to call us his friends. Normally you don't really care for guys that much, do you?" Miku points out.

"What do you mean? I'm pretty popular with the boys at school, y'know? All I need to do is a little bit of this ~ " Ichika suggestively blows a kiss in Miku's direction.

"Yeah, but you're _only_ popular with them. You've never actually gone out of your way to be friends with any of them, have you?" Miku frowns a little at her. "As a matter of fact, I don't think I remember seeing you really hang out with anyone at school other than us."

"Ah, don't worry about it. Our new school's really big, y'know? Lots of people to meet and remember. I'm sure I'll make some friends along the way, though you're right that I haven't really been making that a super high priority or anything."

"Maybe not, but for you to be bothered by Fuutarou not thinking of us as friends..." Miku leans in towards Ichika now. "Ichika, could it be...?"

"Wait, whoa, whoa, it's not like _that _or anything, I'm just a _taaaad _bit upset that poor Fuutarou-kun doesn't want to be friends with us! Who _wouldn't _wanna be friends with us five _perfect _angels, you know ~ ? All the boys at school would _kill _to be our friends!"

Ichika hesitates.

"Well, maybe except for Itsuki, since she'll eat a hole through their wallets."

"Pfffft..."

Both Miku and Yotsuba double over at Ichika's unexpected joke on Itsuki.

"And here we are, talking about how we're gonna make Uesugi-san change when we're sitting here still cracking jokes about Itsuki and her eating habits!" Yotsuba cries out.

While her sisters are recovering from their fits of giggles, Ichika feels a vibration in her pocket, and that's her phone that she's forgotten to take off its vibration mode. Fishing it out, she opens the text that she's just gotten, and her heart freezes as soon as she sees the name: it's from Uesugi Fuutarou.

_I'm still coming over the day before midterms begins for our last cram session. You better tell the others, otherwise I'm asking your dad to tell you all for you._

So not only does he still remember, as she suspected, but he's even calling her bluff. Makes sense, though - as weird as it is to consider, Fuutarou-kun is probably closer to their dad than any of his daughters are, considering that they work in the same hospital, and apparently oftentimes together.

"Somebody text you?" Miku asks, nodding down at her phone.

"Er, uh, yeah...it's...it's from Fuutarou-kun..." Ichika sighs, deciding to let her sisters know; for now, this is a loss that she'll have to eat, though she's going to have to figure out a way to deal with him in private in regards to what she tried to do to him towards the end of their conversation earlier this afternoon. "He says that he'll come over again for another overnight cram session the day before our midterms start."

"Again? I mean, I don't mind, and I'm sure none of us here do, but the problem's more of how Nino and Itsuki are gonna handle it," Yotsuba says. "Itsuki..._might _be okay with it, but Nino...?"

"Ichika, you can blackmail Nino again, right?" Miku asks her oldest sister with utmost seriousness.

"Hey, hey, Miku, that isn't something you should ask so casually like that, you know? Blackmail is bad, mmmkay."

"So does that mean you're a bad girl too?"

"Only when it gets my cute sisters to be good girls and study ~ "

"Yeah, try telling Nino that, see how she reacts."

As they're joking around like this, the front door opens and closes, and in walk Nino and Itsuki, the missing quintuplets, fresh from their venture into the city for the day.

"Try telling me what, now?" Nino asks as the two of them join the rest of their siblings, with Itsuki, quite predictably, going immediately for the snacks and helping herself to a senbei rice cracker.

"Oh, Fuutarou-kun wanted me to tell everyone that he wants to do another overnight cram session before our midterms," Ichika plainly informs her.

_"Again!? _Tell him no, once is _more _than enough! Besides, it's just an excuse to try to get Miku to sleep with him again! I won't allow it!" Nino erupts hotly, as suspected, turning to Itsuki for support. "You tell 'em too, Itsuki! Once is enough, and the rest we can handle on our ow - "

"I see nothing wrong with one more night."

For a few seconds, there is no sound being made in the living room besides the ticking of the large wall clock behind them and Itsuki's calm munching of her rice cracker.

"Then it's settled! We're having one more cram sesh with Uesugi-saaaaan! Yaaaaaaay!" Yotsuba cheers loudly.

"_I-Itsukiiiii! _I thought you were on _my _side! Why're you letting him come back for _another _night here!?" Nino just as loudly complains to her youngest sister, who smiles calmly back at her.

"Oh, no real reason. I just figured that if I am to go down, I would rather drag you down with me ~ "

_**"ITSUKIIIIIII! ! ! ! ! ! !"**_

The Nakano penthouse is filled with the cries of an angry quintuplet and the chorus of quintuplet laughter.


	35. Knifefight

_Fwsshh._

Once more, the teleportation rune in the unoccupied and forgotten attic of an apartment building flashes quietly with bright blue light that simmers down immediately, revealing a lone young man standing on it, dressed in his usual black modern mage garb, who waits for the light to disappear completely and gives the rune a few moments before holding his hand out to it, resetting it so that he can reactivate its teleportation usage again when he returns to the departure rune later tonight.

Uesugi Fuutarou is maintaining total radio silence tonight, so his dad isn't providing him with eyes in the sky, so to speak. Given the commotion he'd made on the city news during his time last here, he needs to assume that whoever was in charge of planting the bomb at the drug cache across the street is keeping a close eye on this site.

But that's precisely why he's returned - to try to lure the perpetrator of the attempted bombing of the drug cache and the police officers who were investigating it at the time out. Who knows - maybe Shirazumi Rio himself - herself? - will come out.

Making his way down to street level first, instead of crossing the street to head into the drug cache site directly, he takes a bit of a detour and goes behind the building to scale it and perch himself on the roof to keep vigil for a little bit of time over the area. The streets seem a bit less busy than usual, probably due to the police scene that was established here because of the drug cache site last week, but there's still at least a bit of traffic flowing on the asphalt down below. Taking a deep, silent breath, Fuutarou wishes that he had the luxury of safety to take his time and enjoy a cigarette from a vantage point over the city's immediate vicinity like his...but such luxuries will have to wait for another time.

"A time and a place for everything"...was what he was told when he was young.

Still, as he stands with his Presence Concealment spell over himself active to mask his position to potential rival mages and common passersby alike, Fuutarou lets the city ambience set the tone for tonight. It's most likely due to his nighttime schedule and his self-established role as the so-called manager of this particular city, but he's slowly but surely grown to like the vibes that a downtown night gives off. The chilly winds...though those won't last long, with summer rapidly approaching...the rumbling of car engines down below, with the occasional horns or tire screeches, the lights of the streets and the skyscrapers, and, if the night permits, the heavy, toxic air of cigarette smoke. Life doesn't get much better than that...

...or maybe that's only because that's the best life _can _get, according to Uesugi Fuutarou.

Now that he has some time to kill while standing watch over the former drug cache site, which has by this point been cleared out by the police over the weekend, the young mage on duty tonight decides to ponder some more pressing..._personal _matters at hand.

Today is Tuesday...all of their midterms are pooled on Friday. Again through Ichika's phone, since her number's still the only one that he knows among the girls, he's given the quintuplets this week off from his lessons so that they can self-study, though how much they'll actually study is highly dependent on the quint: Ichika _might _study, if she's not already busy sleeping or going off to that part-time job of hers that he still doesn't know anything about, Nino most likely won't bother, Miku will definitely study, Yotsuba might not study, and Itsuki will also definitely study, even if he himself didn't tell her to.

Are the quintuplets ready for the midterms? Honestly, no. While their scores have undoubtedly improved thanks to his every day lessons, the rate of improvement still isn't quite to the point where he can be confident in everyone's abilities to pass them without worry, which is an opinion that hasn't changed ever since his last overnight cram session with the girls, unfortunately. Maybe this was only to be expected; there's only so much he could have expected out of five girls who all consistently fail four out of five subjects that they'll be tested on.

He seriously doubts that one more truly last-minute cram session would help them at all - in fact, it might even be a detriment, since he'll be making the girls study throughout the night as per the instructions he'd sent to Ichika to relay to her sisters. But at least he'll be able to use this as learning experience for himself as a tutor; at least, he'll know that if the girls all bomb their midterms completely here, he'll know not to resort to last-minute cram nights the day before the actual midterms.

And it's not just cram sessions like that that need rethinking. So far, Fuutarou has only ever taught the girls with conventional methods; sure, he's had to teach entire lessons to the girls wherever needed because they just didn't get what their teachers were saying in class, but most of the time he's been doing the classic "ask the tutor a question, and the tutor will answer" approach; he's been explaining how to answer whatever questions that the girls have had, but the girls naturally don't have a very good sense of retention that would allow them to remember to answer those same questions or questions like them on their own in the future. He has the feeling that he needs to be more hands-on from the start, and that his usual tutoring style just isn't going to cut it. Desperate times call for desperate measures...not that any of this is "desperate" at all, especially not when compared to what he's going to do tonight.

Still, being able to ponder the educational concerns of his quintuplet clients is, itself, a luxury...and perhaps the biggest luxury of them all, in a night full of contemplated luxuries by yours truly, Uesugi Fuutarou. There are certainly other more worrying things about them that he could be worrying about...

...like Ichika's Mystic Eyes.

After learning of the pair of Mystic Eyes that Nino and Miku possess, their tutor made a mental note to himself to study up on them, but due to his busy schedule and the relative lack of activity from their magic eyes, he didn't feel the urge to do his magical research right away. But Ichika was a different story, because not only is it obvious that _she _possesses a Mystic Eye or Eyes of her own, but she very clearly also knows how to use it and is fully aware of what its effects and abilities are. Ichika was the one who pushed him over the edge to take action and start his damn research, because he sure as hell doesn't know a whole lot about Mystic Eyes...again, partly because he's never had many opportunities to run into another mages at all.

The lack of magical resources certainly didn't help either, so he had to call up an old associate of his to see if he knew anything about them. And unfortunately, his buddy wasn't available at the time, mainly because he lives across the Pacific Ocean from him. Though, at this time of the day, this late at night, he probably can answer if he were to call right now. Then again, since he left a voice message on his phone, he should've called or at least emailed back his response if he knows about it.

Shrugging a little to himself, Fuutarou pulls out his phone to dial his old buddy's number. The smartwatch that was damaged during the explosion last week is still undergoing repairs, as his dad got wind of it and volunteered to help repair it as well whenever Fuutarou himself wasn't working on restoring it, so he's back to square one with his trusty Google Pixel 3 smartphone as his sidekick. Might as well venture another shot at calling his associate, since there's nothing much else to do other than wait for now.

His phone dials the number he's inputted. As the phone call is being directed internationally, Fuutarou isn't looking forward to the bill that this conversation will cause - but such is the price of knowledge that he can't find easily on his own. He could always consult with the boys up in London, but like the samples he's sent to them to analyze, they'll take their sweet-ass time with it...

The call doesn't connect, as Fuutarou half-expected. Seems like his friend's habit of rarely being able to pick up the phone continues to this day. Actually, is it appropriate to even call him a friend? He's still not sure if they even know each other all that well to warrant that. Oh great, now he's reminded of his run-in with Ichika and how he pissed her off by insisting that he wasn't here to make friends. And just as he thought he'd moved past that...

The young mage sighs annoyedly, in the midst of stowing his phone away, but to his silent surprise, it vibrates quickly with the receipt of a text message. This isn't a typical hour of the day - or rather, night - to be receiving texts from anybody. Maybe his dad? But Isanari never really has a reason to text him...well, Fuutarou did specifically tell him that he wouldn't need him as a communicator back at home for tonight's agenda, so texting would be the next sensible means of communications.

Even more surprise creeps up on his face in the form of his eyes widening somewhat when he glances back down at his phone screen, which shows a text message from the same old associate whom he attempted to contact just a moment ago. What the hell, this guy's never texted him anything before. What few times they'd ever been in remote contact, it's always been over the phone. How much are international texting rates again?

Mentally preparing himself to see a lot more digits on his phone and text bill the next time he sees it, Uesugi unlocks his phone to view the text message in full.

_sorry I couldn't answer your calls, been busy lately and rn isn't the best time for calls but at least I can text. how ya doin buddy, been a while, what can i do for ya_

A small smirk of sorts also encroaching onto his face, Fuutarou pulls up his phone closer to his face to begin texting back, though he makes sure to shift his eyes back and forth from his phone and the former drug cache site and the surrounding streets down below.

_I'm doing fine. English is okay?_

_yeah np  
_

_Just so you know, texting like this is going to cost me a lot._

_what you don't have like an international plan or smth_

_And why would you think I'd need an international plan?_

_ok then what about one of those messenger apps like whatsapp or kakao or line or smth_

_You're implying that I have any friends that I can use those things for._

_touche. if it'll make u feel any better u can foot me the bill so u don't have to worry about it. it'll make up for not answering ur calls_

_That would be nice, thanks._

_so what u need_

Fuutarou takes another deep breath as he begins typing out his situation.

_Right now I know a few classmates who I think have Mystic Eyes. I had an argument the other day with one of them and she ended up using it on me. I'm fine but the fact that she knows how to use it concerns me. I need you to tell me what you know about Mystic Eyes; any information will be useful._

_mystic eyes huh. haven't had to deal with those in a while_

_I wouldn't think so either. Especially with what's going on with magic in the world these days._

_yeah it's unfortunate but hey thats how it is  
_

_So what do you know about them? Or am I going to have to go ask someone else? I'd rather not consult with the guys up in London about this if possible._

_oh yea dont talk to the clock tower boys about this, they're gonna go apeshit and hunt anyone down that they know have confirmed mystic eyes. first how much do u know about mystic eyes  
_

_Not much. All I know is that they're special eyes that give mages an extra layer of magical ability or power basically for free, or some kind of power that interferes with the outer world in some way._

_well u basically have the gist of them down so theres that. but mystic eyes don't always give power for free_

_So they can come at a cost?_

_ye, it depends on a few things like type of eye, personal strength/magical talent of the owner, genetics, etc_

_What kind of cost are we talking about?_

_again it depends on the eye. thing is, mystic eyes even back when magic was still in okay shape were pretty rare, so while I can sit here and give you categories of mystic eye side effects, it's just a lot easier nowadays to individualize each case. in the case of your classmates, have you noticed any symptoms from them, or have they told you about them at all_

_One of them told me a bit about theirs. They said that their eyes feel like they burn sometimes._

_burning huh. might be mystic eyes of flame, i think there was someone in the clock tower named yvette who had them but idk, could be something else  
_

_Another one told me she had similar symptoms. But like I mentioned before, one of them used her mystic eye on me._

_what happened_

_I felt like I got frozen in place. I also get the feeling that something else was supposed to happen to me but my defensive spells managed to block it I think. I couldn't move for a few moments, but everything went back to normal after that._

_sounds like mystic eyes of binding. one of the more common types, cripples a target just by making eye contact but that's all it can really do. if ur saying u felt like her eyes shouldve done something else_

_I'm sure of it. I don't know what its other effect could be, though._

_what it is isnt relevant, its the fact that it can do something else that makes it probably not binding. maybe enchantment? but only vampires had those so probably not_

_Can you identify what type of Mystic Eye it is just by looking at them?_

_as in like what they look like?_

_Yeah._

_no not really. just knowing symptoms isnt enough most of the time either; the best way to identify them is to see what they can do. like I said mystic eyes were already pretty rare, and now good luck even finding anyone with them. they can look like anything and have wildly differing effects so trying to categorize them by appearance is pointless. how the hell did u find three people with them lmfao_

_They're quintuplet girls. I'm tutoring them._

_real shit? hell of a job bro_

_Yeah, you're telling me. They have midterms this Friday._

_well gl with the tutoring. im assuming three of those quints have mystic eyes then_

_Yeah. Two of them don't know how to use theirs, or at least they haven't shown that they can to me. But one of them definitely does._

_if two of em don't know how to use their eyes, im assuming they're not from a mage family?_

_No, they were just normal girls up until recently. Well, more specifically, they knew about their eyes when they developed them but they didn't know what they actually were until I showed up._

_how long they have em for_

_Ever since middle school, so like two/three years?_

_bit of time but not too long then_

_Since these are identical quintuplets we're talking about, do all of them have Mystic Eyes if three of them already do?_

_its highly likely, ye. i'd go so far as to say that you should expect the other two to find out about theirs at some point too but thats just me_

_And would they all have the same Mystic Eyes? Or can they be different?_

_ill be honest ive never heard of quintuplets all having mystic eyes. i'm sure there've been like twins or smth before who've had mystic eyes but i don't have any examples that i know. typically all the case studies of mystic eyes we've had were on individual subjects. so i have no clue if all five of them are gonna have the same or have different ones. id love to study a case like that but i got my hands full over here  
_

_I'd rather you not use them like one of those fucked up magical experiments that I've heard about._

_well i wasnt planning on doing anything fucked up so theres that. anything else u wanna know_

Fuutarou, constantly scanning the streets in between texts, pitches his gaze down once more below him before returning to his phone.

_I told two of the girls when they came to me asking about their eyes since they know I'm a mage that because they have Mystic Eyes, they're both mages. Is that true? Or was I feeding them fake news?_

_no ur right, mystic eye carriers are mages because of the whole concept of a mystic eye stems from the fact that they alone can change the world that they perceive, and that's not something a normal person can do. but remember that regular people can become mages too, and ur one of them_

_I know, thanks very much. But what I'm asking is, it's possible for normal people like the quints I'm tutoring to just wake up one day and find that they're mages, basically?_

_its rare but its happened yeah. i guess finding out that u have mystic eyes would be one of the easier-to-explain situations_

_What do you mean?_

_have u been teaching the girls magic_

_No, not really. I don't want to, I don't want to drag them into the magic world. I don't think they can handle it, they're just normal girls. But I have been telling them bits and pieces of magecraft-related stuff, like the stuff I already knew about Mystic Eyes since they know they have them, and they also know I'm a mage. So I'd feel bad for not telling them about something they'd obviously want to know more about._

_ic. ive had to explain to people before when they find out that they have magic powers n shit, it can get pretty complicated sometimes. i just figured telling someone that their eyes have some kinda power is easier than tellin em hey u can do this this and this, u know_

_I'm not quite sure if I follow, but sure, okay._

_goddamn it_

_Don't give me that. We haven't even talked in years, not like this anyway._

_ok ill give u that but still. anything else u wanna ask_

_How dangerous can Mystic Eyes be? I told you that one of the girls used them on me. I'm fine for now, I don't think I suffered anything beyond being stunned for a few moments when it happened, but back when I first learned about them, I got the impression that they're very strong._

_their power can range anywhere from pretty trivial to reality-bending. sometimes literally_

_I don't like the sound of that._

_and u might have up to five of em to deal with. glglglgl_

_Don't remind me._

_lmaooooooo gg no re  
_

_What does that even mean._

_nm. but no rly be careful around them. u already know tho  
_

_Yeah, I do. Now that I know they're all potentially mages, I'm monitoring them closely._

_and ur ok with them developing into mages on ur turf?_

_I don't mind them being in my territory; I just don't want them to go down the mage path, you know?_

_ye ye you told me before. but they can always go down that path on their own if they want to. u sure they won't like backstab u down the road or smth_

_I don't think they will...well, now I'm not so sure._

_yea not with that one girl who could stun u. imagine if she also decided to kill u too_

_Well, if I could imagine that, I wouldn't be talking to you right now, would I?_

_eh reality is a crapshoot in this world anyway lol_

_What the hell does THAT mean?_

_maybe ull find out one day. not smth i can teach like i used to for u_

_Thanks a lot. You sure know how to leave a friend hanging._

_says the kid who always says he's not here to make friends_

Ouch, that comment hurts a bit more than it should. Fuutarou cracks open a little smile of amusement as he rapidly types back.

_Alright, I see how it is._

_hahahaha. hows the hospital work comin along_

And just like that, the smile is gone.

_I'm still working on it. It's like...80% done, I think. Rough estimate. But I'm running into a few problems, progress is stalled for now._

_u dont need my help with that now do u_

_No, like I said, I'd like to do this one on my own._

_not even that one doc?_

_No. This is all me._

_well shit good for u. didnt think u'd make it this far_

_Eh, that doesn't mean much when I'm stuck for the time being._

_keep at it, u'll figure it out_

_Thanks. I have to get going, I'll text you again if I feel like I need something. And don't forget to pay my bill for this, my bank account info's all the same._

_what ur not gonna put it on ur tab or anything_

_I already have enough debts, I don't need another one to pay to you._

_LOL_

Rolling his eyes as he pockets his phone, the young mage peers back down at the streets. He's been texting for the past twenty minutes, almost, and still no sign of anything coming in or out of the site. Perhaps they've chalked this place up as a dead site, and so they won't use it again? No, it can't be that simple, whoever's responsible for this site has _got _to know that he knows about this place and is keeping an eye on it, which is exactly why Fuutarou himself wants to bait them out, even if it means putting himself in danger for doing so. In a situation like his where information is severely lacking, it's worth putting his life on the line just to figure out who's behind the establishment of the caches all over the city, or at least this one right before him.

But waiting for upwards of half an hour like this isn't getting anything done. This very well may be a situation where he has to take initiative to force the opposition's hand, though Fuutarou himself has to wonder whether or not it's just him getting impatient. He likes to think that he's a pretty patient guy, as he remembers the long night hours he's spent keeping vigil atop the city skyscrapers, but that doesn't make him immune to doing the opposite.

More than impatience, though, indecision is a more capital sin, and acting on that, Fuutarou mentally commits to investigating the scene in person again. Rechecking his Presence Concealment to make sure that it's still active, the young mage vaults over the edge of the apartment rooftop and lands on the street below, cushioning the impact with a shock-absorbing rune that sprouts beneath his feet just before he lands, and he strides across the street with relative ease thanks to the lack of traffic, hoping that there won't be another policeman down here who'll try to cockblock him again.

To his silent relief, there is no policeman safeguarding the former drug cache site - there is a distinct lack of human presence at all, for that matter, in the entire building, which, understandably, has been put on lockdown and has not been cleared to be reoccupied yet. Fuutarou wades his way past the KEEP OUT police tape and descends to the basement, where there is also a distinct lack of drugs or boxes or cases or any sign of the former cache.

Just in case he's missing anything about this now-empty basement, Fuutarou steps inside, off the stairs, and slowly patrols around, checking the floor, the walls, the cracks, everything that could be of any shred of interest to him. His past experiences in dealing with rival mages have taught him valuable lessons in how to fight them; perhaps one of the more basic lessons he's learned is to never leave a detail overlooked. This oftentimes means doing quite mundane and boring things like staring at a wall like this for a few moments at a time each, but it do be like that sometimes.

Scouring the basement like this for another half an hour, Fuutarou fails to find anything of interest. This room is as boring and empty as they come - nothing about it seems off. No drugs, no hidden floorboards or panels leading to secret, smaller stashes that the police didn't manage to catch, no hidden runes or planted spells or explosives to be found. The high school mage begins to wonder if it were a mistake to even come here at all; maybe the culprits really did abandon this site because they'd rather not have to deal with the police? If it were a regular drug gang like the one Nino was associated with a month ago, then perhaps so. But if they're led by another possible mage, like Rio for instance, wouldn't they be a bit more bold about it? Unless their leader is also acting way more cautiously than normal...

He puts his hands in his pockets, slowly and deliberately, still facing the far wall in front of him. It's probably time to head back, since there's nothing of value to be gained here.

"Came to see what someone was doing in your little hiding spot, huh?" he says suddenly, raising his gaze up at the wall in front of him.

Behind Fuutarou, whose back faces the bottom of the stairs, stands a tall man, noticeably taller than the young mage. He sports a bright red leather jacket, by far his most distinctive physical feature, a purple shirt with almost an obnoxiously large v-neck, black heavy-duty jeans, and leather boots. His other distinct physical feature is his stereotypical shade of bright blonde hair that is cut neatly to reach the base of his neck but no further.

"Huh...I was wondering who'd be fucking dumb enough to come back here. Turns out it wasn't one of the smooth-brained pieces of trash I hired around the city..." the tall blonde man scoffs condescendingly. "...and instead, it's a mage. Does that make you dumber than the sad excuse for the trash that this city calls 'gangsters', or what?"

"I like to be confident about my intelligence, but at least I have the awareness to know that boasting about it to someone like you is fucking pointless."

"Oh ho! Sharp with that tongue of yours and not dumb, at the very least. I like you, kid."

Fuutarou's ears twitch slightly at the subtle sound of a blade of some sort being unsheathed.

_"So I'll take my sweet time eating every last bit of you."_

Sensing a sharp accentuation of magic aggregation planted right behind where his left kidney should be, Fuutarou sidesteps just in time before the small rune activates - and does nothing. However, more such runes threaten Fuutarou's space, and sidestepping again, he swiftly turns and flicks a playing card in the direction of the tall blonde man. The card flies true, straight for the man's face, and only his own reactions save him from catching Fuutarou's three of diamonds with his eye, which thus causes the card to stab itself into the wall behind him on the stairs.

"And you must be the guy who killed Ebata," Fuutarou snarls lightly, quickly adjusting his cap by pushing up the visor a little. His opponent, sporting a psychotic, nasty little grin, lowers his seven-inch knife.

"Ebata? Oh, you must mean that butler in front of the Pentagon. So you _are _hired to keep those girls safe, now, aren't you? I was wondering if the mage I sensed in this area and the guy who saved those girls a month ago were the same person. By chance, you wouldn't also happen to be the same guy who's been takin' out some of the idiots I've been sending around the city, now, are you?"

"Of course not, I'm just a passing mage who happened upon this place because I heard there was some kind of drug cache here. Drugs are all the rage these days in this city apparently, didn't you know?" Fuutarou chuckles dryly.

"'Passing mage' my ass, bitch, you're the one who's staked this city out, I know it. I can fucking _smell _you all over this goddamn city," the man spits viciously.

"Your name wouldn't happen to be Shirazumi Rio, now, would it?"

"It is, but why the hell did you just ignore what I just said?!"

"Here's a better question, tell me exactly why I should have to put up with you sounding like a low-budget slasher movie villain."

The surprised look on Rio again twists itself into a nefarious, creepy grin.

"Oh, I see, you're a kid of action. I like that too - then I'll give ya what'cha wa - "

Fuutarou attacks first before Shirazumi Rio can even finish his thought, tossing out another playing card that flies straight for his adversary. Now knowing Fuutarou's primary means of offense, however, Rio swiftly snaps his right arm up, shanking his knife through the air and cutting the card cleanly in half, but there are more where the card came from, and Rio swings his knife in multiple directions to eliminate the follow-up cards that he chucks at his enemy.

Letting out a frenzied shriek, Rio, taking advantage of the pause in Fuutarou's playing card ammo, leaps terrifically at him with his knife-wielding arm stretched back for a stab aimed for Fuutarou's head, but the high school mage stands his ground by planting his feet firmly, focusing mana into his right arm, and keeping his eye on his enemy's weapon so that when he swings, Fuutarou is able to read its movement and lean forward to avoid the strike and counterattack with a clean right hook that pops Rio in the side, just underneath his left arm. The strength Fuutarou puts behind his punch is enough to send Rio crashing into the wall to his left, but as soon as he crumples against the wall, Rio lands on his feet like a cat and pounces at him again, though this time with a notably more serious expression on his face.

A flurry of knife swings is launched at Fuutarou, who cannot counterattack this time because Rio starts swinging even before he gets within striking range so that Fuutarou can't retaliate, so the young mage is compelled to duck, sidestep, backstep, and dodge the blows to avoid getting hit. Despite being in this disadvantaged position, however, Fuutarou doesn't mind it too much; as he focuses on his own defense, he studies his enemy's attack patterns, habits, and tendencies: he uses a Hammer grip for his stainless steel knife, and fitting to his unhinged and somewhat psychopathic personality, Rio mainly uses huge, powerful swings with randomized directions and strike locations to attack. An ordinary knife user must either commit to speed or strength to maintain combat effectiveness, in the form of either small or light swings or thrusts that trade power for controllability and stamina conservation or heavy strikes or stabs that are few in number and must be aimed but devastating when successfully landed. Rio is breaking this convention by combining both speed and power, so every one of his knife swings is potentially deadly if they connect, but his reckless abandon means that his attacks are not quite as accurate as he would like them to be, giving Fuutarou ample space and opportunity to dodge them. He just cannot find the time or space to counterattack, however, because of Rio's sheer speed.

But just as much as Fuutarou is gaining information about his enemy, so too is Rio: his swings get less frequent, but they still maintain their power as he slowly adapts to his opponent by trading his speed for his much needed accuracy. He also begins to toss in a few feints randomly in an effort to throw Fuutarou off his defense, which works the first time Rio tries it, but Fuutarou blocks his attempt to capitalize on his success with a parry as the back of his bare left hand meets the knife edge and releases its stored mana with perfect timing to nullify the damaging momentum.

After one particularly heavy swing, Rio attempts to break this stalemate of sorts by charging with his right shoulder to assault Fuutarou directly with his whole body to use his superior mass to his advantage and perhaps knock the young high schooler down to the ground. But this proves to be a mistake, because with his knife tucked away due to the way his body is positioned relative to the young mage, Fuutarou can counterattack freely without worry about a follow-up knife strike - and while Rio's knife-handling skills are certainly formidable, they can't be put to use if he can't have his knife in position to use them. As Rio goes crashing into Fuutarou, the latter simply bends his knees, leans his own body slightly forward, and puts both of his hands against the incoming Rio's shoulder and diverts his momentum, causing Rio to dive straight to the ground behind Fuutarou instead.

Wary of how Rio fights when he's down, Fuutarou wisely backs off instead of descending upon his downed opponent and opts to toss another playing card at him. He doesn't have time to aim it to hit a critical area like the neck, eye, or elbow, as Rio might have enough time to recover and defend himself even on the ground, so Fuutarou has to launch his shot right away, which strikes Rio rather harmlessly on the back of his wide shoulder. Snarling viciously, Rio turns around and gets back up to his feet, flicking off the annoying card stuck in the back of his shoulder, before launching himself at Fuutarou again.

This time, however...

_"Threefold Blossom, activate!"_

To Rio's surprise, a six-inch blade tracks him back and dives straight for his face, and he barely stops it with the flat side of his own weapon. Fuutarou swiftly slides his knife point off and jabs at Rio repeatedly with weak but swift movements, to which Rio is forced to respond with defensive knife motions of his own. The constant bumps of steel on steel ricochet off the confined walls of the building's basement, dully filling the air with blunt impacts rather than the movie-cliched high-pitched clangs, but Fuutarou does not hold the offensive for long as Rio's superior skills with the knife begin to bleed through: deliberately stepping forward into one of Fuutarou's jabs, Rio lets the opposing knife blade enter the front of his left shoulder this time, knowing that his enemy isn't putting anywhere near as much strength as he needs to make his attack lethal in any way, in order to push his own knife blade in the direction of the young mage's face.

Reacting quickly, Fuutarou pushes back with his feet to dodge the stab and pulls out his knife from Rio's shoulder in the process before landing on the floor behind him and jumping back up to his feet. But he barely manages to get back up before Rio is on top of him again, resuming his usual flurry of powerful swings, this time seemingly even more frenzied than before now that Fuutarou has been able to draw blood from him. Fuutarou intentionally dives to his right all of a sudden in the middle of Rio's rapid attacks and performs a perfect combat roll to smoothly transition back up to his feet, which buys him time to safely readjust his own knife grip to a reverse edge-out grip to allow him to defend against Rio's moves more efficiently.

Rio continues to track him, and once again the two knives meet threateningly, slicing off each other repeatedly as Rio attacks and Fuutarou defends. With a more suitable defensive grip, however, Fuutarou holds his ground much more effectively, and soon, Rio's swings slowly begin to look more and more sluggish and out of form. Even for a mage with magically reinforced stamina, one can only last for so long, and this is certainly the case for Shirazumi Rio, who finally makes an unforced error of lunging for a desperation swing aimed for the top of the high schooler's head, which Fuutarou once again sidesteps to his left and punishes by plunging his knife square into the back of Rio's right side. To remove the knife from his opponent's body, Fuutarou tugs hard and pulls his hand inwards, ripping the blade out as Rio's body tumbles forward, slightly skewed in direction because of Fuutarou's knife pull.

Fuutarou doesn't let up just because he's finally managed to land a successful hit on his opponent: tossing his knife to his left hand, he digs his right hand back into his storage rune that contains his pack of playing cards and, taking the time to aim this time, flicks three more cards in total at his enemy. With both power and accuracy put into them, the cards fly true, aimed for Rio's head and throat, and Rio is forced to block them with his arms if he doesn't want to die right here and now. The cards produce chunky thuds upon impacts, much chunkier than one would expect out of ordinary playing cards, and Rio hisses with pain upon feeling the cards sink into his skin like shark teeth.

"Why are you setting up drug caches like this one all around the city? And why this one specifically, in the middle of the city?" Fuutarou asks in a calm voice, chilling enough to freeze the blood in an ordinary human being as he takes a few foreboding but wary steps towards his injured opponent.

Rio gives a short laugh as he tears the cards out of his arm that is now rendered useless for combat, as the cards have struck deep enough to sever important tendons. "And why exactly do you think I'll answer that for you? You didn't even give me a chance to talk to you now, did you?"

"Because there's a difference between me talking and you talking. I'm talking when I've got forty-five more cards that'll turn you into a fucking human porcupine, while you talk to make yourself sound like a fucking idiot. Fitting for someone who hires gangsters around the city and calls them dumb trash."

Whistling tauntingly, Rio slowly gets back up to his own feet. "Listen to you talk shit, kid. Think you're so fuckin' smart for tryin'a use my own words against me? 'Cause that ain't how it fucking works."

It's Fuutarou's turn to crack a grin of amusement. "Oooh, hit a nerve there, did I? Add that to the list of nerves I hit in your arm, too. Now fucking answer me, you piece of shit."

"I ain't answerin' _shit!"_

Plunging his hand into the innards of his red leather jacket, Rio pulls out what looks suspiciously like some sort of grenade. As soon as this registers in his head, Fuutarou quickdraws another playing card and snaps it at Rio, but in his haste, he misses a clean hit on the wrist, so the card merely gives the side of the wrist a deep cut, which is not enough to force Rio to release his secret weapon of sorts. And so seeing his attempt to thwart Rio fail, Fuutarou instead resorts to Plan B: he pivots and immediately dashes for the stairs as Rio is throwing it down on the ground before him. As the young mage escapes manually up the stairs, he hears a sharp _hisssss! _stalking him up the stairs, followed by another pair of heavy footsteps coming after him like those in a horror movie, to reuse the analogy from earlier.

The young mage bursts back out onto the street outside the building. It's only ten o'clock at night, but the lingering presence of the former crime scene here means that there is no vehicular traffic in this block, and there probably isn't any foot traffic here either. Mages shouldn't be fighting out in the open like this in case of unwanted witnesses, but with how much of a psychopath Rio seems to be, Fuutarou doubts that they'll merely go their separate ways just because they aren't fighting in a secluded area. In fact, if Rio's the one responsible for the kidnappings recently, then a fight like this is exactly what he wants. Either that, or at the very least, he doesn't give a damn being seen.

Sure enough, Shirazumi Rio flies out of the building entrance after Fuutarou, his red leather jacket fluttering violently in his wake, and he once more assaults the high school mage violently with another flurry of strikes that are reinvigorated by madness and high-pitched and shrill giggles and shrieks. Their short blades meet again, and their sharp edges make contact in the cool, crisp night air of the city. But with much more room to work with, in stark contrast to the confined basement from before, both parties are able to maneuver much more aggressively about each other: Rio adds lunging strikes to his repertoire of attacks, bouncing off cars, streetlights, and even the sides of adjacent buildings as he puts his best Claw impression on display.

But Fuutarou, also with the advantage of space to maneuver, puts focus into his feet and performs a short-distance flash-step to avoid Rio's crazed lunges every time he dives for him, oftentimes counterattacking again with more playing cards, but Rio dodges those and leaves the thrown cards lodged into the sides of the buildings and cars he dives behind for cover. Seeing that Fuutarou's defensive is too sturdy for him to break, even with his superior strength, Rio briefly concedes their close-quarter engagements and peeks out from behind the car that Fuutarou has lightly peppered with cards that are jammed into the glass and sheet metal alike.

_"Seventh night, blood rite! Now is the time for murder, for chaos! Come forth - Consumption!"_

A double-layered red rune appears in front of Rio. Fuutarou, standing out in the middle of the street with his backhanded knife, senses the return of the magical spikes of energy on his profile, but this time there is an alarming increase in their sheer number, as though he's about to be peppered in remote knife strikes, and so he dives away again, but Rio has prepared for an evasive maneuver on his opponent's part and has placed more knife traps in every direction of Fuutarou so that no matter where he dives, he'll likely head straight into another one. And such is the case - when Fuutarou rolls back up to his feet, an invisible knife trap is lying in wait for him to pass near it.

"Gotcha!" Rio yells gleefully, plunging his knife into the rune, which causes it to shatter like glass.

The rune that Fuutarou runs into disappears suddenly, but it will soon be replaced by an invisible blade that will stab its target, in this case Uesugi Fuutarou, right in the side of the neck.

_PING!_

...was the plan, anyway. Fuutarou foils it instantly with a last-second Parry with the back of his knife hand, effectively nullifying the remote knife strike. However, it isn't perfect - the back of his right hand is split open, and while luckily no tendons or cartilage of Fuutarou's own were severed, the cut is still rather deep and is bleeding moderately.

"The fuck, man, you can even block _those? _What kinda freak are you?" Rio laughs sarcastically over to his rival mage.

"The same kind as you. Together, we're a goddamn freakshow, just like what you're trying to turn this city into!"

Hucking another playing card at Rio, Fuutarou puts as much power and accuracy behind this throw as he can, but this time Rio doesn't attempt to dodge it; he simply clamps his teeth down on it instead to stop it. This isn't without its own consequences, either: the sheer magic energy that Fuutarou puts into the card to turn it into a lethal weapon is absorbed by Rio's face itself, and thus his gums, teeth, and his face around his mouth briefly look like they're in front of a powerful wind blower for a moment. Besides looking a little funny, Rio also makes the card stab into the corners of his mouth by biting down on it, so now the corners of his mouth begin to bleed as he spits the card out and, with a deafening, hysterical burst of laughter, reaches down to the bottom of the car in front of him and, with a brief display of superhuman strength, flips the car in Fuutarou's direction.

The car crashes dramatically behind Fuutarou, as Rio's overthrown it by a good bit, but as the red jacket-toting, bloodthirsty mage leaps yet again at his opponent, Fuutarou hears a distinct scream of a girl behind him, and to his alarm, it sounds familiar.

The high school mage backs up to avoid Rio's landing zone and turns to run in the direction of the scream, knowing that Rio has also heard the scream and will interpret his own retreat as a sign that he intends to prioritize the safety of whoever's back there. In so doing, he sees the source of the scream who's been forced to dive out of the thrown car's way: a familiar classmate with long, peachy-red hair and an ahoge he can recognize from the other side of the city.

Nakano Itsuki.

Sure enough, Rio falls for the bait, and Fuutarou brakes hard, turns, and sinks all of the knuckles in his right fist deep into the top half of Rio's face. Rio, who was again mid-pounce, cannot react quick enough to Fuutarou's ploy and is stopped dead in his tracks (not literally, though) and comically falls flat on his chest on the ground as Fuutarou safely doubles back down the sidewalk and flash-steps in front of Itsuki to secure her.

Gazing down at the incredibly frightened quintuplet with her school bag at her side, Uesugi Fuutarou scowls deeply down at her, still with his own knife gripped tightly in hand.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he growls at her lightly teary eyes, wide open with surprise and shock.

Itsuki doesn't have a chance to answer him, though, as Fuutarou hears the cackling voice cry out again somewhere behind him,

_"CONSUME!"_

Another spike of magical energy begins to form, ready to detonate in only a moment. Because Fuutarou's appeared directly before Itsuki, Rio's ranged magic has them both lined up in a collateral shot. And from his earlier experiences of dealing with it, Fuutarou knows that its range of effect is long enough to hit both him and Itsuki. So he has to either Parry this attack successfully with the little bit of time he has to react to it, or dive forward and tackle Itsuki out of the way.

Either way, blood flies before Itsuki's stunned blue eyes.


	36. Blood for Blood

**A/N**

**Random: I don't have a fixed writing schedule, and I doubt I'll ever have something like that. All I do is write a chapter until it's done, upload it, and then start an****other one whenever I feel like it. Since I knew exactly what to write for this chapter, I got started on it immediately and was able to put it out the next day. But sometimes I'll be gone for a week without an update. It's like playing a gacha game and rolling the gacha for it, except here it doesn't cost you anything but your time and patience.  
**

* * *

Itsuki's pencil scratches the lines on her notebook paper, jotting down various kanji as she studies for her Japanese Language Arts midterm. With a few reference and study-help books stacked up neatly on the side of her desk and a perfect posture sitting on her chair, the youngest quintuplet, sporting her reading glasses that she frequently dons to aid her nearsightedness, studies quietly and diligently on her own in the city library. The small amount of air conditioning keeps the temperature inside the library at a steady 21 degrees Celsius, and the study area that Itsuki has chosen is in a rather remote corner of the library, reducing the likelihood that she'll need to deal with any significant amount of foot traffic near her area, as is unfortunately the case with some of the self-study areas in the middle or closer to the entrance of the library. And with the Audio Technica headphones that she's borrowed from Miku for today to completely isolate herself in her studies that now play classical music such as Mozart's K.299 Concerto for Flute and Harp in C Major into her ears, Itsuki is making good progress on her midterm studies.

Well, she certainly hopes so. Her test scores have a tendency to disagree with her sense of accomplishment at times.

Ever since she and her sisters studied with their classmate and tutor here at the library the previous Saturday, Itsuki has taken a liking to studying here and decided to come here directly after school to study here for the whole day, only leaving to buy and eat dinner at a nearby family cafe before returning to resume her studies. The change in environment is a welcome one; having only ever studied at home, studying at the library provides a fresh change of pace that Itsuki felt like she's needed. It's not to say that she's sick of studying at home, but more that this change in locale and atmosphere goes a long way in helping her mind gear itself towards the expressed goal of studying. That, and oftentimes she'd need to deal with her sisters screwing around downstairs, and no thanks to their rooms' lack of soundproofing, she can easily hear what they're up to if the rest of the quintuplets are making any amount of significant noise.

If anything, she's most irritated at the fact that she didn't think of going to study at the library herself, and that it's taken all these months and years and a classmate of hers whom she's only known for not even two months yet for her to connect the dots and give studying at the library a try.

Itsuki's pencil decelerates slowly as her mind, bearing the burdens and stress of studying for hours today, begins to falter as this thought seeps into her mind. Her smartphone that's sitting next to the stacked books does read 21:32, after all, and she's been here since three-thirty.

Her tutor and classmate...the close-up sight of Uesugi Fuutarou's deep black eyes flashes before her own, causing her hand to finally stop its penmanship. Blinking hard for a moment to perish the memory, Itsuki feels her eyes unfocus from her notebook, causing it to blur in her vision, even with her glasses on, but her tired mind doesn't think to correct them to refocus on her studies as the nebulous thoughts she's been keeping suppressed in the back corners of her brain slowly begin to surface.

Ever since that Saturday morning, when her sisters convinced her to pose as Miku and go wake their tutor up, Itsuki has been feeling a little...touchy at any mention of him. It's nothing drastic; it's not like Uesugi-kun's name is now all of a sudden some kind of jump scare that makes her turn around thinking the boy in question is standing right behind her - though she supposes that given his _other _profession, perhaps that is more likely than she thinks. Wait, is she confusing a mage for a ninja? If mages exist, do ninjas exist too? Is there even a difference, for someone like her who knows no better? Better yet, does any of this even matter?

In any case, she hasn't let this recent sentiment show itself to her sisters, so to the rest of the Nakanos, the extent of her run-in with Uesugi-kun while posing as Miku only goes as far as what they've intended it to be: a playful little joke at Itsuki's expense and nothing more. Maybe Itsuki would've held this against her sisters and her tutor a bit more, if that's all it was to her as well.

But it's not.

Itsuki has never deeply concerned herself with social matters like some of her other sisters do. Hanging out with friends, gossiping about cute boys and dating, subjects of that nature - while she understands that such is the nature of many girls her age or in her approximate age group, especially when they live in a modern metropolis like this, she herself has largely quietly shunned them in favor of things that she felt mattered more, like studying and getting good grades. It's not because she's a nerd, either, who focuses everything on studying because that's all they know - how can she be a nerd with her grades being what they are, too.

No, her studies and her propensity to study stem from her own little desire to become her siblings' surrogate mother after their actual mother died six years ago. Back when their mother was still alive, Itsuki, looking back, knew that she and her sisters, for the most part, took their mother's care for them for granted, and it was only after she passed and while Itsuki was growing up without her that she developed her renewed admiration and respect for her. If only she could show her mother how she feels about her now.

Studying came naturally to Itsuki. Even from an early age, back when the quintuplets still rolled around as a cohesive unit of identical sisters, Itsuki demonstrated her willingness to sit down for long hours to study; none of her sisters could keep up with her own mental stamina when it came to this. Itsuki is the Yotsuba of the Nakano quints when it comes to studying; she won't lose an endurance test, no pun intended, to any of her siblings if studying were a subject that could be tested.

And so studying and her expressed desire to become that new mother for her sisters went hand in hand. Itsuki would study and become successful at school, and with good grades means a good chance to enter a prestigious university, and then from there, a good job. But this was only in part because that was the only quality she had - the start of junior high at Kurobara was when Itsuki truly began to immerse herself in her studies, and of course, to do this, she gave up many other things. Clubs, sports, extracurriculars...she didn't _intend _to give those all up, but when it turned out that her test scores in middle school didn't exactly match the efforts that she put into studying, Itsuki reacted by studying even more, even harder, because she refused to believe that hard work wouldn't be rewarded. Bad test scores? She just needs to study harder. Go back and fix the mistakes. Plug up the holes in her studying. And once she's done that, everything will be fine. Everything will be fine...fine...fine...?

Everything was not fine.

While Itsuki floundered with her studies, she witnessed her sisters growing up alongside her and...finding their own successes in the things they pursued. Ichika went out and got herself a part-time job, and from the sounds of it, she seems to be working hard and making the most out of it, so clearly she must be finding success in it that she values deeply. Nino went out of her way to learn how to cook for the family all on her own after taking inspiration from their junior high home economics classes, and now she can cook and bake whatever she feels like and can comfortably venture out to try recipes that she's never seen before. Miku is most similar to Itsuki in that they both ended up becoming rather isolated girls with the habits of studying, but Miku never studied anywhere near as much as Itsuki did since she became an otaku of sorts, watching her animes and playing her video games, and yet, confusingly, she's consistently gotten better test scores and grades than Itsuki all throughout school, as far as Itsuki can remember, so at this rate, Miku's the one with the highest chance of graduating school altogether, let alone go to university afterwards. And Yotsuba branched out to sports and physical activity, so where her academic abilities lack, her athleticism more than compensates for; sports clubs and teams always clamored to have her as part of their rosters, and inadvertently, Yotsuba would create as big, if not bigger, social networks as the ones Ichika or Nino had simply because of how many people she'd end up meeting and acquainting herself with, though being the cute airhead that she is, she'd never be able to take advantage of it in the same ways that Ichika or Nino can.

What has Itsuki done? Study.

Has she been successful? No.

Then why did she feel so confident when she told her sisters that she would "become their new mother"? That she would care for them like their real one did, in her place?

Maybe that could just be chalked up as a sisterly instinct. She could probably try to convince herself that she only said that as a coping mechanism, to ease the pain of losing the most important person in their lives at the time. But Itsuki doesn't want to let go of those feelings like that. Just calling them a mere coping mechanism and then letting them rot into nothing more than a quaint memory for her to look back on and laugh at - she doesn't want that. She wants to set out and prove to herself that she can do it, that she's strong enough to back up her own words.

So to see that all four of her sisters have a better shot at becoming that new motherly figure that Itsuki declared that she'd be, and to know that she, alone, had no redeeming qualities like the rest of them to show for all this time that's passed since their mother's death...it hurts. And it's not exactly something she can talk about to her sisters, because then she'd come off as a complainer. She'd sound like she's jealous at her sisters' progress, that she's envious that they've all found success when she hasn't, which isn't the case at all: she's very proud of all of them for finding things that they all enjoy doing and excel at.

She just wishes she could also join them in saying she's found something like that too.

Then again, though, as long as this could be kept within the family, she could accept it. Not all of them can become successful; that's just how life is sometimes. You'll have your winners, you'll have your losers. While she doesn't _want _to be one such loser and works as hard as she can to not remain one, Itsuki isn't going to let her sentiments bring her against her own family just because they happened to be winners in their respective situations and she wasn't. She chose to invest her time and energy into studying because that's what she wanted to do; she has nobody else to blame but herself. Maybe her sisters understand that as well and that's why they've never once brought this up to her directly; not even Nino's ever pointed out her lack of results proportionate to all the studying that she's done in the arguments that they've had. And so long as things continue like this, Itsuki feels like she'll still be fine, that she can hang in there and maybe, just maybe, finally be able to turn her grades around for the better.

So what happens when an outsider comes into the picture and is also another depiction of what Itsuki ultimately strives to be? Let's say...a certain Uesugi Fuutarou?

The youngest quintuplet jolts a little in her library desk chair, realizing what the time is on her phone and how late it's gotten. The library closes at ten o'clock at night on weekdays, and there's usually a PA announcement by one of the library receptionists giving the occupants of the library a half-hour warning to closing time, so Itsuki must've been zoning out when that announcement was happening. That, and clearly she's mentally exhausted to have let her thoughts wander about to this extent, so she stops her studying to pack up her belongings and put whatever books she's borrowed back in their respective shelves before leaving the library to head home. She contemplates calling a cab to take her back, as the library is a good distance from the Pentagon, but tonight, Itsuki decides, in the spirit of changing things up, to walk her way back home instead. This way, she can also delve a bit deeper into those thoughts she had while she was in the library still. So she sets off towards home, with naught but her own thoughts to keep her company on the walk back.

Itsuki actually would have willingly joined Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba in Uesugi-kun's study group much, much earlier; the only reason why she didn't at first during their first week together was because she felt incredibly miffed at the little prank that he played on her at the school cafeteria the day they first met, pretending not to know her when he turned out to be that very same tutor that she told him about. And not just that, he was even waiting for her and her sisters in their own home, which was nothing short of creepy. But she could forgive those shortcomings; she could move past those for the sake of working towards better grades, and if a tutor would help her do it, even if that tutor were one of her own classmates, so be it.

Uesugi-kun's sudden appearance at the warehouse and his subsequent rescue of her and her sisters turned her whole world almost upside down. Watching him fight those bad guys, even an ordinary girl who's only been in high school for a couple of days like Itsuki could tell that Uesugi-kun was a professional at what he was doing, or at least had been doing things like this for some time. Not in terms of his fighting technique or anything combat-related, since Itsuki doesn't much care for things like that, the things she found herself fixated on about him were his steadfastness, his lack of concern for the fact that his opponents were physically bigger than himself and outnumbered him, and his confidence in his own skills; she was captivated more by the psychology he displayed at the time and less by his physical finesse.

It was at that moment when she realized that this was a boy who was the same or at least similar age as her and represented what she wanted to become, what she had told her sisters she'd become. Clearly Uesugi-kun isn't the exact one-to-one model that Itsuki had in mind, but a mother cares for her children and protects them in times of danger, right? And Uesugi-kun did just that for them that night. Even if it is just mercenary work, even with Uesugi-kun being a mage-for-hire, as he described himself with his own words, Itsuki can't pry herself away from the distressing revelation that someone like him, her own classmate, the boy who was hired to be their tutor at first, was more or less what she, too, was studying to be. Just, minus the whole fighting bad guys part.

Whatever feelings of inadequacy she had kept suppressed for months, even years up until that point exploded beyond her control. It certainly didn't help that one of those gangsters punched her in the face, so she was already crying from that. That's why for the rest of the night, she kept quiet, even as Uesugi-kun was cleaning her up back at home and tended to her bloody nose that she ended up with. If that were one of her sisters, she could accept it, because she's her sister and they've grown up together and all; at the very least, she can take comfort in the fact that one of them can carry on the words that she gave to her sisters about becoming the one who'd provide for them all. But that wasn't one of her sisters; that was someone else entirely, someone they'd only known for a week at the time. And it had to be Uesugi-kun, of all people.

Maybe she really was an idiot. Talking about how she would be their new "mother" to her siblings...even if she said that when she was younger and didn't know any better, now, Itsuki can't help but feel like a giant idiot whose stupidity is accurately measured by the size of her ahoge. Maybe she really can't do anything on her own. Never mind her own clear inability to study properly to save her test scores, maybe Itsuki simply has nothing she can be proud of. She can't cook, she can't do sports, she can't make friends or network with people, and worst of all, she can't study...not well, anyway. Hell, it took the boy who was supposed to be her tutor for the past month and a half to suggest that they all go study at the library for one Saturday afternoon and actually studying there to show her that studying at the library is something she ought to do more often. All she's good at is eating a whole lot, being stubborn as heck, and being prone to crying whenever she gets teased a bit too much. And the last time she checked, none of her school exams test her on either of those.

An idiot and a crybaby. Truly a far cry from what she'd envisioned herself being as a kid.

Itsuki hears herself sigh heavily in the brisk night air. She'd already been by that place last week, but maybe...just to find some motivation for herself again, maybe she ought to go back.

She would love to have her thoughts end there, but they don't. Even when she's done everything she could to purge the concept of him from her mind, Uesugi-kun always comes back with a vengeance, and at the risk of sounding like some kind of weird secret admirer, Itsuki can't stop herself from bringing him back into her mind. No, more accurately, it's the other way around: Uesugi-kun always finds a way to worm himself back into her thoughts. In the aftermath of the warehouse incident, Itsuki remained separate from the usual study group of Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba because of the sentimental complications that arose; they were so bad in fact that she even went so far as to refuse to acknowledge his existence at times unless she just physically couldn't, like running into him in the hallway at school or something of the sort. But as time went on and those turbulent emotions she had netted from that fateful weekend finally began to subside, she began to see the amount of work that he was putting in as her sisters' tutor, that despite revealing his "secret identity" as a mage to them, he was still committed to working as their tutor.

What got her to finally change her mind and prepare herself to accept him as her own tutor was their Golden Week vacation to Honolulu. With Raiha along for the ride, the quintuplets naturally spent a lot of time with her, and Itsuki, having met her before once and gotten along surprisingly well with her, was one of the ones who socialized with her the most. Some of their conversations naturally drifted towards Raiha's brother, and through these such conversations Itsuki learned a bit more about her tutor, the parts of him she as a classmate and student of his wouldn't normally come to know. Things like how Uesugi-kun always works long hours at night, to the point where sometimes he wouldn't even bother coming back home, how Uesugi-kun might seem like a standoffish kind of person whose main concern in life is money and how to use that money to pay off his family's debts but in reality is a much kinder person than that, etc. Of course, Raiha didn't seem to know exactly what her brother was up to, but comparing her stories with what Uesugi-kun's told her in their own conversations throughout the weeks, Itsuki can't find any reason to doubt any of the things that Uesugi-kun's told her, just in case he's been deliberately feeding her lies anywhere along the way.

And then there was his whole run-in with their own father. That was just about the last thing Itsuki expected him to do, yet, just like at the warehouse, Uesugi-kun confronted Dr. Nakano with the same courage and confidence, and Itsuki was quick to notice it; perhaps in hindsight, that was a very Uesugi-kun thing to do. She could never even begin to imagine herself standing up to her own father like that to tell him of the grievances she and her sisters have with him and his almost comically packed work schedules, and certainly none of her sisters could either, and yet someone who isn't even part of their family has the guts to go up to their father and tell him what the quintuplets have always wanted to tell him. Yes, normally she wouldn't appreciate the fact that an outsider like Uesugi-kun is butting into their family business, but not only was he able to deliver a message that she and her sisters couldn't bring themselves to say, but at that point, unlike whatever Nino usually says, Uesugi-kun was clearly no longer a mere "outsider".

So that incident, coupled with her conversations with Raiha regarding her brother, gave Itsuki the willingness she needed to move past Uesugi-kun's previous transgressions against her and talk to him privately about accepting her as a new student. Unfortunately, that didn't quite go as well as she thought it would, as she discovered that Uesugi-kun was just as stubborn as she was, and that resulted in another troublesome stalemate that left her studying by herself again like always. But this time, while she certainly acted quite angry towards him that night, Itsuki was able to let go of that anger she had for him much more quickly. How could she stay angry like that? Sure, Uesugi-kun was being stubborn and wanted to do things _his _way, but what right does Itsuki have to critique him so when she's been doing the same thing for years and yet has nothing to show for it? And all _she's _been doing is study; who knows what Uesugi-kun has had to do all these years in comparison. And along those lines, Uesugi-kun has a lot more going on in his life and a lot more on his plate to deal with than she's ever had, so why was she demanding that he conform to _her _selfish reasons for accepting her as his student?

For all this talk of Itsuki's emotional side of the past month and a half, it's a bit amusing that what flipped her opinion of Uesugi-kun around yet again was the fact that she was able to see the improvement in test scores that Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba were all making when she took a look at the mock tests that they'd been taking with Uesugi-kun in secret, so at the end of the day, it all comes down to studying anyway. Even still, even if Nino didn't drag her into studying with her and everyone else, Itsuki probably would have asked Uesugi-kun to let her study with everyone else at some point; she just didn't know how she'd do it, or if she'd be able to bring herself to do it before midterms. So Nino ended up doing her a big favor, so Itsuki needs to think of repaying her somehow...just in a way so that Nino doesn't realize that she'd ended up doing a favor for her.

And...

_Your eyes are exquisite today as always too._

Frowning deeply, Itsuki briefly shakes her head, rubbing her right cheek in a fret. Why? Why is she so bothered by that? In hindsight, Uesugi-kun was clearly only saying that as a joke; with how immediately he reacted and his exaggerated acting after Itsuki blew her own cover calling him "Uesugi-kun", he probably even knew that she was Itsuki just trying to pose as Miku and was playing along just to screw with her, so everything he said to her shouldn't mean anything. But every time her mind also trolls her for shits and giggles by replaying those words in her ears, Itsuki finds herself unable to resist getting a little flustered by them.

Isn't Nino supposed to be the one who likes this kind of thing? She usually goes around talking about how she loves your typical knight-in-shining-armor kind of scenarios, and she should certainly be no stranger to talking about dating and guys with her friends at school. Itsuki should be the polar opposite, as she has very little social experience in this aspect; after all, she sacrificed friends and social reputation just to study. So why is she acting like Nino and letting herself get all embarrassed like this just because her own tutor teased her a little bit? And Itsuki's always been the one to say that a tutor or teacher and student having any kind of personal relationship isn't proper because that would jeopardize the whole studying environment that's supposed to be between tutor and student. Why is _she _the one who's going against her own words? Perhaps it's just fate, that the one quintuplet among them who can't live up to her own words in terms of achievements would also fail to do the same for her own self-dictated social constraints.

To think that her heart even skipped a beat when she heard Uesugi-kun say that kind of thing to her...as soon as Itsuki gets home, she just wants to go straight to her bed, crawl underneath the covers, and curl up into a ball with her face in her hands over how embarrassing this all feels to her.

So preoccupied is Itsuki with her thoughts now, however, that she fails to register the rather loud blows of steel on steel ahead of her on the street; it takes a flying car launched in her direction to drag her back into reality, and when the car does land on the street next to her and tumbles shockingly loudly away, Itsuki jumps out of pure fright and can't stop herself from letting out an uncontrolled shriek of surprise, tripping over her right foot and falling on the ground, staring wide-eyed at the car that's just screeched down the street for some bizarre reason that she certainly can't explain.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Itsuki looks up with her wide blue eyes that are beginning to tear up to see Uesugi Fuutarou, her classmate and tutor, glaring down at her for just a split second before turning around faster than she's ever seen anyone turn around - just in time to also see a handful of large drops of blood fly at her face, followed immediately by a hair-raising tearing of skin, and a distinct -

_PING!_

Forced to shut her eyes because of her body's instinctual reflexes at Uesugi's blood that's lightly splattered her face, Itsuki, realizing that this is another dangerous situation that she's stumbled into, cries out first before raising her sleeved arm to wipe the blood off her eyelids,

_"UESUGI-KUN!"_

With teeth clenched and strength immediately leaving his right leg, only to be replaced by pain, Fuutarou resists the urge to reach down to cover his fresh stab wound over his right side in order to properly assume a defensive stance against the inevitably attacking Shirazumi Rio, and as such he doesn't have the time to inspect it to know exactly what's been hit.

Sure enough, Rio, seeing that one of his remote knife strikes has finally landed thanks to the girl who's unintentionally provided a decent enough diversion, redoubles his efforts and throws more such remote knife attacks in Fuutarou's direction, once more peppering his general area with more invisible runes from his parent red one that he controls.

Fuutarou can't possibly Parry them all, especially not when he's got a hole in his body somewhere on his right side and the pain messing with his concentration like such, so he uses the brief window of time that the remote knife runes need to wind up on him to turn around again and stoop down, yanking Itsuki up to pull her with him, away from the lethal runes that stab viciously into thin air behind him. After setting Itsuki standing next to the door of a nearby consulting office a few meters away, separated from her school bag, Fuutarou, who doesn't have the time or the energy to tell Itsuki what's going on, needs to trust that she can deduce what's going on on her own as he turns and bolts for the middle of the street, out in the open, to draw Rio's attention away from Itsuki, and thankfully with two-thirds of his current playing card deck still remaining in his storage rune, the injured mage can still draw aggression from the rival mage with them.

Constantly emitting crazed little shrieks and brief screams of sadistic enjoyment, Rio evades the several thrown cards hurled his way again and jumps onto another car in front of him to use that as a springboard, leaping up high into the air to attack Fuutarou from above. Uesugi takes advantage of Rio's inability to divert his trajectory midair and throws a pair of well-aimed cards through his pulsing pain up at his enemy, and both of them lodge themselves deep into the top of Rio's right thigh and center mass, square in between the base of his ribs. Even with these well-placed cards, Rio doesn't seem fazed at all and comes down on Fuutarou hard, slamming his feet and knife into the asphalt, which Fuutarou barely avoids himself with a pained backdash.

Rio is fully aware of the fact that Fuutarou's movement is heavily impeded thanks to the wound he's caused for him and dashes after him, closing the distance between them in one stride with his knife swinging upwards at him in an uppercut motion, threatening to split Uesugi's chin and bottom of his skull in half. Fuutarou tilts his head to the left, causing Rio's seven-inch blade to just barely miss his ear and shoulder, and Rio's overextension leaves him wide open for one of Fuutarou's own attacks, which he gladly exploits by once again plunging his own backhanded knife square into Rio's back. This time, he even aims for Rio's spine to rob him of any ability to walk, but in his own pain, Fuutarou barely misses the critical strike and pulls out his knife so that Rio doesn't counter-counterattack him.

Roaring with redoubled pain of his own, the red jacket-wearing mage pushes himself off the ground as more of his own blood drips onto the asphalt where he stands and pivots to savagely attack the high school mage yet again. The wounds that Fuutarou is slowly racking up on him are now finally beginning to show their effects as Rio himself, with this new deep wound in his back, is showing clear signs of exhaustion and pain, thus rendering his usually brutal and powerful swings to become slower and slower each time he uses them.

Even still, through their respective injuries, the two men exchange knife swings with dangerous intent and precision, filling the air of the otherwise empty street with dull clashes of stainless steel blades. However, both of them now focus much more on evasive maneuvers and feinting to conserve their now severely limited energies; oftentimes there are brief periods of time that both mages spend doing nothing but circling around each other, keenly watching each other's moves, and only committing to a swing or thrust if they feel that they can land a successful hit with it.

The only visible bystander in the area, Itsuki at first looks around to see if there's anyone else around who can help, but mysteriously, there seems to be no one in sight; not even the adjacent buildings appear to have any occupants inside for whatever reason. The gnarly impacts of steel blades eventually captures her attention though, and the moment she bears witness to the knife duel between the two mages, Itsuki can't get herself to tear her eyes off them. The sight of her tutor, wearing that strange black outfit that doesn't suit him at all, bleeding and sweating profusely, squaring off against a man clearly taller than him with a dulled but still very much so psychotic look on his face, both armed with dangerous-looking knives - Itsuki has never liked watching action movies and dislikes violence in general because it makes her uncomfortable, so why is it that she can't stop watching these two duke it out?

Thankfully she comes to her senses quickly, only having watched the two mages duel for about a minute, and Itsuki, biting her lower lip, quickly considers whatever options that she has as a spectator to help Uesugi-kun. What about the police? Would calling the police help? Given his identity as a mage, Itsuki can't imagine how on earth her tutor would be okay with her calling the police on them, but what else can she do other than stand around being useless, or even worse, a possible hostage for that evil-looking man in the weird red leather jacket? Not to mention Uesugi-kun himself is injured and bleeding.

Steeling her resolve, with the adrenaline that's now pumping through her own veins easing her decision-making, the youngest quintuplet carefully but quickly doubles back to her own school bag, making sure to keep her eyes on the two boys on the street so that the bad guy whom her tutor is fighting doesn't start going after her instead when she isn't looking. Reaching her bag, she finds her phone and, for the first time, presses the emergency dial button on the corner of her screen to connect her to the police.

As Itsuki keeps an eye on the knife scuffle while talking to the operator, Fuutarou reads an obvious thrust from Rio and, instead of dodging it as he has for the past minute or two, reaches out his left hand and times his Parry perfectly to safely negate the attack and steps forward to stab Rio in the chest again. But Rio also reads this riposte and swings his left hand outwards wildly to knock Fuutarou's arm away, and the lashing works out in Rio's favor, as Uesugi doesn't expect Rio to defend himself like this. Rio's burly arm slams into Fuutarou's arm, just below the wrist, and at the same time, Rio pulls his Parried knife downwards to slash as quickly as he can, catching Fuutarou by his own chest - and slicing his old cut back open.

The renewed pain shocks the young mage into letting go of his knife, effectively disarming him, but it also jolts him back awake since the exhaustion of combat has been seeping into him. Reacting as fast as he can to get his opponent away from him, Fuutarou pumps as much mana as he can into his left fist and pops Rio in the face. Such a mana-driven hook repels Rio, and as he takes a step back in a slight stumble, Uesugi refocuses mana into his right leg and kicks his adversary in the left side, away from the side of the street that Itsuki's on to keep Rio as far away from her as possible.

Not expecting Fuutarou to be able to perform such a strong kick, Rio can't hold his ground and ends up flying across the street, smashing into the solid brick divider between buildings and collapsing in a heap on the ground. The knife he's dropped clatters onto the asphalt, also tumbling to a stop near the paint. But he doesn't stay down for long at all, and while Fuutarou glances down quickly to check the severity of the cut over his chest, Rio himself gets back up, heaving and wheezing briefly, as he reaches for a nearby crosswalk sign, grabs it with both hands, and with a massive grunt, rips it straight out of the ground.

Fuutarou narrows his eyes, still with his clenched teeth. Even if he were to go back for his knife, it wouldn't service him adequately in a situation where his enemy has such a huge range and reach advantage over him. He needs to fight fire with fire.

As Rio lets out another bloodcurdling roar and charges straight for Fuutarou to bash his head in with his crosswalk sign, the young mage parts his feet and chants:

_"Twofold Blossom, activate!"_

Itsuki watches breathlessly as she sees a spear or some kind of long polearm warp into view right into her tutor's grasps, just in time to match the firepower of Shirazumi Rio, who swings his newly acquired means of scrappy violence down onto the high schooler. Now similarly armed, however, Fuutarou leaps backwards as Rio ends up smashing the crosswalk sign's head into the street, denting it so badly that there's only half a sign left. With slightly bloody hands, Uesugi tightens his grip on his naginata, with its perforated red grip and sinister-looking black blade that's longer than both of the men's knives combined and then some. But he's in no condition to be handling a weapon of this size; exhaustion is one thing, but pain from an injury, especially a deep one like the one he got earlier in blocking it from reaching Itsuki, is another matter entirely. He needs to end this fight quickly.

Not caring for the fact that Fuutarou has armed himself appropriately in response to his makeshift weapon, Rio, thoroughly sapped of strength himself, stomps menacingly towards his enemy instead, brandishing his crosswalk pole at him. But as Fuutarou finds out swiftly when Rio enters his range and darts forward with a quick jab to test his skills with a polearm-like weapon, the mage with the red jacket is nowhere near as skilled with something like a sign as he is with his knife; Rio can block Fuutarou's first jab easily enough, but he doesn't expect a second jab to follow so fast and fails to react swiftly enough to it, and Fuutarou feels the first couple of inches of his naginata's blade make contact with flesh and sink into Rio's chest again, this time into his right ribs; in fact, the spear point is stopped from entering further by one of Rio's ribs.

Yanking his weapon out before Rio can seize hold of it, now armed with the knowledge that Rio is at a heavy disadvantage when it comes to polearms, Fuutarou seizes the offensive, making efficient use of what little energy he's got left in his tank by constantly employing quick jabs that put Rio on the back foot; he needs to reserve the heavy swings for an attack that he knows for sure will land and, better yet, will kill. Fuutarou's skill with the naginata and the distinct reach advantage it gives him is made terribly clear as now, Rio cannot even attempt to draw close to his enemy because the latter will simply zone him out with more quick jabs, and whenever he tries to swing his crosswalk sign at Fuutarou, the latter merely dodges the blows easily and continues applying pressure as though Rio hadn't even attacked.

"F-Fucking - annoying little - shit - ! Agh - "

As Rio is trying to curse at the younger mage, Uesugi capitalizes on an opening that Rio gives him when he tries to bat Fuutarou's naginata out of the way and raises his naginata, flips his grips on the shaft, and performs an overhead thrust that causes the spearhead to tear through Rio's right shoulder, though the combination of Fuutarou's relative lack of strength in his thrust and Rio's stoutly muscular build prevents the naginata from piercing all the way through. Still, Fuutarou quickly changes his spear grips again so that he can rip the weapon back out. In the same fluid motion, Fuutarou reaches up, pulls the naginata back down from the air so that he can get a secure grip right up next to the base of the blade, and lunges forward to swipe the naginata with a backhand motion, aiming directly for Rio's neck.

The mage in the red jacket throws the weight of his body backwards to avoid the fatal strike but must take the hit on his chest again, as the polearm's blade length is too long for him to dodge unscathed. With the abandoned crosswalk sign rattling onto the street at his feet, Fuutarou regains his posture and corrects his naginata grip, watching Rio perform a few acrobatic backflips away from him, well out of the reach of his weapon, before stopping in place and glaring back at him with a twisted but thoroughly entertained grin on his face.

"Interesting. Interesting, interesting, interesting, interesting!" he shrilly laughs, licking the blood that's happened to splatter on his face around his mouth as though he's looking at a scrumptious dinner. "So the mage in this city knows how to fight. Good, that's good, that's very good. It'd be boring otherwise...it's no fun eating someone who can't even defend themselves...and they sure as hell aren't gonna tenderize themselves if that's the case, hahahahahahaha!"

As Rio is laughing like a maniac he is, police sirens now can be heard blaring in the distance, and all three people on the scene glance in the direction of the sirens.

"Ah crap, and of course the fuckin' police just _has _to come along right as things're gettin' good," Rio clicks his tongue irritably. "Consider yourself lucky, kid. Next time, you ain't leavin' again without havin' one 'a your hands missin' at _least_."

He also throws another dirty glance over at Itsuki, who feels like she's just been dunked into a tank of ice-cold water the moment her blue eyes lock with his crazed orange ones.

"And bring that girl along with ya again. Nino? Is that one Nino? Can't really tell right now... but she lookin' like a fuckin' _snack, _and I could use a good one these days. It's either that, or I can start huntin' 'em down on my own from now on, ahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ! ! ! !"

Shrieking with maddening laughter even as he retreats, Shirazumi Rio bounds away from the scene, climbing up a nearby building by grabbing hold of the windows and ledges like he's straight out of an Assassin's Creed game before slipping out of sight. Once Fuutarou confirms that he's leaving the area for good, tracking his magical signature manually until he's out of range, Fuutarou releases his naginata, which dissipates into bright blue orbs of light that also evaporate out of view, and he does the same for the knife that he collects.

"Itsuki, get over here, we're gettin' outta here right now!" he barks at the quintuplet, who doesn't say a word and swiftly picks up her school bag to race over to him - at least, not until she reaches him.

"W-What about the police? Shouldn't you tell them what happened here, at least?" she asks him urgently, but she immediately silences herself when she takes one look at his silently furious face.

"Did _you _call them?" he demands quietly, and he closes his eyes briefly in acute frustration when his student nods and sighs exasperatedly. "God-_fucking_-damn it, Itsuki!"

"I-I'm sorry! I thought - I thought I would - "

Neither being in the mood to listen to her excuses, nor does he have the energy to spare to deal with her, Fuutarou puts his hands on Nakano Itsuki and swiftly sweeps her off her feet to put her in the princess-carrying posture. It's not an ideal carrying method when he's got a hole stabbed in him somewhere in his right side, but with the police about to arrive on the scene, the young mage is left with little choice. Itsuki yelps in surprise at Fuutarou's surprisingly forceful strength that one wouldn't think a rather lanky guy like Uesugi Fuutarou would be able to possess, and she yelps louder when he soars up into the sky after taking a moment to focus his mana into his feet for a boosted jump that lets him land on the rooftop of his own adjacent building.

"Hold on tight!" Fuutarou yells down at Itsuki through clenched teeth, and she complies, gripping her arms as tightly as she can around his chest just before Fuutarou, with a running start, leaps again through the night air to traverse across the rooftops of the city's downtown.

For a few moments, the quintuplet in her tutor's arms quietly feels the somewhat chilly night breeze blow against her as she and Fuutarou hurtle through the air from rooftop to rooftop to escape the scene unnoticed. But louder than the winds that buffet them are her tutor's terribly labored, gasping breathing - and with her head tucked in against his chest, Itsuki is forced to listen to it the entire time as her shoulder begins to ache with how tightly he's clutching her.

"Uesugi-kun, w-where - where are we going right now?" she finally calls out, unable to bear the silence between them any longer, but she cowers again and averts her eyes when Fuutarou once more glares down at her with pain-driven frustration.

"The hospital."


	37. Burden of Responsibility

**A/N**

**derethl2: basically what Rose said - using guns is hella expensive, especially in a country like Japan where gun control is infamously tight, so the biggest barrier to using firearms for Fuutarou is simply getting them in the first place. Even if he, as a mercenary mage who has no reason to comply with conventional gun laws, were to own a gun, acquisition of it is the first and perhaps biggest concern, because he needs to figure out a way to procure it since he sure as hell isn't going to be buying it legally, which would then involve having to register his gun with the local police as part of the process of owning a gun in Japan, and that's before getting into what black market prices for firearms in Japan must be like. Remember also that Fuutarou is only fifteen years old in this fic; while he's not an inexperienced mage because he started when he was young, he's no Emiya Kiritsugu with a well-established network of contacts through which he can acquire weapons.**

**Even if he were to go through the trouble of securing a firearm, assuming he could even afford to do so, he then needs to worry about maintenance costs: ammunition, gun cleaning supplies, spare parts and accessories, and repairs if it gets damaged in action. He could look up videos online that can help him teach himself how to shoot and improve his marksmanship, but h******e'd then need to find a secure location to train with said gun and do so regularly to keep his skills and aim sharp, which means a steady consumption of ammo and more trips to the black market, and so far the only such black market that's been mentioned in this fic is the one that involves contraband drugs and not necessarily weapons, and guns at that.****

****And you saw in Chapter 28 how easily Fuutarou's Presence Concealment spell gets broken; how easily do you think he'll be able to find a place in the city to shoot a gun? Even if he were to also get a suppressor for his gun, which itself would cost more money, most conventional suppressors do not totally silence a gun; even with suppressors on, guns are still quite loud and distinguishable, and as such they can easily break any kind of personal Presence Concealment effect that Fuutarou tries to use. Truly silent suppressors do exist, but you're looking at buying a gun that's either specifically designed to be used silently through use of integrated suppressors and/or using subsonic ammunition with suppressed firearms to get that kind of effect, and by that point, such equipment is more than likely many times beyond Fuutarou's own pay grade, if he even has one to begin with.****

****Even Rio has his reasons to forgo the use of firearms. I've established in this fic that mages typically do not want to attract the attention of normal people to their activities, and Rio is no exception, as his reaction to the police arriving on the scene in the previous chapter shows, so using a gun in what's basically a street fight is pretty self-defeating IMO. And he'd also have to deal with all the same problems and costs of owning a firearm that I discussed above. I can't use the argument of having defensive spells that are tough enough to stop bullets; not only does that sound like literal plot armor, but Chapter 30 depicts Fuutarou clearly injured from the controlled blast of the bomb, so whatever defensive magic he had on him wouldn't keep him safe from bullets. And yes, Fuutarou would probably be able to modify guns magically like he has for his other technological devices, but again, the problem isn't his ability with his gear; it's how he's supposed to get that gear in the first place when he's a broke-ass motherfucker.  
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****I would have loved to give Fuutarou a gun to use as part of his equipment, I'll be honest; if you're familiar with my habits as a fanfic writer, you'll know that I kind of have a thing for guns...lots and lots of them. But the reality is that it doesn't make contextual sense for someone like Fuutarou to use a gun regularly as part of his arsenal, so I need to have him make do with more pragmatic - and economic - means of fighting. And we haven't even gotten into the whole mythological gag of this fic being based on the Nasuverse and how even in the Nasuverse, gun users are very rare due to the disdain of modern technology that mages as a whole have, though how much of that really applies to this fic with its whole establishment of conservative/orthodox magecraft versus new-age/modern magecraft is up to reader interpretation for now.  
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****Without getting into spoiler territory, though, what you brought up was something I was going to delve into at some point in this fic proper. I contemplated not responding to your review in light of this, but I don't know how long it'll take me to get to that point, so I decided to share my thoughts on the matter while it's still relevant.****

* * *

Nakano Itsuki listens to the almost ominous ticking of the clock on the wall of Dr. Nakano's office. The clock itself reads 11:25 PM, and the rest of her father's humble office is devoid of human presence besides herself.

It's been more than half an hour, going on forty minutes, since Uesugi-kun has become a human ambulance and brought her to the hospital, though not for her. Not surprisingly, they found Dr. Nakano in his office, once more on night shift duty, and the two men left to go treat the tutor's wounds while leaving Itsuki behind in the office to wait for them, and she's been waiting for them patiently and quietly ever since with her school bag standing next to her against one of the legs of her chair.

Right after her father and Uesugi-kun exited the office, Itsuki made the mistake of looking around her father's office, as it's been a very long time since she'd last had a reason to be here, but in so doing, she accidentally caught a glimpse of her school dress-code compliant red shirt - despite its already red hue, she can still clearly make out the small blotches of blood smeared against it as a result of Uesugi-kun's princess carry on their way to the hospital.

The youngest quintuplet has always been hemophobic for as long as she can remember; back when the quintuplets were still in their young identical years, this was one of the few immediately differentiating traits that she possessed which thankfully didn't crop up as much as it could have, given how active they all were in elementary school. All of her sisters actually had some aversion to the sight of blood; for example, if one of them had gotten a cut that drew blood, Ichika used to make a big fuss over it and do whatever she could to treat it, to the extent that she carried around Band-Aids for a time for such occasions. Nino and Itsuki both couldn't stand it at all and would shy away from the scene, and their reactions would be even worse if they were the ones who were hurt. Miku would look visibly uncomfortable but wouldn't run away like Nino and Itsuki would, and Yotsuba would try to cover up the cut with her hands without touching the cut directly and start chanting the "Pain, pain, go away ~ " song that commonly circulates among Japanese children.

But as they grew up, so too did their maturities develop with them: now, Ichika and Miku don't even bat an eyelid at the sight of it anymore, and Ichika certainly doesn't baby her sisters with Band-Aids in her pocket. Nino still gets visibly distraught at the sight of it, but her years of self-taught cooking and the fair share of mishaps with knives and hot temperatures that they've brought with them have helped her build up her tolerance of blood so that she can deal with situations without letting her discomfort get in the way. Yotsuba's probably the only one whose reaction to open blood hasn't changed at its core, as she sometimes still sings "Pain, pain, go away ~ " when she's treating one of her sisters' cuts, but she now does so with a cheery calmness that instills a certain kind of relaxation, a feeling that everything will be okay.

Itsuki is the sole quintuplet, just like the rest of herself, whose reaction towards blood has not shown much signs of improving. Even an ordinary paper cut will strike fear into her mind and cause her to treat it immediately with disinfectant, water, and a Band-Aid, not because she's afraid that the paper cut will somehow get infected, but because she so badly does _not _want to see blood emerge from it. And if she can't treat it, her mind will lock itself on that paper cut, and that's one of the only things that she can concentrate on until she can do something about it. Something about the sight of blood makes her freeze up and be unable to take her mind off it until it's out of her sight, and even then her mind still linger on that recent memory for a few minutes afterwards before it can let it go. It's not like she has hemophilia or has had traumatic incidents involving blood in her life before, so this truly is an irrational fear of blood that she has, and Itsuki is well aware of this, but so far she hasn't found a way to make herself get over it to the extents that the rest of her sisters have.

So she has sit in her chair for the past half an hour, almost petrified, staring at the opposite wall in a perfect sitting posture befitting an honor roll student, except for the fact that she is not one. She's actually okay with blood being on her skirt for whatever reason that she herself can't quite identify, but it's the blood on her shirt that she just can't stand. She wanted to ask her father if he happened to have a spare shirt on hand for her to change into, but given Uesugi-kun's condition, specifically the knife wound that he incurred when the two met in the middle of his fierce duel against that other hostile mage, she didn't want to get in their way.

As if she's slamming her toe against a door to make herself forget about the pain of a toothache, Itsuki finds her mind replacing one uncomfortable notion with another, perhaps more distressing thought. Because of her accidental involvement in whatever kind of fight that Uesugi-kun was in tonight, Uesugi-kun got stabbed in the side somehow. It's because of her that she's in the hospital right now; if she'd just decided to stick to her usual regimen and called a cab home, Uesugi-kun wouldn't be here having to treat a wound from an attack that was meant for her, and she wouldn't have to be so preoccupied with the fact that she has blood on her either.

It might as well be on her hands instead of her shirt for all she cares.

The more her mind dwells on this, the worse and worse Itsuki feels. If she hadn't gone to the library and just studied at home like she always did, this wouldn't have happened. If she called a taxi home like she normally would whenever she was in the city like this, this wouldn't have happened. If she were paying attention to where she was going instead of being so immersed in her own stupid thoughts, this probably wouldn't have happened. If she were just better at studying, taking tests, and getting good grades, none of this would be happening. But no - her own selfish pursuit of good grades and academic results, despite her own history of never achieving them on her own, and her continued, dogged, and stubborn pursuit of them by any honorable means necessary now truly begin to rear their ugly heads in plain vision of Itsuki, and she doesn't even need her glasses to see this one clearly staring her in the eyes right on front of her at a time like this.

And her self-inflicting misery doesn't stop there. Itsuki's memory has been refreshed tonight that Uesugi Fuutarou-kun doesn't just have tutoring responsibilities for her and her sisters but magework on top of it, and that from time to time, he has to put himself on the line like this. How long as he been doing this, living this dangerous life as a mage that forces him to dive deep into the darker, uglier sides of the city and the world? How often does he have to deal with dangerous situations like running into enemy mages who clearly want him dead? Itsuki remembers Nino mentioning last Saturday how Uesugi-kun had a big cut on his chest after they came back home from the library. How many times he been hurt like this?

Just as Itsuki was beginning to forget about the so-called magical side of the world that she had a tiny, brief look into at the warehouse, she finds herself yanked back in and reminded of the fact that most ordinary people like herself have zero clue that such a side of the world even exists. In light of this, just how long has Uesugi-kun been doing this while knowing that everything that he's done and everything that he will do will go unseen? He himself would have never let the girls know about it, and if the incident at the warehouse last month never happened, likely Itsuki herself for sure would be none the wiser, at least until tonight, when it would've come as the biggest shock in her life.

Itsuki has been studying all this time for the expressed purpose of being able to take care of her family but has produced no results.

Uesugi-kun has been working and fighting all this time in the shadows like a vigilante in an anime-like fashion to produce results, but no one will see them. At least, not most people.

The youngest quintuplet just can't imagine that. She can't manage to wrap her mind around just how different she is from the boy she's reluctantly come to call her tutor; in a sense, she and Uesugi-kun have been living in two completely different worlds, and in comparison, Itsuki can't help but feel insignificant and irrelevant.

Her hands that have been resting on her thighs while waiting patiently for the two men to return tighten up into fists on their own, scrunching up handfuls of her green plaid school skirt. Itsuki's first instinct is to get angry again, like she's traditionally done, at Uesugi-kun for making her feel this way. If he'd never come into her life, hell, if he hadn't shown up at that warehouse on that Saturday night a month ago to save her and her sisters like some kind of superhero, she wouldn't have to force herself to acknowledge all the things that Uesugi-kun has done; forget about her eating habits that her sisters always poke fun at her for, she wouldn't have to sit here feeling like a complete burden.

Well, she _wants _to, but...she can't. And besides, if blaming other people for her own failures could get her good grades, she would never need a tutor in the first place.

The door to the head physician's office opens, and Itsuki's father enters the room, shutting the door calmly behind him. Itsuki doesn't glance over to him at first, so deeply entrenched in her own thoughts as she is, and Dr. Nakano resumes his own seat in his office swivel chair with a tablet in hand.

"Uesugi-kun will be fine. He has suffered a few deep wounds, but he should make a full recovery," Dr. Nakano informs his daughter as though she were a family member visiting a patient. "I'd like to ask what you were doing in the city this late at night, Itsuki."

The sternness of her father's voice, cold and commanding as it's always been, efficiently drags Itsuki out of her nebulous thoughts to listen to him.

"I was...at the library," she answers slowly and honestly; if there's something that she fears more than the sight of blood, it's her father when he finds out that he's been lied to, and she wasn't even planning on lying to him at all. "Uesugi-kun brought us to the library last Saturday to study, and...I enjoyed studying there. So before we have our midterms this Friday, since Uesugi-kun isn't coming in to tutor us, I went to the library today after school to study instead of studying at home."

"You usually study at home, no?"

"Yes."

"I see." Dr. Nakano gives a single curt nod, but his eyes are still glued to his tablet as he taps a few times on the screen. "I commend you for devoting yourself to studying like this, but perhaps next time, be more mindful of the time, especially during a time like this when there has been some...let's say, ruckus in the city. Have you been watching the news recently?"

Itsuki nods. "If you are talking about the kidnappings in the city recently - "

"Ah, so you do know. Then I advise you to remain at home if you intend on studying late at night."

Her lip curling somewhat, Itsuki turns her gaze away from her parent. "...yes, Father."

Putting his tablet down on his desk, Dr. Nakano turns his chair slightly to face his youngest daughter.

"Why did Uesugi-kun give you this week off?" he asks solemnly. His extremely dry, stifling voice grips Itsuki and sends waves of chills down her spine.

"B...Because he wanted us to study on our own for midterms. He tutored us extensively last week, so he said that tutoring us any more would be counterproductive, and that we should study on our own until - "

"Hm, quite strange. The agreement I had with him was to have him tutor you every weekday...what you are telling me right now does not sound like that."

At this, Itsuki's eyes dart back at her father.

"Maybe...maybe not, but..." Itsuki inhales sharply. "...I'm sure...I am sure that he...must have his reasons."

"Reasons, you say. And what reasons would those be?"

"Er, well...I do not know them myself, of course..."

"Then why mention reasons that you do not know? Either speak of them with certainty or do not mention them at all."

"Ngh..." The biting rationality of Dr. Nakano chomps down hard on Itsuki's conscience, but she does have something that she can defend herself - or maybe Uesugi-kun - with. "But Father, Uesugi-kun did tell us that...he would study with us one last time before midterms as a last-minute cram to make sure that we're as prepared as we can be for them."

"A last-minute cram session? I can hardly agree with that as a method of effective teaching. But we shall see with your results with these upcoming midterms..."

Itsuki straightens up in her chair, intending to ask Dr. Nakano a question in regards to the condition that Uesugi-kun informed the quints about, the condition that if any one of them were to fail their midterms, he would be fired from his position as their tutor. But the flashing memory of Uesugi-kun's strained, angry face after learning that she'd called the police to the scene of his fight with that other mage dissuades her from asking the head physician about it, so instead she changes her question.

"Father, this...this may be something that I should not pry into, but...but what exactly is your relationship with Uesugi-kun?"

"Itsuki, what did I just say about speaking of things you are not sure of?"

"That I should not speak of them unless I can speak with certainty. But even despite that, even if I do not know the situation between you two, what I _can _say with certainty is the fact that my tutor was just involved in a dangerous fight that could have easily cost him his life, and that he came directly to the hospital to be treated, and not only that, straight here to your office."

"Even though it was you who was the reason why we are having this conversation to begin with?"

The bluntness of her father's words might as well turn into a hand that smacks her across the face. For better or for worse, having dealt with a fair share of Uesugi-kun's own bluntness over the weeks, Itsuki doesn't feel as hurt by them as she otherwise might be, which allows her to respond with,

"That may be, Father, but...but that does not change the fact that Uesugi-kun appears to have some kind of...connection to you that the rest of us do not know about."

Listening to Itsuki's quiet, somewhat stuttery words that brave the tense, cold air that Dr. Nakano seems to have about him at all times, the head physician slowly crosses his arms at his youngest daughter.

"How much has Uesugi-kun told you about this? Answer me honestly," he demands quietly.

"Not much at all, Father. After he saved us at the warehouse, when he took us back home, he told us then that he was a mage, and he gave us a brief description of what he did and what mages are and the like, just to help give us a bare minimum explanation of what was going on. He said himself that he did not want to tell us more about it because we were better off not knowing about such things so that we could concentrate on our studies."

"...mmm, I see. Then why do you suppose that asking me about the relationship between me and Uesugi-kun will help you with those studies?"

"Because..." Itsuki hesitates for a moment to compile her thoughts quickly, "...I cannot just ignore what happened tonight, Father. Yes, perhaps I may have been a part of the cause of our trip to the hospital tonight, but again, that does not change the fact that my tutor was badly injured in a fight that I bore witness to. This is someone who is supposed to be important to not only me, but for the rest of my sisters, your daughters, as well!"

"Someone important, you say. Then why has Uesugi-kun been reporting to me that you and Nino have not been cooperating with him in his lessons for the past month and a half? Are you trying to tell me that Uesugi-kun has been lying to me about you intentionally this whole time?"

"I - "

The rest of Itsuki's spine freezes up, paralyzing her figuratively and somewhat physically too. She can't refute that at all, and even if she and Nino did begin accepting lessons from Uesugi-kun last week, her father certainly isn't going to be terribly impressed at that anyway if she even bothers telling him that. Still, she tries.

" - no, Father, Uesugi-kun is right. Nino and I have not been attending his lessons as we should have with the others. I do not know what Nino's true reasons are myself, so I will not try to speak on her behalf, but for myself personally, I did not work with him because of...honestly trivial reasons. But I have seen the errors of my behavior and finally began to study properly with him last week, as I mentioned when I talked about the time when we all went to the library to study last Saturday."

Itsuki then looks back up at her father.

"So that is why now, I can say with more certainty than before at least that Uesugi-kun is an important person to everyone. That is why I want to ask you about the two of you, because this is something that not just I, but all of my sisters have been meaning to ask you ever since we transferred schools."

"And that is?"

"Why you hired Uesugi-kun to be our tutor for an entire year, for the rest of our freshman year in high school." Itsuki uses her hands to turn her plastic folding chair to angle herself better towards her father. "It was such a sudden development that we at first planned to turn the tutor away on his or her first day, but as it turned out, it was Uesugi-kun, who was one of the boys in our class at school, so...we gave him a chance. Well, Yotsuba was the first one to...followed by Miku and Ichika. But we initially figured that you did this because we were so inept at our studies that an entire year's worth of tutoring was justifiable. I do not know what my sisters think of this situation now, but for me, especially after what I have seen tonight, I cannot help but think back to a month and a half ago when we were trying to figure out why you would give us a tutor like for a whole year, and at the beginning of the school year, too. Because by this point, as if it weren't already a month ago, it is undeniable that Uesugi-kun was hired to do more than just tutor us. Is that not so, Father?"

To Itsuki's silent surprise, her father nods curtly, and when he doesn't try to interrupt her with his own words, Itsuki takes that as a sign to continue.

"As curious as I am to know the truth behind what is going on, like you said, I will not try to involve myself in things that I am uncertain of," Itsuki asserts, even though her real reason is because she knows her father won't tell her anything anyway. "Instead, I simply wish to ask you about why the two of you seem to know each other quite well, even if...you two do not seem very friendly to each other...because that way, perhaps I will better understand why you decided to have Uesugi-kun work as our tutor."

At that moment, just as Itsuki is uttering those last few words to her father, the office door opens suddenly again.

"Don't bother asking him that. He won't answer you anyway..."

Leaving the door open and standing in the doorway itself, Uesugi Fuutarou, having taken off his black hoodie jacket and opting to hold it draped over his left forearm like a corporate wageslave returning home from a particularly awful day at work, peers into the office at both occupants other than himself. Itsuki, turning to see who's entered, at first reels at the sight of her tutor: he hasn't cleaned up any of the blood on his clothes at all yet, as treating his wounds was naturally the more urgent matter of business, so his usually plain white dress shirt is now stained systematically with bloodstains, mainly concentrated over his right side and chest, but he also sports a handful of cuts on both of his arms as well. While the bright cuts seem to have stopped bleeding, some of the ones on his arms still have their trails of blood still streaking around his arms where gravity has pulled several drops during their nighttime sojourn to the hospital. At the very least Uesugi-kun has wrapped his chest and his right side again, now that they've been checked for any poisons or other foreign magical substances that Rio's knife may have been laced with that Fuutarou missed while fighting him in person, so that Itsuki is spared having to look at his worst injuries, but once again her hemophobia seizes her conscience with impunity, and Itsuki tears her eyes away from her tutor before she actually begins to physically scream.

"Done already? How resilient as always, Uesugi-kun," the doctor nods back at his employee curtly as usual.

"Yeah, well, it's dangerous for Itsuki to be here right now at this hour," Fuutarou exhales deeply, glancing up at the clock over Dr. Nakano's head. It's as if Uesugi can only speak while breathing simultaneously because of his acute exhaustion, and as if that weren't enough, a solid bead of sweat is even running down the middle of his scalp, down the right side of his nose. He wipes it away with the back of his hand when he feels it creep down near his nostril as he glances down briefly at his student. "Let's go, Itsuki. Like I said, he ain't telling you shit."

Itsuki, for her part, begins to bite her lower lip. "...can I not...may I not at least try...?"

"Sure, you can, but maybe another night when I don't have a hole in my side. But I'm telling you, he won't tell you what you want to know."

Both Uesugi Fuutarou and Dr. Nakano sure know how to add salt to the wound whenever they're talking.

"It would appear that boys and girls your age do not know how to listen when they should. Have you already forgotten the little talk we had when you interrupted our family dinner in Honolulu?" Dr. Nakano points out calmly, having lowered his crossed hands down to his lap.

"Oh, you're tryin'a say that this is a 'family matter' between the two of you?" Fuutarou hisses back in a low voice as Itsuki slowly gets up from her folding chair and picks up her school bag that sports a few small smears of dried blood of its own where it's pressed against her tutor's chest. "That's funny, because in this case, I don't see how I'm _not _involved. And you still have the balls to say that this is a family matter?"

Then, Dr. Nakano smiles wryly. It's a tiny smile - but just like his voice, it easily sends another round of chills down Itsuki's back when she turns to see it.

"Afraid that someone will expose your dirty little secret, Uesugi-kun?" he asks dryly.

The head physician isn't even done with his statement when Fuutarou beckons to Itsuki to get her to exit the office, and when she does, he gives the doctor one last scathing glare and a hefty,

**"Go fuck yourself."  
**

And he slams the door behind him as hard as he can without further harming himself. A blue rune flares into view beneath their feet on the floor, absorbing the frightening crash from spreading throughout the rest of the hospital below them and potentially waking up any patients.

Itsuki, having seen her tutor clench his teeth before slamming the door shut, still jumps a little when the gunshot-like slam tears the air in the corridor apart, and she gazes up at him in its aftermath as he turns a little, letting his hand slide off the door handle tiredly. His usually bloodshot eyes are so strained now that it's almost as if his eyes themselves are bleeding inside, and he lets his head hang briefly, the muscles in his neck going slack for a moment as he momentarily lets his exhaustion get the better of him before redoubling his strength and straightening up again, as he's still got a job to do.

"Let's go, Itsuki. Follow me."

Departing for the staircase, the injured mage leads the way with the youngest quintuplet trotting nervously behind him.

"...are you alright now?" she asks timidly, wondering if she should even say anything to him at all since she's sure that he doesn't want to deal with her at the moment, even if he's contractually obligated to. As if to prove her right, Fuutarou turns and gives her a quick glare in his tired eyes as he pulls the staircase door open and holds it so that Itsuki can walk through with him.

"No, I'm not. The guy got me in my right side here...got my liver." He holds his hand carefully over his liver where he took the ranged knife attack from Rio. "Hurts, but thankfully I managed to stop it before it could go any deeper and hit anything else...like my kidney or something."

"Th-The liver..." The talk of internal organs being damaged like this understandably causes the quintuplet to feel queasy as the two of them climb the stairs. "But...but that's the only organ in the body that...can regenerate, correct? So..."

"Yeah, I'll be fine, since it can make a full recovery on its own. I got off lucky tonight, I just need to deal with the pain for a little bit..." Fuutarou clears his throat tiredly, and Itsuki can hear just how ragged his voice really is when he does. "I'm surprised you know that, Itsuki. That's not exactly something they teach you in school...they just teach you what the liver does and stuff..."

"Well, my best subject is biology, after all. And sciences in general...I like to, um, read around, I guess...I could sit in my room and read books and watch shows about science all day. For some reason, I always remember things that will never be on any of the tests at school..." Itsuki chuckles awkwardly in an attempt to lighten up the mood that she quietly deems pathetic to herself.

"Not surprising. You're more likely to remember things that you want to learn about, as opposed to studying things just for the sake of regurgitating them back onto a dumb fuckin' sheet of paper at a waste of time they call school..."

"By the way, where are we going? Should we not be doing _down? _How are we going to go home?" Itsuki asks, beginning to wonder why Fuutarou is leading her up instead of the opposite direction.

"To the roof. I don't exactly trust taking a cab at the moment, so I've got an alternative."

"Wait, you have roof access here? I thought only staff was allowed to be up there?"

"You forget, Itsuki, I _am _part of the staff. Just not _officially_..."

Reaching the roof access door, Fuutarou, having fished for a key out of his storage rune, opens the door. Itsuki gazes down at the helicopter landing marker on the roof, her eyes widening slowly.

"...are you going to call a helicopter to take me home...?!" she asks in hushed amazement, causing Uesugi to squint at her incredulously.

"Hell no, do I look like I got that kinda money? And aren't you the type who rides choppers often?"

"N-No! Limousines and first-class, yes, but not helicopters!"

Fuutarou shakes his head disdainfully. "So this is what they mean when they say 'suffering from success', huh?"

_"Uesugi-kun!"_

Managing to crack a wry grin of his own, Fuutarou turns to raise his hand out to the helipad before them. Itsuki is at least glad that she was able to make him lighten up, even if it was at her own expense.

_"Fate is in heaven."_

Reacting to his words, a large bright blue rune locks into view, painting itself into view directly over the red H on the hospital roof. Itsuki pulls her hands over her face in the wake of the blinding light, which is made seemingly brighter due to the sharp contrast of the darkness of the night around them.

"W-Will this not attract attention to us?" Itsuki wonders aloud, blinking down at the huge rune and taking a look around at their surroundings at the adjacent buildings and skyscrapers.

"I've got a bounded field surrounding this hospital on the roof; people trying to look down into the roof won't be able to see past it. Normal people, at least." Fuutarou steps onto the rune and makes his way to the center, and Itsuki nervously follows him, wondering what is about to happen. "This is a teleportation rune, I've got it connected to another one on the Pentagon roof. Take a deep breath and relax - you're going to feel like crap afterwards if you tense up too much."

Before he can even give her a chance to brace herself, Fuutarou activates the rune, and the two of them disappear in a flash of light, removed from the hospital roof instantly and finding themselves, as Fuutarou projected, on the roof of the high-rise residency of the Nakano family. Even if she's already watched two fights and is equipped with the knowledge of magic and its existence, Itsuki still finds it hard to believe that just a second ago, she and her tutor were standing on the roof of the hospital and are now standing on the roof of the Pentagon.

Making sure the teleportation rune is on cooldown so that he can reset it for another use, the injured mage slowly trudges over to the edge of the skyscraper to survey the panoramic view that the roof offers. Itsuki follows him slowly at first, but once she realizes that Uesugi is walking right up to the edge, she shies away and maintains her distance from it herself. While she doesn't have acrophobia, per se, she doesn't like looking down and knowing that one step could mean certain death.

"...what are you doing now? If you need a ride home, I can call a taxi for you..." Itsuki calls over softly, letting the high-altitude wind carry her words to her tutor, who hears her words like this and slowly walks back to her, correctly guessing that Itsuki doesn't fancy being near the edge of the roof, even if there are plenty of safety barriers to prevent falling over the edge.

"I have to wait for the this rune to reset, and then I can reactivate it for another use in the future," he explains in a low voice. Now that he's gotten Itsuki back to the relative safety of the skyscraper, Fuutarou finally lets himself relax a little bit, which is reflected in his voice. "It'll take a bit...like ten or so minutes, so I'll be hanging out here for a little bit longer, if you don't mind."

That last part about the teleportation rune needing ten minutes to recharge for another use is a lie; he can reset it immediately after giving the rune a few moments at most.

Itsuki nods slowly, looking down at the roof.

"If you're worried about how your sisters are gonna react to you coming back home so late, I got a text from Ichika while we were on our way to the hospital, asking me if I knew where you were because you weren't responding to any texts or calls from her," Uesugi mentions.

At this, Itsuki lets out a small but terrified yelp as she dunks her hand into her school bag, where she'd put her phone while the two of them were fleeing the street where the fight took place. Sure enough, when she unlocks her phone screen, she sees no less than seven missed calls and texts, with each of her sisters having sent her one text or call each and the most coming from Nino.

"Oh no...I-I completely forgot about them...!" Itsuki whimpers in guilt, having totally forgotten to let her sisters know where she was in the development of the events of the night.

"Don't worry, I told Ichika that you're safe and that she'd be back home later tonight. I asked them to not bother you about whatever happened tonight, and I'd like to ask you to not divulge anything that's happened to the rest of your sisters either."

Lowering her phone but slowly gripping it more tightly, Itsuki turns to her bloodied, wounded tutor whose black half-kilt flutters in a particularly sudden gust of wind.

"...sure, I can do that. But...are you not angry at me for what happened tonight, Uesugi-kun?" Itsuki asks slowly.

"Only at the fact that you called the police on us when I didn't want you to. If you hadn't done that, I could've maybe had a shot at killing that guy I was fighting and putting him down for good, or even better, knocking him out so that I could extract information from him later."

"...I apologize for my carelessness. I just...wanted to help. And it seemed like you were very injured at the time, and...all the more now that I know that you took a hit for me back there."

"Mmnn, it's fine now, I guess. I'll just be glad that the situation didn't get any uglier than it already was...really, though, I was more annoyed at having to carry you all the way back to the hospital than you calling the cops on us."

"Oh _geez_, Uesugi-kun, even at a time like _this, _you choose to make a joke about my weight?!" Itsuki sulks hard back up at her tutor. "I just cannot believe you right now!"

"...it wasn't meant to be a knock on your weight, goddamn it. I would've made that same complaint if you were any one of the others."

"Hmph. And besides, if you had something like this...this teleportation spell, couldn't you have used it to take us to the hospital instantly?"

"Most of the teleportation runes I have set up are one-way only. I can make two-ways, but they're both more complex to build and more energy-intensive to maintain, so in my case, it's more efficient for me to build a network of one-ways than to put up two-ways. This rune we're standing on right now is one of the two-ways that I have, and it should be pretty obvious why. So back when we were going to the hospital manually, I didn't have much of another choice."

Itsuki stares blankly up at him.

"...have you ever considered making another one-way route _to _the hospital, then?"

Fuutarou stares back. He puts his hand up to his chin in thought, raises it again and opens his mouth to make a counterargument, then stops because he realizes he doesn't have one, then lowers his hand to put both hands on his hips. Itsuki feels the lower eyelid of her right eye twitching a little.

"...Uesugi-kun, how was _I _able to think of something like that but _you _could not?" she asks slowly and dryly, not unlike in the manner of her father. "Were _you _not supposed to be the smart one among us?"

Already with his face in his hand, Fuutarou shakes his other in Itsuki's direction. "I don't want to hear it."

Even though she probably shouldn't, Itsuki can't help but crack up, unable to resist laughing a little at her tutor's apparent lapse in judgment.

"Well, there is something you can remember doing the next time you are out and about in the city," Itsuki manages to smile warmly back at her tutor, her rosy cheeks making the chilly air of the skyscraper rooftop just a bit warmer than it should be, but the smile doesn't last. "...and please be careful out there. I know tonight you were hurt because of me, but..."

"I'll...try. I already told you how being a mage is pretty dangerous, and you saw it again tonight..." Lifting up his snapback cap briefly to run his hand through his hair, Fuutarou gives a quick sigh. "And don't beat yourself up over how you got me hurt. It happens a lot, and I'm used to it. The last thing I want for you to deal with is to have to think about what happened tonight in the middle of your midterms. There's always another day to live, but there're only so many midterms you can take."

Itsuki gives Fuutarou a bit of a incredulous look of her own. "What kind of logic must you have to think of things like _that?"_

"Sorry. Mages like me typically have a few screws loose."

"I can _tell."_

Folding her arms over her chest, both as a conversational gesture and to try to keep more of her body heat to herself up on the roof, Itsuki briefly glances about the roof, still on the fence on whether she should stick around to talk to her tutor for a little bit longer or if she ought to get a move on and return home. Seeing this reaction, Fuutarou reads it correctly and takes his hoodie jacket on his arm to drape it around Itsuki's shoulders for the time being. Despite the fact that she knows it's got a venerable amount of blood smeared on it, Itsuki manages to swallow her hemophobic tendencies to let Fuutarou do so.

"Um...about what I was talking about with Father..." the youngest quintuplet finally manages to blurt out, but her tutor raises his hand to silence her politely.

"I overheard most of it. Sorry if this creeps you out a little, but I was outside the room for most of it, eavesdropping."

"Yes, that _is _a little creepy."

"I said sorry already."

Making a little pout that disappears quickly, Itsuki continues to look back at her classmate.

"Then if you say that Father will not answer the question I had for him, may I ask it to you instead? What exactly is the relationship you have with Father? Or can you not tell me?"

Uesugi takes a deep breath.

"All I can tell you for now is what you probably already know: I work with your dad so that I have access to the hospital's medical equipment, and in exchange he has me help around the hospital and, as of a month and a half ago, tutor you and your sisters and protect you from people like Rio, the dude whom I was fighting against tonight."

"But _why, _then? How did you come to work for him?" Itsuki presses on. "And there was that one thing that Father mentioned that got you all mad just before we left his office..."

Fuutarou twists his lips in discomfort at the mention of that last bit of discourse between him and her dad.

"That's just something between me and him. We don't have the best history between us...there's been some bad blood between us." Fuutarou glances down at his bare, cut arm. "...no pun intended. But I'd rather not talk about it...now's not the time for it, at least."

Itsuki frowns deeply back at her tutor. "You cannot tell me anything? _Anything _at all?"

"Mmm...I guess you could figure this out by now if you sat down and thought about it real hard, so it should be okay for me to tell you this: the tutoring gig that your dad set up for you girls was definitely something that'd been in the works for a while. I heard you talk to your dad about how it seemed like this all just kind of...happened out of nowhere, right? But it wasn't a spur of the moment kind of thing."

"Father intended to have you tutor us for a while? For how long? As in, leading up to now?"

"That's impossible for me to say, since I don't know what your dad's thinking half the time. But knowing him, he's the kind of guy who premeditates everything. And given his status in the hospital and his connections to the rest of the city's bureaucracy and oligarchy, I don't find it surprising at all. He probably saw all the shit that's been happening in the city and decided to have me cover for you five in case anything happened, and sure enough, someone's after you, and now, we know most likely it's that Rio guy from earlier."

"Must be...he knew one of my sisters by name somehow. Though he confused me for her, so I guess he does not know who we are personally..."

"And I'd rather let it stay that way. He doesn't need to know more about you than he already does."

"Agreed..." Itsuki lowers her gaze down to Fuutarou's feet, since she can't bear to look at his bloodstained front. "...I'm sorry, Uesugi-kun. You told us even a month ago that someone was coming after us, about how someone murdered Ebata-san, and sure enough, you were right. And even then, just because nothing seemed to be happening besides the recent kidnappings in the city, I let myself forget all that..."

"I'm gonna get mad if you keep acting like that, Itsuki."

"B-But I am trying to let you know that I am concerned about all this...!"

Fuutarou scoffs briefly. "Says one of the two girls who didn't attend lessons like she was supposed to until _last week."_

"Oh no, you _too!? _You sound just like Father, talking like that!"

"Nah, he'd have a lot drier of a voice. Kinda like this..." Fuutarou tries his best Dr. Nakano impression, causing Itsuki to crack up a bit more.

"No, seriously, Uesugi-kun! I may have acted like that before, but...but watching you fight that...what was his name again, Rio?...watching you fight him made me realize...how stubborn I have been all this time."

"Ah, so you finally realize, huh."

_"P-Please let me finish...! _Anyways...! Watching you fight that guy...I realized that you must have done so much training and fighting to get the point where you are now. We already knew that you have been working long hours during the night, to the point where you treat school like the only time of the day when you can get any sleep. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for you to get to this point...and how even then, even after all that you must have done and accomplished, you are still in a situation where you need to help provide for your family. Meanwhile, I am stuck here at home, or I guess at the library for tonight, studying and trying to get good grades and all...and being unable to show for any of my own efforts."

"Yeah, you don't say!" Fuutarou agrees with a rather insensitive and obnoxious snort of his own. "Imagine just having to study a whole lot as your biggest concern in life! Couldn't be me, that's for sure."

"If you're angry at me for what I did tonight, I already said I'm sorry, geez!"

Uesugi cracks another tired smile down at the pouting Itsuki before letting his head hang tiredly again about his neck, but at the same time, Itsuki feels a large, heavy hand also rest on top of her own head.

"...even still, don't worry about that either. Even if you think you're at fault for part of what happened tonight, even if other people tell you shit like that, I won't hold you accountable, since this is my job at the end of the day; I should have known what I was getting myself into accepting a contract like this. All you need to do is ace those midterms; it's the biggest favor you can do for me. In the meantime, I'll keep doing my job like I always have and make sure that son of a bitch doesn't get anywhere near you or your sisters...and hopefully figure out the rest of what the hell exactly's going on with this city."

Itsuki gazes with open blue eyes back at her tutor, who's managed to raise his tired head to reciprocate her eyes.

"...acing the midterms might be a bit of a stretch, though," she freely admits blankly.

"Tch...you're right. That's why I'm coming over on Thursday so that we can study overnight again like last week."

"Aaaaaagh! You just reminded me of that - oh noooooooo!" Itsuki cries aloud, grasping her head in terror.

"What, Itsuki, don't you _looooove _studying? Rejoice, young lady, for you get to study for a _whole sixteen hours with your favorite tutor!"_

"Nooooooooooooo! Father, you - you idiooooooot! ! ! ! !"

"But weren't you okay with it last time? Why're you getting all worked up about it now?"

"Because I thought that'd be the only time!"

"Well, _that's where you're wrong, kiddo!"  
_

Giving him the biggest pout of the night, Nakano Itsuki refolds her arms across her generous chest and turns her chin away. "Hmph! You've always been a big giant bully, Uesugi-kun! You haven't changed one bit!"

"Implying _you've _changed at all."

"Nonsense, I _have _changed! I've been trying my best to act friendlier to you, can you not tell?"

"No, I actually did. I just wanted to get you to say it out loud yourself."

At this, Itsuki, realizing that she's been tricked and baited, feels heat rise up to her cheeks.

"W-W-Why you - _UESUGI-KUUUUNNNN! ! ! ! !"_

Having the freedom to yell at the top of her lungs freely because they're on the roof of the skyscraper, Itsuki makes liberal use of it as her suddenly mischievous classmate and tutor cackles at her pride's expense. Even still, seeing him laugh and smile like this, again, is worth being teased a little bit. For a boy whom she usually always sees scowling, frowning, or simply with no expression on his face whatsoever, for some reason, whenever he puts a smile or a laugh there, it warms her own heart.

That doesn't stop her from building tears in her eyes at being teased like this, especially because it's someone other than one of her sisters doing it, and noticing this, Fuutarou ceases his laughter with a small sigh.

"Fine, I'll stop. Tell you what then, Itsuki - if you and your sisters manage to pass your midterms, I'll treat you all to something to eat. It can't be too expensive, though, so don't start getting any funny ideas of squeezing me dry."

At the mention of food, Itsuki's ears perk up, and she immediately stands at attention at her tutor's offer.

"Oh, oh! I know of this little ice cream parlor that just opened recently, and it's on the way home from school. I haven't been there yet, so I don't know the prices, but that's the place I'd like for us to go to!"

Fuutarou notes that Itsuki's subconsciously relaxed her speech at some point while they've been talking. So she _can _talk like the rest of her sisters...that's a relief to know.

"Gotta ace those midterms first, though," he reminds his student.

"Like I said, acing is impossible."

"Geez, you're a killjoy..."

_"Uesugi-kun is calling ME a killjoy!? I can't believe this!"_

The roof of the Pentagon is filled one last time with a round of hearty laughter and the angry Itsuki noises that accompany it.


	38. Nothing Special

"...sugi? Mr. Uesugi...please wake up."

Fuutarou doesn't recall having fallen asleep in the first place, though, much less close his eyes at all. But he does find himself hunched over in his seat with his head resting against the desk in front of him, on top of his folded arms, so maybe he was sleeping. Or maybe he was just putting his head down? He's not sure, but he doesn't feel the imperative to argue or protest, so he pulls his head up.

Taking a look around at his unknown surroundings and down at himself, Uesugi Fuutarou finds himself in some kind of...dressing room, of sorts. At least, that's what it seems like...not much of a dressing room, though, for how bare and unused it is. Not in terms of its actual furnishings, but more in the sense of how much the room has been used - barely anything's been touched, and really the only signs of occupancy are some extra clothes that have been hung up with coat hangers along some of the clothes racks. Fuutarou himself appears to be wearing a snappy white tuxedo and a dash of cologne, though perhaps hilariously, his hairstyle is the same as ever. Perhaps that was intentional.

Funny...Fuutarou's never worn a tuxedo before, and he's certainly never had the idea to go out of his way to wear one.

Turning around and face the person who's called out to him, Uesugi finds a beautifully dressed woman is standing behind him, watching him get back up to his feet from his chair and analyze his surroundings for a few moments. She is quite tall, almost as tall as Fuutarou himself is, and she has donned a black kimono beautifully sewn with an image of a winding river, in the same style of traditional Japanese paintings. She has jet-black hair that is somehow darker than the kimono she wears...but that's just about all Fuutarou can see. She has a face...but for some reason, he can't seem to register what it looks like.

Now that she's gotten his attention, the lady in the kimono meets his eyes and smiles calmly.

"The bride is ready."

...is it that day already? Fuutarou thought it'd never come.

He nods at the lady, who smiles briefly back at him and turns around herself to lead him out of the dressing room. The two of them soon reach the closed front doors of the chapel, where the wedding will take place, but strangely, as Fuutarou realizes once they arrive and after he takes another cursory look around...

"...she isn't here," he says quietly, turning to the woman in black...

...who is gone. In her place where she once stood is another lady, a lady perfectly dressed in a pure white wedding gown and veil, complete with a bouquet of flowers in her hands. She smiles back up at him; her smile shines brighter than the sun's rays that pour into the chapel lobby where they stand down from the transparent ceiling above them.

"I'm right here, Mr. Uesugi," she says peacefully. "I've always been here."

Something is not right.

Fuutarou slowly faces the door before the two of them. "...sorry I took so long. Apparently I was sleeping in the dressing room..."

The bride laughs a little. "Yeah, that sounds like you, alright. Did you have a good dream, at least?"

"Hm...funny you mention that, because I was dreaming about the day when I first met you."

"The day when you first met me...ah, when you first met all of us?" The bride also sets her eyes straight forth at the doors in front of them. "Ichika, Nino, Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki...the day when you found out that we were quintuplets, right?"

Fuutarou nods curtly as the doors shudder and begin to open for them slowly.

"Haha. Well, it didn't seem like a dream to me."

When the doors finally come to a stop, having opened fully for the couple-to-be standing behind them, Fuutarou steps into the chapel, takes a deep bow, and slowly marches formally down the aisle to the altar at the front of the chapel.

No bridesmaids.

No family members.

No audience.

No music.

No fanfare.

The chapel is empty.

Fuutarou reaches the empty podium, his hands down by his hips clenched for reasons he himself can't explain. Once arrived at his next destination, the bridegroom stays as he is, facing forward still, while the bride follows his trail soon after and approaches him, taking his side before the podium on the marriage stage of the empty and otherwise silent chapel.

"Hmph. I guess you're right," the groom remarks once the bride takes his side before the podium. "Even now, as an actual adult...I still see that moment in my dreams from time to time."

Then, Uesugi turns around. On the first row of pews, closest to the small stage, now sit five bodies, slumped in various positions on their respective benches that were definitely not there the first time he passed them.

Each body is staring with wide, lifeless eyes, cast in unique directions. But despite the pale discolorings of their skin, the colors in their frozen eyes are undeniable - yellow, purple, blue, green, and red.

Uesugi coldly looks at each of them in disgust.

"...it was a fucking nightmare," he whispers.

Directly on cue, a heavy, ominous bell tolls deafeningly in the chapel, despite the fact that it has no room to fit such a heavy-sounding bell, let alone hide it from view. The bride next to Uesugi Fuutarou explodes into a mass of black mist that spreads throughout the chapel at the same time, and while the mist disperses, a shrill, ear-splitting series of hair-raising screams fills the air of the chapel like five separate sets of fingernails clawing their way down a chalkboard.

Watching the mist travel about the chapel, Fuutarou, having not bothered to get out of its way and has consequently gotten engulfed by it, suddenly doubles over as blood suddenly flies from his right side. The pain is crippling; Uesugi is accustomed to sharp pain but this is to the point where even he must take a knee with how paralyzing this pain is. The blood that's shot out from his liver and is staining the stage and the floor just beneath it are not the normal red, but black, and the pain doesn't subside - instead, it only gets worse. It spreads slowly throughout his body, starting from where his liver should be, gripping him with more and more and more pain on top of the pain that brought him down to his knees to begin with.

Struggling to stay on his knees with how bad the invasive and oppressive pain is, Fuutarou, with one hand over his open, festering wound, has to support himself from collapsing entirely with his other hand against the stage floor, and as he looks up with labored breath and blurring vision, he is just about able to make out the sight of five girls whose bodies he saw slumped on the first row of pews before him just a moment ago. Like marionettes that are barely attached to their strings, they awkwardly stumble forward to stand over the ailing groom and stare down at him with their sickly colored eyes, and they continue to do so as the last of Fuutarou's strength swiftly leaves him like the black blood gushing from his side, causing his left elbow to buckle and forcing the rest of his body to collapse into a quickly growing pool of his own black blood.

* * *

The throbbing pain in his right side wakes up Uesugi Fuutarou for real this time, and he jerks suddenly to his right, rolling off his thin blanket on the hard floor, clutching at his right side. His body suffering a bout of micro-trembles, Fuutarou waits patiently for the pain to subside before sitting up on his blanket to check the condition of his wounds.

Nothing is wrong with them; just some aftershock pains that his body must have been experiencing while getting his liver to heal from the wound he's taken from Shirazumi Rio the other night. The cuts on his arms and chest are just about fully healed, and Fuutarou has taken the liberty to erase the scars from his arms so that he won't attract unnecessary attention to himself; it's rather easy to remember someone if they happen to be walking around with their arms filled with cuts and scars. He could perform magical surgery on himself to hasten the healing process, but that would mean having to use precious magical resources in order to do that when he'd rather not. Of course, he could always operate on himself without any such resources, but while Uesugi can tolerate a good deal of pain, he'd rather not find out how much _that _would hurt. His name isn't Leonid Rogozov, he knows that much. The only supplies he used the other night when he and Itsuki had to stop by the hospital were some disinfectants in case Rio's knife was dirty and magic ointment to counteract any potential poisons or minor-level curses that could have been applied at the time of injury; everything else he's treated himself with his own magical stitching, though the hospital did provide the shelter he needed to be able to do so safely.

So the most he's been able to do is keep himself isolated to focus on recovery. He still goes to school, of course, but that's only to keep up appearances so that Itsuki and the rest of the quintuplets don't realize that he's having a hard time. The silver lining to his situation is that he's also been able to wound Rio very heavily, so Uesugi can take the risk of taking these few days off leading up to their midterms from having to keep watch over the city at night, because Rio's probably forced to recuperate as well. And so far, judging from the lack of incidents this week, it's working out this way.

The room is eerily quiet; Fuutarou can only hear himself breathe. But picking up his phone that is charging against the wall next to him and checking its digital clock, the injured mage realizes that it's just about time for him to head out anyway, despite the fact that the sun hasn't even risen at all yet, so he gets up to prepare for the day. Today is the day of the overnight cram session that he told the girls they'd have the day right before midterms, so he grabs his messenger bag and fishes out a stack of papers, specifically worksheets that he's made for the girls to do during their cram session tonight, and checks them over to ensure their quality. Once that's done, he puts the sheets back into his bag, checks that his bag has the reference books and other study materials that he intends to use to have the girls study with for tonight, and closes his bag back up and carries it over to the door before doubling back and fixing himself a little breakfast consisting of a small bowl of old white rice sprinkled with a few dashes of nori komi furikake and a banana.

As soon as breakfast is done, Fuutarou washes his dish, disposes of his banana peel properly, and picks up his messenger bag to head out. He briefly contemplates taking a shower before leaving, but he figures that Ichika or one of the girls will force him to take a shower before they go to sleep tonight anyway, regardless of whether or not he's already taken one at his own place, so Fuutarou locks the door behind him and climbs down the stairs to travel the dark roads that are now just barely beginning to receive the fledgling rays of the sun for the day.

Since he plans on taking a quick nap when he reaches his classroom, Fuutarou briefly runs a few thoughts through his head in consideration of his situation while walking through the city to get to school. Shirazumi Rio fits the description of Ebata-san's murderer well enough for him to assume that he is in fact the one who's putting targets on the quintuplets' backs; the fact that he somehow knew one of the quintuplets' names directly, Nino, is pretty convincing evidence of that, though he still wonders to himself why Rio got Itsuki's name confused with Nino. He doesn't seem to come off as the most levelheaded fellow, so maybe he's got a harder time than he does differentiating the quintuplets, or maybe he just doesn't care about whom he gets his hands on.

Either way, his duel against him was a boon of information that he needed greatly in order to advance his assignment, because now Uesugi knows what his target looks like, how he fights, how he talks, and what he's capable of doing. Rio is predominantly a knife user who prefers to fight up close and personal but brings a savage, wild edge to his fighting style; that, and his ability to deliver ranged knife attacks using his runes extends his attack range significantly, which adds to his overall danger. Uesugi knows that Rio is indeed going after the quintuplets, and that he probably knows them by name, if he already knows Nino's, but he clearly can't tell them apart and, thankfully, he doesn't know where they live.

But as their fight the other night showed, while Uesugi is less skilled overall than Rio is at knifefighting, in terms of overall fighting ability, he is confident that he can beat Rio if there are no restrictions to hold him back, like enclosed space or a potential hostage situation. While Rio's ranged knife attacks are dangerous, he can parry them with perfect timing on his blocks, as the cut he got as a result of one such parry on the back of his hand shows - and the one that struck his liver too, at that. And Rio clearly does not know how to deal with a long melee weapon like a naginata that Fuutarou used against him for the final segment of their confrontation, an advantage that Fuutarou will surely keep in mind for the next time they meet. All this, for the price of an injured liver and a handful of cuts - not a bad price, he supposes. The young mage has certainly paid more for less in the past...

However, he still doesn't know what Rio is up to exactly. Sure, he's probably got the confirmation he wanted that Rio is targeting the Nakano quintuplets, but he still doesn't know why. Their kidnapping attempt from a month and a half ago and the existence of liquid Heisei, especially now that he's seen what their effects are firsthand, indicate that Rio may intend to use the quintuplets as test subjects for that new liquid Heisei drug, a notion that he even pitched himself to Ichika during their Golden Week vacation to Honolulu, but then Fuutarou still has to keep asking why: if that's what Rio is up to, then why does he want to test it out on the _quintuplets _in particular? Just because they're quintuplets? If that's the case, then Rio would have an easier time just looking for twins or something in the city and kidnapping them to test out his drugs if identical siblings is what he's looking for. There's something else that he wants, something more that would explain why he's going after the girls in particular.

Uesugi also still doesn't know what Rio's involvement exactly is in the drug black market that's been raging in the city's underground recently. How much of it is because of him? How much of it does he control? What's his influence on the rest of the drug rings in the city? Clearly he's strong enough or influential enough to be able to hire other gangs to do some of his dirty work for him, and he probably even has his own little gang running around the city as well, judging by the stuff that those gangsters he tested out the liquid Heisei samples on said back then...assuming it's Rio they were working for. He would've liked to beat some of the answers he's looking for out of Rio, but Itsuki unfortunately called the police on them that broke up their fight, and while he _did _say to Itsuki that he wasn't angry at her because of it...he's a _little _bit annoyed by that.

Taking a deep sigh, Fuutarou clears his mind and fishes out his headphones, this time from his storage rune since his messenger bag is pretty full with papers and books at the moment, and hooks it up to his phone to put on some city lofi to vibe out on the rest of his way to school. He's got a long night ahead of him, so it's probably not the best idea to beat himself up mentally with questions like this when midterms is the next big obstacle that he and the girls have on their plates right now.

The young tutor enters campus grounds just as the clock strikes six and makes his way over to his homeroom, being the first one there as usual and easing down into his chair to rest. Putting his head down on his arms on his desk, Fuutarou feels a wave of uncomfortable deja vu wash over him. Here's to hoping he doesn't get that same dream again...

Barely does he put his head down does he sense someone enter the classroom with him, a lone person, who opens the door loudly but closes it quietly after himself or herself. Not only does the person see Fuutarou sleeping in the middle of the classroom, but they're deliberately trying to not wake him up, and after putting their backpack or bag down at one of the desks in the back of the classroom, they approach him slowly from behind. Fuutarou deduces that it's one of the quintuplets, but given that it's still just past six in the morning and class won't start until two hours from now, and as far as he knows none of the quintuplets have any zero period classes or club obligations, so which one of the quintuplets is this? Who among them would have a reason to be at school so early?

He gets the answer surprisingly easily, because the quintuplet whispers to him softly,

"...Uesugi-saaaan...?"

Huh...it probably makes sense that it's Yotsuba. Ichika would never be up this early, given that her sisters always wake her up to go to school; Nino would be up, since she's known as an early riser, but she'd be at home making breakfast for everyone. Miku maybe? But she doesn't have a reason to be at school this early; the same could probably be said of Itsuki. Yotsuba makes the most sense in hindsight, given how heavily involved she is with a whole ton of clubs around school, so there ought to be a time when one of them asks her to come to school early before classes start to have her help them out with something.

But still, _this _early, at barely past six? Even Yotsuba shouldn't have a reason to be here so early. Has she been acting funny lately? Fuutarou wracks his brain silently, digging through his somewhat hazy memories of the last two days, but he can't seem to find anything that would explain Yotsuba's presence here at school.

Maybe the answer lies within the person in question.

So Fuutarou pretends to be asleep to see what Yotsuba does; admittedly he'd be able to do this better if he weren't planning on getting some extra sleep here in the classroom before class starts; he was planning on actually paying attention in class for their midterm reviews so that he can adjust the lessons he'll administer to the quintuplets later tonight, and his injured liver certainly isn't doing him any favors. Still, he maintains his vigil through his exhaustion, waiting for Yotsuba to make a move while he continues to feign sleep.

Slowly, he hears Yotsuba's footsteps inch closer and closer to him...and then suddenly step away. Yotsuba grunts a little, and it sounds like she's lifted up a desk nearby and sets it down next to Fuutarou's so that she can seat herself there. Finally, the fourth quintuplet eases her own head down gently on Uesugi's right arm, making sure not to wake him or make his arm uncomfortable by restricting its blood flow.

"Uesugi-san...thank you for keeping Itsuki safe the other night."

Fuutarou's heart sinks hard for the first time in ages. It's funny how dangerous situations like his fight against Shirazuki Rio and having his liver pierced by a knife doesn't intimidate him or make him queasy anymore, but a girl thanking him does. Regardless, how the hell does Yotsuba know about what happened earlier this week between him and her younger sister? He even took Itsuki aside for a moment after class before lunch yesterday to double-check that she didn't go blabbing about it to her sisters, for the main reason that he doesn't want Miku or Ichika getting worried over him for sustaining even _more _injuries since the last time he'd been over at their house for tutoring, and Itsuki swore that she didn't spill the beans to any of her siblings. He'll have to take Itsuki aside later and have her tell him the truth...at least it seems like only Yotsuba knows about it, given how secretive she's behaving at the moment, and Yotsuba is far from the worst quintuplet who could also know about it -

"I don't know what happened that night...but I'm sure it was because you were protecting her."

...well, there's his answer. Perhaps Itsuki is telling him the truth after all.

Yotsuba falls quiet for a few more calm moments, and then Fuutarou feels the weight of her head pull up and away from his right elbow.

Then, he feels her lips brush ever so gently against his cheek. Because of how his head is positioned on his crossed arms on his desk, she can only easily reach the far rear of his right cheek with her lips, where his sideburns would start forming if he had any, but the positioning of her own body and the movement of her weight according to Fuutarou's magical senses all indicate that Yotsuba has, in fact, just given him the world's softest kiss.

"...thank you, Uesugi-san. You've always been looking after us...always..."

...always?

At the worst possible moment, the wound in his liver flares up with excruciating pain again. While it isn't nearly as bad as the first time it's happened today, it's still enough to cause Fuutarou to inhale sharply through his nostrils and hold his breath in a strained manner to counteract the pain that has not once been treated with painkillers of any kind thus far. He can't exactly pretend to still be asleep after this, so Fuutarou heaves a deep sigh and slowly pulls his head off the desk and sits up slowly; he does still pretend to have just woken up, rubbing his eyes and yawning greatly to sell the impression as best he can, and with how Yotsuba has reacted, backing away quickly with a sudden blush in her cheeks, watching her tutor and classmate get up, it seems like he's done a good enough job.

"Mnnn...tsk, ouch..." Fuutarou inhales slowly, letting the pain permeate tolerably throughout his abdomen before exhaling patiently again. "Oh...it's you, Yotsuba. Mornin'..."

"G-G-G-Good morning!" Yotsuba stammers heavily; given what she's just done, this is understandable. "I-I-I-I wasn't doing anything suspicious, I swear!"

"Suspicious...?" Pretending not to know what she's talking about, Fuutarou does look down to note the very close proximity to which Yotsuba has brought the neighboring desk over. "...well, last time I checked, I didn't have a desk sitting literally right next to me..."

Her muscles fueled by pure embarrassment, Yotsuba quickly clambers to pull the desk away, back to its original spot, but all she ends up doing is scootching the desk over and causing the chair's feet to screech against the hard floor loudly. Fuutarou even pretends to wince at the loud noise, even though his senses are well warmed by this point, by holding his hands over his ears.

"What're you doing so early at school, anyway?" Fuutarou asks calmly, making his voice sound huskier than it is to maintain his guise of just having woken up, which is easier than usual to do thanks to the pain from his deep wound that he's had to deal with for the past two days.

"U-Uhhhh...nothing...nothing in...particular...!" the usually cheerful and genki quintuplet shakes her head quickly, sounding much meeker than usual; she's going to start seeming like Miku at the rate she's going. The quintuplet leans backwards slowly, corresponding to the slight lean that Fuutarou hits her back with when he narrows his eyes at her.

"Hmmm...suspicious," he concludes.

"I-It's not suspicious! I just, um, decided to come early to school today! Aha, ahaha ~ !"

"But Yotsuba, the only reason why you'd be here at school early on your own is if you have club obligations or because you're here to help around school with someone or something. And so because of that, you'd be somewhere else right now rather than be here at homeroom with me, so that must mean that you don't actually have any club obligations or promises to help anyone out today. Am I wrong?"

Yotsuba immediately hangs her head, very visibly depressed at the fact that Fuutarou is able to dig underneath her lie and disintegrate it so effortlessly.

"Uesugi-san, has anyone told you that you're just too freakin' smart sometimes?" she pouts softly, her blue eyes still glued to the floor near her feet and her green hair ribbon drooping as it's prone to do whenever its owner gets crestfallen like this.

"No one needs to tell me that. I live every day of my life knowing how smart I am, and how annoying that must be to everyone around me, including myself."

"...you annoy yourself with how smart you are? Is that some kind of smart person joke that I'm too dumb to understand, Uesugi-san?"

"Er...well, it's not that dumb people _can't _understand it, it's just...I think you can understand what I was trying to get at with that for yourself."

"But I just said that I'm too dumb to understand it."

"...you're not dumb, though?"

At this, Yotsuba glances up at her tutor and hits him with a weak smile.

"Aha, you're funny, Uesugi-san. That's a joke even I can understand."

"...that wasn't a joke, though."

Yotsuba's pathetic attempt at an awkward chuckle is extinguished swiftly, never having stood a chance against Fuutarou's cold bluntness.

"Uesugi-san," she murmurs, her gaze having dropped back down again, "you don't need to sugarcoat things for me. I'm well aware of how I'm the one who consistently scores the lowest on the practice tests you've given us lately, during the last few times you tutored us."

"Maybe, yeah. But I wasn't talking about your academics, necessarily."

Yotsuba blinks a few times at Fuutarou as he shakes his head briefly, rubbing his right temple. He's not doing this to keep up his whole "I just woke up" impression, this is genuinely to clear his head of the sleepiness that'd been sinking into his head during the time he'd kept quiet when Yotsuba first entered the classroom.

"...Uesugi-san isn't talking about academics or test scores while using the word 'dumb'? Uesugi-san, are you sick or something, by chance?"

"Hm...not sick, but..."

Debating briefly whether or not he should let Yotsuba know about his new wounds, against his better judgment, he decides to let her know about them. Yotsuba probably came out here to school with the intention of seeing him, because why else would she come straight to homeroom where she knows only one other person would probably be at this hour. That, and given that he'll be heading over with the rest of the quintuplets to their penthouse again for the night, they're bound to find out sooner or later.

So he lifts up his clean white dress shirt down by his right side, and since Yotsuba is already sitting to his right, he conveniently doesn't have to angle his body for her to get a good angle on the bandages covering new magical stitches that he's sewn to close the wound.

Surprisingly, Yotsuba doesn't react strongly to the sight of his new wound. She just has an expression that seems to imply that Fuutarou has merely confirmed her fears, and it's frankly a bit of a painful expression that even Fuutarou himself feels.

"The other night when Itsuki was out late...you and the others probably could figure that one out on your own, but...I ran into some trouble in the city. Itsuki happened to walk right into it while she was on her way home from the library, so I had to keep her safe from the crossfire," Fuutarou explains, pulling down his shirt again. "Been dealing with this for the past two days as a result...oh, and try not to tell the others if you can. Though I'm sure they'll figure out about it on their own at some point..."

Just like before, Yotsuba reacts by...not reacting at first, and it takes her a few moments before she gets up, pulls the desk behind Fuutarou aside, and stands behind him so that she can put her arms around him, resting her forehead against the back of his head.

"...somethin' wrong?" Fuutarou asks his student quietly, and he feels her face move up and down against the back of his hair. Maybe he really _should _have taken that morning shower before coming to school...

"There's a question that I can't seem to answer on my own, Uesugi-sensei," she murmurs softly; her breath tickles the hairs on Fuutarou's nape a little. "I don't understand why you go so far to keep us safe. Are we...are we _that _important to you?"

Fuutarou snorts a little, but not in a way that implies ridicule.

"I can't exactly say 'no' to a question like that, can I?" he points out. "Unless I want to go out of my way to look like the biggest asshole in the city."

"But...Uesugi-san, hear me out, please?"

"Sure."

"You're a smart person, and you always do things so efficiently whenever you can. I've only seen you fight once before...but even then, you looked so strong and skilled. So for you to come back with injuries like this...maybe I'm overthinking this, but...it feels like to me, you're putting so much more effort into your work in protecting us than you need to."

"Mmnn, I think you're giving me too much credit. I'm bound to run into strong enemies, you know, it's just part of the job. I was only able to fight those bad guys back at the warehouse like that because none of them were mages like me, just normal gangsters who think they know how to fight but don't really stand a chance against an actual mage. The guy I fought two days ago was a mage like me...and he was strong. I think he's the guy who got me that cut on my chest that Nino told you lot about from before, too. So this guy's no joke, I have to take him seriously."

"...so I _am _overthinking this?"

"Yeah, little bit." Fuutarou slowly raises his hand to rest it comfortingly on Yotsuba's left arm over his left breast. The touch of her soft skin, toughened from the combination of years of physical activity and her relative lack of skin care product usage compared to some of her sisters, graces his fingers...as Fuutarou's eyes flash with the memory of the jarring dream he had before waking up this morning. "But like I said before, I don't think you're dumb. This is what I meant from before, about you when it comes to things like this."

Yotsuba can't help but to give a small smile. "Yeah, but if only it could help me actually pass my tests, then that'd be great, haha."

"We'll work on that tonight as best we can, don't worry."

The tutor and student remain like this for a few minutes in mutual silence as the sun's rays grow stronger and stronger inside the classroom.

"...do you like it when I do this, Uesugi-san...?" Yotsuba asks softly, breaking that mutual silence on her own.

"...I don't particularly mind."

"Ehehe...I thought you would."

"Would I?"

"Well, back when we first got to know you, you seemed like the kind of person who wouldn't like it when people get all close to you. Didn't you even say at one point to us that we shouldn't have any need for relationships or stuff like that during high school because it's pointless or something?"

"Did I? I don't quite remember...but still, you've got a point."

"Then how about now? What makes you let me hug you like this?"

Fuutarou simply shrugs. "I'm tired right now, I guess. Need some more sleep, to be honest."

"...you shouldn't have come to school today, then. You could've texted Ichika and told her to get the review material for you."

"Yeah, I could have..."

"...but you didn't."

"Seems like it. Admittedly I'm not in a state to be making good judgment calls right now..."

Yotsuba giggles lightly. "Uesugi-san, you dummy. Ehehe..."

"Hmph. Enjoy your one chance to call me an idiot, Yotsuba...I'll remember it."

"Kyaaaa, ahahaha ~ Uesugi-san has a grudge against me now, oh no ~ "

"Heh, I'm gonna haunt you and put a curse on you."

"Who are you, Takeo-san?"

"Okay, let's not get too crazy now."

The two classmates share another laugh together, but Yotsuba continues to stick close to her tutor.

"By the way, you still haven't answered my question from earlier, about why you came to school so early," Fuutarou reminds her.

"I did! I said there's no particular reason!"

"But I said that you're probably lying. And we all know that you're the worst among you quints at lying."

"I-I'm not! Itsuki is really bad at lying too!"

"Well, now you're just trying to dodge the question."

Yotsuba gives the back of Fuutarou's head a big pout that he cannot see, as much as he'd like to. He can at least _hear _it, with the cute grumbles she makes with her pursed lips. But the grumbles come to pass, and Fuutarou waits patiently for Yotsuba to answer him for real.

"...I came to school to see you, Uesugi-san," Yotsuba mumbles, bordering on flat-out whispering. Her words drop onto Fuutarou's nape and crawl around his neck to reach his ears. "It's like you said...I wouldn't be here otherwise unless it was for some kind of obligation. I _did _have to lie to my sisters that I had something come up in the morning that I needed to attend to just for today, so that's why I came to school by myself. And I figured you'd be here already..."

"Mhm. And what's the occasion?"

"Er - "

Yotsuba hesitates, realizing that Fuutarou was sleeping when she spoke her first words to him this morning, and the memory causes her blush to resurface slowly as she struggles to keep her feelings under control.

"...I just wanted to make sure that you were okay," she answers finally, having given herself another few moments to convey her thoughts with clarity. "When you texted Ichika to tell the rest of us not to talk about whatever happened the other night with Itsuki, we figured it was because you were keeping her safe. And the past two days you weren't looking so good here at school...and I guess now I know why."

"So you came out here alone to check up on me?"

Yotsuba nods, despite the fact that her tutor can't see her do so.

"Problem with that is...it's a bit dangerous to be walking around the city by yourself during a time like this. Who knows what could've happened to you when I had a hole in my liver two days ago..."

"Ah..." Yotsuba grows uncomfortable again. "...sorry."

Fuutarou blinks heavily; he's finally reaching the end of his rope in trying to stave off his exhaustion, and his eyelids feel quite sluggish as a result.

"Mmm...but I still appreciate the sentiment. As a rule of thumb...if you find me at school here, that means I'm fine. Probably..."

Leaning his head back, Fuutarou closes his eyes and rests it against Yotsuba's bosom.

"I'd meant to get some more sleep here before class started...since you're here, can I ask you to wake me up when class starts?" he sighs lightly.

"Like I said, you should've really stayed at home today..." Yotsuba pouts a little, but it quickly gives way to a happy little smile, full of warmth and relief. "...but of course, Uesugi-san. By the way, you didn't take a shower recently, did you?"

"Shit...I was _just _thinking that to myself, too..."

The two of them break out into a few last chuckles and giggles before Fuutarou lets himself drift off to sleep like he'd intended to, and Yotsuba remains as she is, leaning down behind her tutor's desk, nestling his head on top of her chest. She makes a mental note to herself to put Fuutarou down on his desk like he usually sleeps in class once their classmates start filing in, but until then, she has about an entire half an hour all to herself to spend with her classmate and friend.

But is this really okay for her to do?

Looking straight down into the dark depths of Uesugi-san's unshowered black hair, Yotsuba feels like she's looking into a mirror. Was it right for her to come to school all on her own, just for the sake of being with Uesugi-san? She even premeditated this, having built up the courage to tell a blatant lie to her sisters about having some kind of obligation at school that she said she needed to keep for today before school and then executing this impromptu plan of hers.

Does she have the right to be so selfish?

The answer is no. No, she doesn't. What she is doing is very bad. She shouldn't feel this way for a boy who is their tutor; not just her own, but also that of her sisters. She shouldn't feel this way for a classmate whose work is dangerous and incurs risks of injury like he's demonstrated the past two weeks, or perhaps even worse; it would go against what he'd want, too, as he's the type of person who wouldn't want more people worrying about him than necessary. The only people who would have that right would be his own family, his dad and Raiha-chan.

That's right...Uesugi-san belongs to everyone, not just her. He's not being contracted to tutor just one of them quintuplets; he's committed to tutoring all five of them...protecting all five of them. The memories that they've had so far ever since they first met this school year, from the failed dynamic entry he tried pulling off on them to the last overnight study session he held at their penthouse...while admittedly their time together so far has been relatively short, Yotsuba already finds herself cherishing every last one of them. And what makes her the absolute happiest is the memory of that last overnight study session, when all five of the quintuplets convened to study together...just like they used to when they were younger. And best of all, Uesugi-san was there too with them...teaching them, talking with them, joking and laughing with them...being with them. And so this ensuing happiness she derives from these memories should mean that for the sake of the quintuplets as a whole, things ought to remain how they are; the status quo must be maintained.

But it's not. The very act of coming to school this morning, and with the intention of seeing Uesugi-san alone at that, threatens to shatter that month-and-a-half long status quo. Why? Why did she feel so compelled to do this? It wasn't like...an overflowing desire to do something like this; it wasn't as if she was trembling and giddy while coming to school this morning because she just couldn't wait to see her tutor. As a matter of fact, she was very calm the past two days, even when she premeditated her plan of meeting Uesugi-san alone today...maybe a bit _too _calm. But the fact of the matter is that she still let her feelings towards Uesugi-san drive her to go out of her way to do something she otherwise wouldn't; she even told a smooth lie to her sisters in order to get here when she's normally supposed to be the worst one among the Nakano quints at lying. So why? Why does she -

\- oh, that's right. This isn't a test; it's not a pop quiz. The answer is actually...very simple. So simple, even Yotsuba knows what it is in a heartbeat.

Of course she would. Out of all her sisters, she's the one who would know...who _should _know.

Melancholic nostalgia and sorrow washes over her, causing her to pull her arms inwards against Fuutarou's sleeping chest a little bit more tightly. No...it's not _her _fault that the status quo can't be maintained. Because if she thinks about it, she would have been totally okay with keeping things as they have been...Uesugi-san coming over to tutor them everyday, hanging out with them at school. No, this isn't her fault. That would have to lie with her sisters, the two who've been studying with her for the past month and a half, because over this period of time, Yotsuba has seen both of them change in the way they behave towards and treat their tutor.

Miku, who'd grown reserved, cold, and brooding in recent years, was finally able to start looking like a little bit like how she was in their younger years, something she'd never once done for anyone else they'd known. Ichika, who, despite Uesugi-san not being her type at all by her own self-admission, has gone out of her way to talk with him and banter with him in a way she'd only do with people she considers her close friends.

Yotsuba can tell. As someone who already had feelings for Uesugi-san from the beginning, she can tell. Even if Miku doesn't say it herself, she can tell. Even if Ichika denies it if she asks, she can tell. They, too, are developing feelings for him. She may not know their reasons, and perhaps their reasoning is irrelevant when it comes to a situation involving love, but the signs, at least to Yotsuba, are unmistakable.

At first, Yotsuba didn't act on this. Because neither Miku and definitely not Ichika have demonstrated any explicit sign of clear intimacy towards Uesugi-san, Yotsuba doesn't know exactly when they began to like Uesugi-san as more than just a friend, and as such she can't point to any clear incident that marks the beginning of her knowledge of such. All she knows is that at some point, she became privy to the fact that two of her sisters, understandably the ones who've been studying with her and Uesugi-san for all this time, now harbor feelings similar to her own in regards to the boy they call their classmate and tutor. Yotsuba didn't act on this knowledge like she has today because she didn't take it very seriously at first. She remembers feeling glad that Uesugi-san is being valued by her sisters, just as much as she does, that the boy she first met and fell in love with six years ago in Kyoto was finally getting his just due for his qualities of being a good friend and a caring person, but then it developed an edge of melancholy as she was forced to recognize that the feelings her sisters have for him are more than what mere friends should have for each other.

Mom used to tell them all the time, didn't she?

If one of you makes a mistake, overcome it together.

If one of you is happy, share it with everyone.

Joy.

Anger.

Sorrow.

Love.

Life.

You must share it among the five of you...in five equal parts.

For they are identical quintuplets - born of one entity that happened to split itself in five to give life to all of them.

All for one, one for all.

Naturally, then...this means that Yotsuba is not special. She cannot be special. She cannot treat herself as anything special. She _is _nothing special. And not only that, but the only reason why she's even here, the sole reason why everything that has happened up until now, while admittedly not much _has _happened yet, has culminated to this brief, fleeting moment of quiet happiness that she has all to herself...just her and the boy she loves...is because of her sisters, because of the sacrifices _they _had to make because of _her_. Maybe she could have still met Uesugi-san even if her sisters chose not to make those sacrifices, since her Dad would probably have hired him as their tutor regardless in hindsight, but she's at least certain that things would have not happened in such a way that she is able to experience the feelings that she does now.

Then if she knows she is nothing special and that she shouldn't try to behave as such, why is she here? What is she doing right now, embracing Uesugi-san as he gets some much-needed sleep? She shouldn't be doing this; this isn't fair to everyone else, to Miku or Ichika. For all her thoughts on how those two were the ones to start breaking the status quo, Yotsuba is the one tearing it apart beyond repair. And that would make her a hypocrite, a deceiver...a trickster, and a liar. And her whole reason why she can't lie very well is because she hates the feeling of deceiving people.

These feelings, these memories...while their number is not many, that's perhaps for the better, for she needs to get rid of them.

She _must _get rid of them.

So then...why _can't _she?

She's usually very good at doing so. Smiling when she's not supposed to, laughing when she doesn't feel the urge to. All those clubs that she's been a part of throughout middle school, all the people she's known, all the friends she's made, and all the memories she's created with all the above - she's been able to easily discard them all whenever the situation dictated it. She used to feel bad about it, but she's done this so many times that she doesn't bat an eyelash at doing it again. All things considered, discarding the feelings she has for a single boy should be among the easier things she can do, especially one who wouldn't care what happens either way if he knew about it. It's something even Uesugi-san would want.

But she can't. She just can't. As much as she repeats to herself in her mind over and over as she clenches her hands in front of Uesugi-san's chest that she must let go of the boy she has in her arms, her arms refuse to budge.

I can't.

Not yet.

I can't.

Not yet.

Because in her arms right now...is someone whom she considers her friend. A friend who is tired, injured, poor, and probably hungry. Scratch that, _definitely _hungry, if his growling stomach is any indication. A friend whose alternate life as a mage, working to keep the city safe for her and her sisters, she knew nothing about until a month and a half ago, and probably would have continued to be ignorant of if that incident never happened. A friend who's probably been living this brutal, strenuous life for longer than she can imagine, enduring pain and stress that she can't imagine. If she never had an idea about Uesugi-san's work as a mage, she probably wouldn't feel this way. If she were never privy to the injuries he's had to take, the life he must lead...maybe she'd actually be able to toss aside all the feelings and memories she's had of him, shared with him.

If she'd never known just how much of a caring person Uesugi Fuutarou really is, Nakano Yotsuba would be able to let it all go and let him fall into the bottomless darkness of her discarded memories, where he'd turn into just another blackened piece of regret for her to look back on and feel sad about for the rest of her life.

No...she's not doing this because she wants to feel special, because she really doesn't. She doesn't deserve to have feelings for someone like Uesugi-san, not when she couldn't even keep the promise the two of them had made to each other back in Kyoto, six years ago, the promise to study hard for the sake of growing up and being able to take care of their families through their academic success. While she's never forgotten it herself, Yotsuba has never produced the results to prove it. She, who shortly after her fateful meeting with Uesugi-san at Kyoto enjoyed a sudden shift in socioeconomic status thanks to her dad, was then able to live a life of comfort, privilege, and prestige, and yet she still could not uphold the promise she made to that boy she fell in love with when she was the one between the two of them who should have. And the boy who also made the same promise to her, despite all the odds that he must've faced over the years, was the one who succeeded when he probably wasn't expected to. Even when he doesn't seem to recognize her from six years ago, which can be excused due to the quintuplets' identical natures back then, Uesugi-san not only remembered their promise, but he also became someone who could do more than take care of just his own family, but take care of _hers_, too.

Yeah, Yotsuba thinks to herself. She really is nothing special. She's stupid, ditzy, loud, and incorrigibly stupid. Did she say stupid twice? Because that's how stupid she is. Compared to the boy in her arms right now, even being the breast pillow on which his head rests is too good for her. Miku is better deserving of being in her place right now, or maybe Ichika, one of those two. Itsuki as well...and, hell, maybe even Nino, if she'd even think about doing this in the first place. Anyone else, any other one of her sisters...but not her.

And yet, she cannot pull herself away, because this isn't for herself that she's doing this. This has nothing to do with her...well, not as much as it might seem.

Because if only for a moment, one small, fictional moment in their imaginary little corner of the world, she wants the boy she loves to feel safe.

If for a moment, she can have another use for her arms that have done nothing but thrown almost everything they've ever held away...


	39. A Warm Feeling

**A/N**

**Phospor: Thanks for the kind words. I'm hoping that maybe the second season of the anime will give the fanfic scene here some more exposure once it comes out later this year, but we'll see what happens. As for how I'm able to put out chapters like this, it's a combination of eight years' worth of fanfic writing experience, all the failures and lessons that they've brought with them, and a solid idea of where I want this fic to go - and of course, plenty of love for the source material, especially for all of the quintuplets, helps a little as motivation to write, I think.**

**As for why Fuutarou uses playing cards as a weapon, again with the issue of the lack of firearms that I addressed two chapters ago, this was something that I feel would have been discussed at some point in a future chapter but since I don't know when that time will come, I'll address what I can here. On the contrary, for him I would imagine that playing cards _are _on the easier side of things to obtain. The city that Fuutarou is living in, in my own headcanon, is a rapidly expanding and modernizing city, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for there to be a casino or two in the city. Casinos either sell, give away, or incinerate the playing cards they've retired from their tables, hence providing a supply of playing cards for Fuutarou to use as part of his arsenal.  
**

**I do agree with you that items with flat surfaces synergize very well with runes; for someone like Fuutarou who relies on runes to perform spells and the like, being able to rely on something like cards that are very easy to work with is critical, especially because as a young mage, he doesn't have that much experience applying his magecraft and runecraft in more advanced ways, and he certainly can't risk experimenting in high-pressure scenarios. The fact that casino playing cards are plastic instead of paper also helps, since they're naturally sturdier and will maintain structural integrity longer than paper ones will, so Fuutarou doesn't need to use as powerful Reinforcement spells on them to ensure their lethality.**

**Again, I'll explore this aspect of Fuutarou's character in further detail if I can in the story proper when I feel the time is right. If I don't end up forgetting, which unfortunately happens more times than I care to admit.  
**

* * *

"Aaaaaand we're done ~ !"

Being the last one to finish, Yotsuba presents her English practice test to her tutor, with the rest of her sisters who all finished before her waiting on her. Since Fuutarou requested that everyone stay quiet for the sake of showing courtesy to everyone else who aren't done with their tests yet, Ichika and Nino are both on their phones, while Miku has her headphones in listening to music at a low volume and Itsuki glues her eyes to the edge of the glass table where she customarily sits during their group study sessions like tonight, reviewing the answers she's put on her own test in her head - however many of them that she can remember by this point.

The young tutor takes the paper from Yotsuba and groups it with the rest of the quintuplets' practice test sheets, having waited for everyone to be done so that he can grade it together; this is to prevent the girls from seeing how well (or poorly) they did so that they don't have reactions that will distract anyone else still taking their tests, and of course to prevent those still taking their tests from accidentally (or purposely) getting eyefuls of correct answers that they shouldn't.

Now that he's armed with all five practice tests, Fuutarou places them on the glass table that he's sitting at with his students, spreads them out before him, and begins grading with his usual red pen. Now that Yotsuba's done and Uesugi is beginning to grade their tests, the girls begin to pay attention, looking up from the table or their phones to see their tutor get to work. Uesugi has no physical answer sheet because he already knows all the answers to each question flawlessly, and so he's able to grade one question and then compare the answers of all five tests together, marking questions with his red pen with answers that do not match a correct one. At an alarmingly frequent rate, Fuutarou has no correct answer to look for because none of the papers have it...not that this is much of a hindrance to his correction speed. The girls all express their varying degrees of reactions as the crisp sounds of a red pen tip clicking and rolling against papered glass repeat themselves many times as Fuutarou goes down each of the five papers all at the same time.

"Haha...something about Fuutarou-kun grading our tests is pretty satisfying to watch ~ " Ichika giggles softly, leaning her head over onto Nino's shoulder, who glances to her left for a moment before begrudgingly letting her do so.

"I know, right? We've seen him do this a lot by now, but it's so addicting watching him!" Yotsuba says cheerfully too.

"You're trying to tell me that it's addicting for you to watch yourself get terrible test scores? Give me a break, Yotsuba," Fuutarou sighs lightly, causing Yotsuba chuckle awkwardly at herself.

"Ahaha...you got me there..."

Itsuki is also keenly watching her tutor grade their tests as swiftly as the wind. "...it is still quite the sight for me," she admits, in light of her and Nino's recent admissions into the quintuplet study group. "How on earth are you able to grade our tests so well like this? And without an answer sheet, too..."

"Yeah, Itsuki's got a point. Won't _you _make a mistake grading our tests if you don't at least have an answer sheet on you? You're _that _sure that you know all the answers?" Nino points out to her working tutor.

"Ah, well, funny you mention that, Nino...that's the same thing I brought up back when he first started tutoring us, and, well..." Ichika giggles lightly again. "Let's just say that Fuutarou-kun knows what he's doing."

Clicking her tongue out of annoyance, Nino diverts her eyes back down to her new phone, whose purple bunny-ears cover Miku bought for her to go with it.

"If you're so smart, why do you even bother tutoring people like us? I'm sure you'd get paid a lot more if you go tutor at an actual educational institution of some kind, right? At least a cram school or something," she suggests reluctantly.

"Remember, Nino, I'm not normally a tutor, I don't go out of my way to use tutoring as a way to earn money," Fuutarou says, glancing briefly up at the second quintuplet before dunking his eyes back on their practice tests again. "Though, you _are _right, I _could _try to go teach part time at a cram school...in fact, I think I saw an ad in the newspaper or something for one in the city..."

"Okay, okay, we get it. Now you're just bragging."

Fuutarou pauses his grading for a few seconds to hit Nino with a quick, wide shrug before resuming it fluidly. He's just about done with it anyway, and after checking the last four questions, he swiftly counts the number of questions each of the quintuplets got right, since there are far less correct answers than incorrect, and marks the tallies up at the top.

"Ichika, 24...Nino, 39...Miku, 9...Yotsuba, 11...how the hell did you score higher than Miku...and Itsuki, 20," Fuutarou announces, handing each practice test back to its corresponding Nakano quintuplet.

The girls all groan in unison as they receive their tests back, viewing their respective scores with varying degrees of discomfort.

"All this studying and only Nino's still able to get a passing grade?" Ichika sighs dejectedly. "Nothing's changed, I guess, huh?"

"Hey, Ichika, don't make it sound like Fuutarou isn't doing a good enough job..." Miku murmurs loudly over to her eldest sister in her tutor's defense.

Ichika bolts up in slight alarm, shaking her head quickly in denial. "No, no, no, I - that's not what I meant. I didn't mean to make it sound like that..."

"The question of my own tutoring performance aside, I wouldn't say that _nothing's _changed," Uesugi says, reaching over for his messenger bag and, after rummaging through it for a moment, pulls out a small stack of old papers - the quintuplets' old practice tests that Fuutarou has had them take over the weeks, to be precise. Itsuki, who immediately recognizes what they are because she's able to see the red numbers on them more easily because of her angle, furrows her eyebrows at the sight.

"You have been keeping all of their practice tests up until now?" she asks, which incurs a slight glance from her tutor.

"Yeah. Shouldn't I?"

"Er..." Upon second thought, Itsuki realizes that she's asked a rather pointless question, and as such, she shrinks a little in her seat on the carpet. "I-I apologize, that...that was an odd question for me to ask. I was just surprised..."

"I kept them so that I can show you the progress that you've been making. Well, not so much you two - " Fuutarou points briefly at the second and fifth quintuplets. " - but everyone else. I mean, I gotta say...even with the scores you're all getting now, you all still show definite improvement, even in, what, the past seven weeks that I've been tutoring you guys?"

Fuutarou spreads the practice sheets out on the tables before the girls to show them.

"So it's not like _nothing's _changed," the young tutor shrugs at Ichika, who smiles back in slight amusement.

"Looks like it. I stand corrected, Uesugi-sensei," Ichika raises a hand to snap off a casual two-finger salute at her tutor.

"Even still, it's not quite enough...considering midterms is literally tomorrow," Nino mutters, taking a look at all the scores and her sisters' progressions for herself. "And I'm sure I'll be the same way for all my other subjects..."

With a deep sigh, Fuutarou raises a hand of his own behind his head to scratch his hair. "Yeah, and that's the problem. I don't mean to be so downer about this myself, but at this rate, all of you are probably only going to pass your strongest subjects each and that's it."

Miku's expression grows sharply worried, even more so than before when they got their initial scores back.

"Fuutarou, will Papa still...still fire you if we don't all pass?" she asks as Yotsuba leans over to part her bangs a little from completely obscuring her right eye from Fuutarou's view.

"He hasn't told me anything about calling off the condition, so I'll have to assume so, yeah."

An uneasy silence settles among the quintuplets.

"And the other practice tests we took today were similar stories to this, with all of us failing them except for the ones whose strongest subjects were being tested," Itsuki notes somberly.

"That's why you should've started studying with us right away, Itsuki," Miku says. "That way, you could've made so much more progress."

"Me? N-No..." Itsuki quickly shakes her head. "I don't think I would have...made any more progress than anyone else."

Miku starts pouting at Itsuki too. "_You're _not saying that it's because of Fuutarou not tutoring us well enough, is it?"

"No, no! I am suggesting nothing of the sort! Besides, I have only studied with Uesugi-kun a few times compared to the three of you, I cannot accurately speak of his tutoring ability, at least not as well as you three can."

"Well, even if you did have a professional tutor who knows what they're doing, the fact of the matter is that for you girls specifically, you all need way more than just six or seven weeks to really make solid progress; that's just my opinion," Uesugi inputs. "That's how bad of shape all of your grades are."

"Ah, Fuutarou-kun's doing it again," Ichika announces with her voice dragging a little. "He's bullying his poor students about how dumb they are."

"Well, it's still the truth, so..." Yotsuba shrugs with an uncomfortable grin of her own.

"Even still, this should be a time when he ought to be cheering us up, right? These poor girls, studying so hard and valiantly, yet unable to achieve the results that they so desperately need...times like these, Fuutarou-kun, you should try to do something to get our spirits up, you know?"

"Try doing something to get your spirits up? I'm a tutor, not a cheerleader," Fuutarou frowns over at her.

"C'mon, don't be like that. Look - everyone's tired, we ate dinner not that long ago so we're all probably gonna start getting our food comas pretty soon, and it doesn't help that all of us just flunked our English tests right now," Ichika points out to her tutor. "I'm not saying you should be a _cheerleader_, but..."

As she's talking, though, Ichika realizes that their tutor is gazing at her rather intently, and the look in his eyes isn't one of annoyance or doubt, but one of deep consideration. Even though she knows that Fuutarou is most likely taking her suggestion seriously, Ichika can't help but to avert her eyes a little - she can't help but feel a little shy knowing Fuutarou is giving her this kind of look, and she's not quite sure why she feels this way.

After a moment or two, by which point the rest of the quintuplets are also peering interestedly back at their tutor, wondering what he's thinking about, Fuutarou straightens his back in his seat on the carpet.

"...hm. I'm not confident that I can do that, but...it _is _already, what..." Fuutarou turns around to take at the big clock on the wall behind him. "...almost nine o'clock? And we still need to go over Language Arts and Mathematics before we go to sleep...so I can try a little something here..."

To the quintuplets' surprise, Fuutarou raises his hand again and snaps his fingers lightly, causing a small array of blue runes to appear around him whose sizes vary slightly. These runes are the size of small saucers, but they all have an English word written on each of them that slowly rotates in place within their respective runes like writing on a record disc.

"...uh, if your idea of cheering us up is to give us some kind of...weird new pop quiz to help us study English, then..." Ichika trails off awkwardly, just as confused as her sisters are at what Fuutarou is doing exactly as he raises his hands to each of the runes, checking them individually. As he does so, though, Nino, who eyes the runes for herself, reads the words in each of them. They are words such as "electric guitar", "bass guitar", "drums", "voice synthesizer", "audio mixer", and others. While she doesn't know what "voice synthesizer" is in Japanese, she does recognize the simpler words like "guitar" and "drums".

"You're gonna play a song for us or something? Laaaame, we can just listen to music on our own if we wanna," Nino groans a bit more obnoxiously loudly than she probably should.

"Admittedly I haven't done this in a while, so I might be a bit rusty. Honestly, if I'd known that there'd be a chance that I'd have to do this, I would've practiced up ahead of time..." Fuutarou murmurs, basically ignoring Nino's last remark. "But I'll try my best anyway."

"Practiced up? Wait...Fuutarou, you're not...?" Miku also sits up quickly, pulling her back off the front of the long couch behind her.

"Huh? Miku, do you know what he's doing?" Yotsuba asks with sharp curiosity, and her green hair ribbon also perks up along with its owner.

"Well...he, uh..."

Remembering the evening she spent with her tutor in Honolulu on the beachfront patio, Miku can't stop her cheeks from reddening with warmth, and she vocally disengages as she tries to hide her face with her hands, unable to finish her thought. Ichika, however, recalling that night and remembering that she heard some pleasant guitar being played from the patio area where Miku and Fuutarou should have been, pipes up with a guess, going off what Nino said:

"Fuutarou-kun, are you actually going to sing a song for us?"

Yotsuba and Itsuki both show marked expressions of surprise, turning to Fuutarou at the same time to confirm with him.

"U-Uesugi-san, you - you can _sing?!" _Yotsuba cries out first, naturally. "You don't seem like the type to!"

The quintuplets' tutor grimaces uncomfortably as well. "I _can_, yes. I would have rather kept this a dirty little secret of mine to myself, but since everyone's been studying and working hard, and since Ichika's right that you all might need a little extra push to keep studying for a bit longer, I'll embarrass myself in front of everyone for tonight."

"Oh my gosh, I was actually right," Ichika remarks, positively shocked that her little guess was actually right on the money. "Remember back when we used to sing and put on performances together at school? Itsuki, didn't you keep singing after the rest of us quit for like the first few months of middle school or something?"

At the mention of her singing experience, Itsuki, also blushing suddenly, clasps her hands over her ears.

"P-P-Please forget about all that! That was when - that was when I thought I was actually good at singing when I was not talented at all! Ooooh, even thinking about it makes me want to...ugh..."

"Aha, looks like she's still the same towards it..."

Miku, who's been watching Fuutarou tune his runes for past few minutes, sits on a question that she wants to ask him for the same amount of time before digging up the courage to ask it.

"Um...Fuutarou, was, um, singing...was that also something you had to do as part of your, uh, magework?"

"Yes and no; yes in the sense that I've worked with professional musicians who've hired me as their bodyguard when they stopped here in the city as part of their tours or whatever, and in exchange, and sometimes it'd involve me playing onstage with them to ensure their safety, if you can believe that. But no in the sense that I mainly decided to learn how to sing on my own. I do have to stay up pretty late at night, so it can get pretty boring sometimes. And since I like listening to music, I can just, y'know, sing along to whatever I'm listening to, I guess."

"Ehehe ~ Uesugi-san's just like the rest of us, singing along to our favorite songs ~ " Yotsuba giggles happily; she's quite relieved to hear that Fuutarou still finds the time to do something that isn't necessarily work-related.

"Doesn't mean that I'm any good at it, though."

"Oh, don't worry, _we'll _be the judge of that," Nino snickers deviously at her tutor, holding up her phone at him. "I'll be taking a leaf out of Ichika's book and record you the whole way, and you don't get a say in it."

Fuutarou shrugs. "Sure, go ahead. No one's gonna care for listening to an amateur like me."

"Sheesh! Talk about low self-esteem!" Rolling her eyes, Nino lowers her phone half-heartedly. "At least let me enjoy making fun of you!"

"Last time I checked, you didn't need the permission of the person you're trying to make fun of to do that."

"Ugh, just hurry up and embarrass yourself already so we can get over it and study and go to sleep!"

"Yeah, yeah...and we should be good to go."

Having finished tuning the last rune, Fuutarou lets it go and watches it float back up into its usual position around him. He then raises his right hand up to his array of runes, with his left hand up to his left ear, pressing his left index and middle fingers against his ear as though he's using an earpiece microphone, and the runes light up with stronger blue light. However, the quintuplets don't hear anything.

"Sorry, making sure that everything's working as they should. Like I said, I haven't done this in a while..." Fuutarou takes a deep breath once everything's set in place. "Alright...here we go."

At Fuutarou's cue, the small rune labelled "electric guitar" begins to play a series of chords, as the rune on the other side of it also begins to play back a recorded series of claps alongside it. Even Fuutarou begins to clap along with the synthetically generated clapping, which soon has drums join in as well. And then -

"One, two, one, two, three, four!"

The claps disappear, but the guitars and drums intensify to make up for their exit as the song gets under way. As Fuutarou prepares to deliver the first verse, Miku feels herself captivated by the music again, just like how she'd been when she first heard him playing that electric guitar back at Honolulu.

_"Scream my name, hold your hand to the flame  
__Keep it there as long as you can stand but don't forget it's a game  
Oh, it's such a shame that you bear the blame  
But seize your opportunity to pounce and baby, I'll do the same, oh - "  
_

Having closed his eyes, Fuutarou is singing in perfect English. Not only that, but his voice adopts a noticeably higher pitch than what the girls are used to hearing, which on its own is quite unusual, never mind his whole singing in English thing that he's got going on.

_"Won't you tell me all your secrets about how you exploit their weakness,  
I think you're a fuckin' genius, ah, ah -  
__So now my dear, it's just a matter of time  
__So buckle up, because you'll soon become my partner in crime, ah, ah - let's go."  
_

By this point, it's not just Miku who finds herself unable to take her eyes off her tutor performing in front of them; everyone is reacting similarly, including Nino, who, right before Fuutarou began to sing, was about to go back to her phone to bury herself back in the timelines of her friends' social media feeds.

_"She got my heartbeat out of control  
She had me at 'hello' and set my world to b-b-blow  
So baby light it up and let it go, oh, oh  
Oooooohhhhh ~  
_

__She got my heartbeat out of control  
She had me at 'hello' and set my world to b-b-blow  
So baby light it up and let it go, oh, oh  
Oooooohhhhh ~ "__

Fuutarou doesn't sing while just sitting still; he gesticulates emphatically with his arms and hands like an actual lead singer performing live on a stage. With the lively guitars, drums, and bass supporting him, he exudes a kind of energy that, while it didn't really suit him for the first few moments, now gives his small audience the impression that he'd been doing this his whole life as he transitions into the song's second verse.

_"You're so vain,  
But no one stares at your brain  
So with that thought in mind  
I think we banish any plans to abstain, oh -_

__Won't you tell me all your secrets about how you exploit their weakness,  
I think you're a WHOOP! genius, ah, ah -  
__So now my dear, it's just a matter of time  
__So buckle up, because you'll soon become my partner in crime, ah, ah - let's go!__

_She got my heartbeat out of control  
She had me at 'hello' and set my world to b-b-blow  
So baby light it up and let it go, oh, oh  
Oooooohhhhh ~  
_

__She got my heartbeat out of control  
She had me at 'hello' and set my world to b-b-blow  
So baby light it up and let it go, oh, oh  
Oooooohhhhh ~ "__

With the song entering its instrumental stage on its way to the bridge, the young mage begins clapping manually again, along to the synthesized clapping that his synthesizer rune plays over his shoulder. While he himself doesn't seem to take notice, some of the girls, specifically Ichika and Yotsuba, have joined in on the clapping, already fully vibing out to the groove of the music.

_"So let's go light up the night, own the night, just you and me  
Light up the night, ___own the night, just you and me  
_____Light up the night, ___own the night, just you and me  
___________Light up the night, ___just you and me - LET'S GO!________

_She got my heartbeat out of control  
She had me at 'hello' and set my world to b-b-blow  
So baby light it up and let it go, oh, oh  
Oooooohhhhh ~  
_

__She got my heartbeat out of control  
She had me at 'hello' and set my world to b-b-blow  
So baby light it up and let it go, oh, oh  
Oooooohhhhh ~ "__

The young mage claps for the short rest of the song until the guitars and drums stop abruptly, signaling the end of his performance.

Immediately, both Ichika and Yotsuba cheer with a round of applause for their tutor, who hangs his head and holds his hand over his forehead like he's unsure of whether or not to facepalm.

"That was actually so good, Uesugi-san, you were amazing! You even sang in English too, that's even _more _amazing!" Yotsuba is clapping so hard that her hands are reddening, but she doesn't seem to take notice. "Not that I could understand any of it because I'm a dummy, haha ~ ! But I could still tell that you're a great singer!"

"Seriously, Fuutarou-kun, you were great. Don't be ashamed about that," Ichika reaches over and pats her tutor on the back. "Well, it might just be because I like listening to English songs a lot, even though I'm not the greatest at listening to them, but still!"

After a minute of sulking in his own embarrassment, Fuutarou finally pulls his face up to face the quintuplets, though not without one more heavy sigh of disappointment.

"Yeck...I messed up so much during that. Voice cracks, off-pitch..." Fuutarou grumbles to himself. "Yeah, definitely rusty."

This time, it's Miku who interjects to cheer her tutor up. "Even if you were rusty, that was still really fun to listen to, really," she insists.

"Watching you, I feel like you actually performed on stage before. Am I wrong?" Ichika leans in a little towards her classmate. "I got the same vibe watching you sing as I do whenever we watch concerts or something on TV. Nino sometimes watches those variety talk shows where sometimes their special guests even do small little shows for the program."

"Yeah, I said earlier that I've had to perform alongside professional musicians and stuff."

"Ah, yeah, right, you did, sorry I forgot for a sec there."

"Man, Uesugi-san's so multi-talented, it's not even funny anymore," Yotsuba chuckles. She rests a cheek against her hand, with its elbow planted on the top of the glass table. "You can ace all your tests at school, you can tutor, you're a super badass mage, _and _you can sing. Just what the heck _can't _you do?"

"Tutor the five of you enough to make sure you can pass all your midterms tomorrow."

Once again, the girls all relapse into a wave of groans.

"There he goes _again_," Nino rolls her eyes yet again. "Every chance he gets, he makes some kind of stupid comment on how we're all gonna fail..."

"While I won't deny that, remember that it's _your _grades we're talking about, not mine. Me complaining about your grades for you still won't change the fact that all this is about _you, _not me."

Once he's gotten over his disappointment at himself for being an embarrassment to his own students, Uesugi sits up straight again to address his students properly.

"On a more serious note, I _have _been doing some self-assessment of my own. As in, I've been thinking about the way I'm approaching tutoring the five of you. While we might've only had a month and a half working together, I feel like there are things that I myself can improve upon as your tutor, and I've come to the conclusion that I need to be more interactive and teach the material to you in more engaging ways so that you all can remember it better. My whole singing just now is part of the whole self-reassessment thing that I'm talking about."

At this, Ichika can't stop herself from squealing aloud lightly. "So, so, so, so that means - that means we'll be able to listen to you sing more, right? Right?"

"As embarrassing as it'll be for me, yes, it might. It's not something I'll do all the time, mind you."

But the eldest quintuplet is already trembling with excitement. "Yaaaay ~ ! I can't wait, I can't wait ~ by the way, can we have an encore?"

"No."

"Awwwwww, why nooooot? Pwwweaaaaase, Fuutarou-kun ~ ?"

"No means no."

"But, Daaaaaaad ~ "

**"Absolutely not. **Also, don't call me your dad, that's weird."

"Oh ho ho? Fuutarou-kun, does that _tickle your fancy?" _Ichika creeps up next to her tutor in a suggestive manner. "Does being called Daddy make you feel some type of way, hm? Tell Ichika-onee-san more about it ~ "

"I-Ichika! Please refrain from such behavior with U-Uesugi-kun!" Itsuki hollers lightly, her own face acting up for her oldest sister at the sight of her advances.

"Yeah, listen to your sister for once and let's get back to studying. The faster we can go through these, the faster we can all go to sleep," Fuutarou agrees as he reaches over for the Japanese Language Arts books sitting close by.

"Hear, hear! God, I wanna go to sleep," Nino drawls out loudly.

"But you don't sound that tired, though," Ichika counters. "Admit it, Fuutarou-kun singing like that got you all pumped up to study more, didn't it?"

"L-Like hell it did!"

"Alright, alright, settle down. Everyone get your Language Arts textbooks out and let's review the stuff that'll probably be on your midterms tomorrow..."

* * *

Suddenly finding herself awake, Nakano Nino inhales sharply, blinking into the dim blue light that is the only one of its kind still left in the living room.

"Good morning, Nino."

At first ignoring the greeting from her tutor, the second quintuplet slowly raises her hands up to her face to give it a good rub to clear her senses from their slumber, grunting quietly while doing so. She must've fallen asleep while studying at some point...even though the quintuplets completed their late-night tutoring session with their classmate, the others insisted on sticking around to study on their own for a little bit longer, making good use of Fuutarou's own advice of studying together before going to bed, and Nino, not wanting to feel left out, reluctantly stayed with her sisters to study together. It would appear that all of them ended up falling asleep here in the living room, with Ichika, Yotsuba, and Miku dozing peacefully at the glass table and Itsuki sleeping on the long couch. Nino herself was apparently napping on the short couch, and while her memory is a bit hazy leading up to when she dozed off, Nino is certain she wasn't sitting on the short couch when she fell asleep. And neither did her sisters all have blankets on them at the time they started falling asleep themselves.

Nino reaches her hands up before her eyes again - her contacts have been removed for her at some point, judging by her incredibly blurry vision, and again, she doesn't remember taking them off before falling asleep. Lowering her hands a second time to peer over in her tutor's direction in the dim blue lamplight, Nino sits up in her seat on the short couch.

"...what time is it...?" she mumbles softly. Though she's still woozy from sleepiness, she doesn't want to wake her sisters who have been studying hard over the course of the night.

"Four thirty, just about," Uesugi-kun reports back, also keeping his voice low, but he's still speaking clearly and articulately. "Do you need your contacts?"

"...what did you do with them? Did you take them off for me when I fell asleep?"

"Yeah. I believe you're not supposed to go to sleep with them still on, so I took them off for you. Sorry if that bothers you."

Nino can barely make out her classmate's silhouette in the dim blue light over his shoulder shift, nearing her and handing her something, so she extends her hands, lets him place her contacts case in her hands, and takes it from him this way. However, it's only when she takes it from him that she realizes her next big problem.

"...I need to go to the bathroom..." Nino mutters, feeling her cheeks heat up against her will.

"Oh...right. Here, take my hand."

"..."

Nino glares back up at Uesugi-kun, who sighs back at her in response.

"Don't give me that. Unless you're okay with trying to find the bathroom by yourself in this darkness."

"Tch...o-okay, fine. I'll...let you...take me there."

Taking Uesugi-kun's extended hand with extreme reluctance, Nino carefully gets up from the short couch and walks slowly with her tutor over to the bathroom, where Uesugi-kun taps on the lights for Nino to see and be able to put her contacts back in for the time being, but first she washes her hands and face, brushes her teeth, and uses the toilet before finally putting her contacts in.

When she's done, Nino emerges from the bathroom to find her tutor absent from the area, only to hear some soft clinks from the kitchen. She promptly joins him in the kitchen, still in complete darkness with the exception of a small shoulder rune that provides the dim blue light that she's been seeing floating around Uesugi-kun ever since she woke up. He hands her a cup of warm hot chocolate that he's made quickly for the two of them, offering it to her.

"Hot chocolate," he clarifies when Nino narrows her sleepy eyes down at the cup that's being held out to her, and she takes it and takes a whiff of the heavy chocolate scent.

"...how the hell did you know where to find the hot chocolate?" Nino wonders aloud, grumbling softly as she takes a cautious sip of her hot drink. Even when speaking with a small voice, her words are as biting as ever. "And not to mention, I _just _brushed my teeth."

"Just brush it again afterwards, then. And...hmmm...I guess it's okay for me to tell you now. Back when you drugged me with that Heisei you had, I spent a night afterwards going through the house to make sure you weren't hiding anything else from me. That's how I knew where to find your contacts case from that one night...and where to find the hot chocolate too, I guess."

"...motherfucker, you know that's fucking _trespassing _on someone else's property?"

"And you think someone like me gives a shit about something like that? Especially not when one of the people who lives on that property tried drugging my ass the night before."

"That's still trespassing. Not to mention creepy."

"Psh. Fucking excuse me, then."

The two of them take sips from their cups of hot choco in silence for a moment, before Nino suggests:

"...we might wake up the others. Let's head out to the veranda."

Uesugi-kun opens his mouth to tell Nino that he's put runes on everyone else that prevents them from hearing their voices or any of the immediate ambient noise going on in the living room, but he decides not to and follows Nino out to the veranda, angling his rune light in front of Nino so that she can see where she's walking. Nino lets herself out onto the veranda, and Uesugi-kun closes the large sliding door behind him. Once outside, he reconfigures his rune to turn into a magical speaker, which begins to play some relaxing, ambient lofi for the two of them to listen to while enjoying their cups of hot choco.

"Do you _have _to play music right now?" Nino scowls at him when she first hears the lofi.

"Well...after I embarrassed myself in front of everyone earlier last night, I've been in kind of a vibing mood; I've been listening to lofi all night while studying on my own. The volume isn't _that _loud..."

"It's not about the volume, you idiot..."

"Then what, you don't like it? I can turn it off if you want."

"Ugh...just...whatever, keep it on, it's fine."

Rolling his eyes, the young mage also adds a sigh to it, which he stops with a sip of his comforting beverage.

"...how long were you studying for, after we all fell asleep?" Nino asks, holding her own cup with both hands to warm them up in the chill of the night. She's starting to regret deciding to talk to Uesugi-kun outside like this, but she doesn't feel like inviting him into her own room to do it either.

Noticing Nino beginning to tremble and shudder at the cold, the young mage pulls up his storage rune, pulls out his black hoodie jacket that he wears during his magework-related business, and drapes it around Nino's shoulders.

"I didn't ask for this, you idiot," the second quintuplet hisses back at him, but her hiss is lacking its usual venom that Uesugi-kun has had to get used to whenever he needs to talk to her.

"Whether you asked for it or not, I'm not letting you catch a cold _the day of your midterms _on my watch," he fires back. "I guess it's a good thing that I decided to fix some hot chocolate for the two of us. How is it, by the way? I've only ever made hot chocolate like this a few times before..."

Nino takes another sip. She's always loved sweet things, and chocolate is no exception.

"...it's delicious..." she mumbles softly. "...thanks."

And she coyly glances to her left to see how Uesugi-kun reacts.

The boy puts on the smallest little grin she's ever seen. It's so small, Uesugi-kun is basically doing nothing other than make the right corners of his lips stretch just a tiny bit. But make no mistake, that is still a smile, a smile of...relief.

A boy her age, who lives a double life as a high school student by day and a mercenary mage by night, is relieved...all because he was able to properly fix a good cup of hot chocolate.

"Good to know," he says quietly back, taking a silent sip of his own drink with her.

As the two of them gaze out to the city skyline under the dark, empty sky, time seems to blur. Hot chocolate, the city skyline, and the relaxing, lofi beats that could put Nino back to sleep if she weren't standing outside with her classmate's jacket over her shoulders...Nino slowly brushes some of her sideburns aside to take in the view...and this experience that she's never felt before, something that not even her sisters can make possible. The setting is so simple, so crude...as an elite teenage socialite who wears all the freshest clothes and eats at all the chillest restaurants, Nino shouldn't be as content as she is in this situation. But she finds no motivation to muster up any such discontent, any anger, any dissatisfaction. How could she, when she's got a boy with her who's happy all because he was able to make a good cup of hot chocolate.

"By the way, you never answered my question," Nino reminds her tutor, lowering her cup now that it's been emptied of its contents.

Uesugi-kun pauses briefly while taking another small sip. "I think you all went to sleep at around midnight? So ever since then."

"Do you even _need _to study? You just ace all your tests anyway, I thought."

"Hey, c'mon, even I need to study. I might know the material already, but it's never a bad idea to review. My biggest problem is that usually I don't have the time to do it."

"And yet you score perfects on everything anyway."

"Yeah, but these are midterms. They're a step up from all the other tests and quizzes we've been dealing with."

"Hmph."

"Also, you're already done with your hot chocolate? You weren't kidding when you said you handle hot stuff easily."

Nino gives a bit of a smug look over at her tutor. "Guess there's something I can beat even you at, huh?"

"Since when did we make hot chocolate-drinking a competition?"

"Since right now."

"Real shit, huh."

Nino quietly listens to Uesugi-kun take yet another careful sip of his hot beverage.

"Tell me what happened on the night Itsuki came home late," she asks. Her voice is quiet, yet steady and firm.

Uesugi-kun lowers his own cup.

"I managed to run into the guy who I think is trying to come after you and your sisters," he answers solemnly without looking back at Nino. "I've confirmed he's the guy who killed Ebata, your butler. So we got into a fight in the middle of the city, basically, and since Itsuki was studying at the library that day, she accidentally walked right into the street we were fighting on on her way back home."

"Oh. It wasn't like you had to go save her from trouble or anything?"

"Not really, no. She literally just walked right in on us; that guy I was fighting, his name is Shirazumi Rio - he wasn't after Itsuki or anything, or at least that wasn't his intention at the time we first met. Though once she _did _walk in on us, I had to make sure she got out of there safe."

"Hm. And let me guess, you got hurt again?"

"Yep. Got more cuts - one of them even reopened the one you saw from last week. Most serious one was right on my liver, though."

"Y-Your liver...?" Nino cringes a little at the mention of an internal organ being damaged.

"It's fine, it's healing up. But in case you were wondering why I was looking pretty rough the past few days at school, that's why."

Uesugi-kun took the words right out of the quintuplet's mouth, so Nino's hands tighten around her empty cup.

"Uesugi-kun, can I ask you something?" she asks softly.

"Sure. What's up?"

"Why...do you work so hard? Why do you...do all this dangerous stuff as a mage? Why did you study for the past four hours or whatever while the rest of us were asleep when_ you _of all people don't need to? Why do you even bother going to school when clearly you don't have to?"

Nino turns to her tutor, who doesn't reciprocate.

"You're clearly smart enough to have a good-paying job, even at your age. Hell, you even told me that you were able to work at a super young age because you looked older than you were, so it's not like a lack of working experience's stopping you. But here you are, getting yourself into bad situations and putting yourself in harm's way for our sake. Is being a mage really that worth it to you? To the point where your desk at school becomes your bed, even? Maybe it's...maybe it's just because...I don't get what it's like being in your shoes at all, because our lives are just so different that I can't even begin to know what it's like. Maybe I just wouldn't understand. I mean, shit, I don't even know why I'm asking you something like this when I was the one who told you not to butt into our business like I did before."

Finally finishing the rest of his hot chocolate, Uesugi-kun lowers it down by his side.

"All I can say right now is that I've got my reasons," he replies slowly. "You're right, there's probably a better way I can go about helping my family get out of debt that my stubborn ass is failing to grasp because living as a mage is all I've ever known, pretty much. I guess if I had to say, it's because I do like this city a lot, and all the stuff that's been happening here lately...the drug rings, the kidnappings...it gets to me, I guess. I'm not a fan of all this bad shit happening around the city. And I know enough about all that bad stuff that I know the city by itself isn't going to be able to solve it all. All that, and I know I'm someone who can take matters into his own hands...a vigilante, basically."

He sighs deeply.

"Sometimes it's not always about me and what I want. Sure, I prioritize my family and the debt that we're working to pay off, and obviously that's very important to me...but over the years, I've come to realize that there are some things that are even more important than them."

Nino finally turns away.

"...I guess that's why I just don't get you. I don't think I can ever put anything higher than my family."

Her companion nods slowly in agreement. "It's best if you leave things like that. Life gets...complicated, let's just say...if you do."

"Yeah, if you're any indication."

Nino hears no response from her tutor. That's because he doesn't speak his response.

A heavy hand rests softly on top of Nino's head.

"Normally I'd say to not worry about me," Fuutarou mutters quietly, "but Ichika's gonna kick my ass if she finds out I said that to you. So...thanks for worrying about me. It means a lot, especially because it's you."

Because it's you.

Nino's eyes begin to feel warm. But it's not the alarming, scathing heat that's tormented her on several nights before. It's just a warm feeling in her eyes that matches that which she feels in her heart.

That's all it is.

Just a warm feeling.

That's all...

* * *

**A/N**

**The relaxing lofi Fuutarou plays is Schoolgrounds by Sleepy Fish. Enjoy.**


	40. Midterms

**A/N**

**Another ten chapters. You know the drill.**

**Though, this break might be a bit shorter than usual. We'll see...**

* * *

Uesugi Fuutarou's eyes open slowly, staring up at the ceiling for a moment as his vision refocuses, before blinking a few times to help expedite the process. He's gone to sleep on the hard floor off the carpet in front of the big flatscreen television as the quintuplets are all still fast asleep themselves.

Exhaustion still grips his senses - even if he's gotten used to waking up with suboptimal hours of sleep, it doesn't mean that his body is rested enough, and this is doubly so when he's got a serious wound to recover from. But as much as he wants to go back to sleep, Fuutarou forces himself to stay awake. Given the morning rays of the sun that are pouring into the penthouse, it's about time to haul ass over to school for their midterms.

Getting up from the hard floor, Fuutarou grunts under his breath and is about to get up to his feet when the yellow blanket decorated with lemon prints drapes down his chest. Oh yeah, he's forgotten that he went to sleep a few hours ago with a blanket - he usually doesn't bother with one, if his chronic sleeping at school is any indication. He remembers trying to insist to Nino earlier that morning after they hung out a little out on the veranda that he didn't need one, but Nino threatened to kick him out of the house if he didn't accept at least a blanket to go to sleep with, and he didn't feel like putting up an argument with her at five in the morning.

Sitting up on the floor gives Fuutarou a chance to rewind the events of the morning. He didn't expect Nino to want to take him aside for a little bit just to chat with him like they did. Ever since the midnight talk he had with her and Miku in regards to their Mystic Eyes, he and Nino haven't really interacted all that much, not even at school; the most they've ever had in terms of dialogue were either simple greetings of "good morning" or "good afternoon", or of course Nino's usual mopey attitude around him whenever the topic of tutoring was at hand.

But standing outside that morning on the veranda, enjoying some hot chocolate and casually chatting about stuff going on in their lives...Fuutarou enjoyed it. Maybe not something to be expected from someone like him, but it was a nice change of pace, and he's not against those. And speaking of changes of pace, he's the most glad about being able to talk to Nino normally like they did. Not having to deal with her usual antagonism, not having to put up with her constant insults, her unrelenting profanity, her abundant irritability...Fuutarou wishes Nino could be more like that, more often. Not because he doesn't like her personality, everyone's entitled to acting however they want and Fuutarou himself doesn't care enough to go out of his way to convince people to act otherwise, but just so that they can actually have some nice conversations from time to time.

Maybe his earlier run-in with Ichika this week at Starbucks is doing a number on him, Fuutarou ponders to himself quietly. All that talk about friends and such that Ichika was hammering into his head back then at the start of the week...given how he feels about the fact that he and Nino were able to talk normally like friends would for a solid half an hour or so earlier that morning, maybe he's subconsciously recognized that the eldest quintuplet was in the right all this time, or at least enough to the point where he'd start taking her advice. Maybe he can even go so far as to say that Ichika was just trying to look out for him...then in which case, he'll have to make a mental note to himself to apologize to her for trying to be a stubborn and edgy idiot for going on about how he doesn't need friends or whatever.

He then glances over at the peacefully sleeping quintuplets; all five of the girls are still in their same places, including Nino, who's returned to her short couch to go back to sleep there. The runes that he's placed on them, including on Nino after she fell asleep, are still active, invisible to the naked eye but hovering over each of the girls' heads to softly block normal levels of ambient noise from reaching their ears to ensure that they can get the sleep they need for their tests today. Because of this, though, they won't be able to hear any alarm clocks that go off - not that any of them had set any because they all drifted off to sleep while studying - so Fuutarou's made it a point to himself to be their human alarm clock and wake them up when it's time for them to get ready for school.

And that time is now. Fuutarou then pulls the blanket on him aside and gets up to his feet to neatly fold up the blanket so that he can set it against the side of the glass table for the quints to figure out what to do with it. Getting a good stretch in and slapping his cheeks quickly to try to get himself to wake up a bit more, the young tutor, rubbing his right side, turns around and glances up at the clock.

8:05 AM.

School starts at 8:30, and their exams begin at 8:45.

He was supposed to have woken up a whole hour beforehand.

Oh for fuck's sake.

Immediately springing into action, the young mage pivots and rushes to the kitchen, snapping his fingers in the quintuplets' direction to remotely remove the noise blocking runes from over the quintuplets' heads. He doesn't start yelling at them to get up, however, because the racket he's about to make in the kitchen to start fixing everyone a fast breakfast will do that job for him. Yanking open refrigerator doors, Fuutarou grabs five eggs, two at a time and then one, and sets them down on the kitchen counter as he also grabs five small rice bowls from one of the cupboards, fills them with rice that's been kept warm in the rice cooker that Nino prepared before going to sleep the second time, and cracks one egg over each bowl of rice swiftly but accurately before chucking the broken eggshells across the kitchen into the tall, sliding wastebasket that's built into one of the cupboards near the stove that he's pulled open while filling up the rice bowls for this purpose.

The loud, hurried racket he's making begins to do its job of waking up the quintuplets, starting with Itsuki, then Nino, followed shortly by the others. Sitting up on the couch, the youngest quintuplet squints irritably over to the kitchen where all the banging of cupboard doors and sharp cracks of eggshells are coming from.

"What on earth are you doing first thing in the morning, Uesugi-kun? If you're hungry, you can always just wake Nino up to have her make you something, can you not?" she calls over in a somewhat raspy morning voice.

Fuutarou grimaces back at her briefly as he carefully tops the rice and eggs in their bowls with soy sauce first before using a salt shaker to gingerly apply light dashes of salt to finish the simple breakfast meals.

"We're gonna be late for school. Hurry up and get ready to leave, all of you!"

The words "late for school" pierce through the air like bricks thrown through glass windows, and all the quintuplets except for Ichika, who hasn't gotten up yet, spin around at the big clock that's built into the wall high above the flatscreen TV.

Naturally, Itsuki is the first to react audibly, and she does so by letting out a small but high-pitched scream of horror, and even her ahoge almost jumps out of her head with how frightened it looks.

_"Aaaaaaaaaaahhhh! ! ! ! ! Wh-Why is it already past eight o'clock?!" _she cries out shrilly, which finally gets Ichika to wake up as well and pull her heavy head off the glass tabletop to rub her eyes at what's going on.

"Wait, why did we - how did we _all _oversleep?!" Miku cries as well, her confused blue eyes darting around at the rest of her sisters. "Did - did _none _of us set alarms...?!"

"And we only have about twenty minutes...I think we're in some deep trouble right now..." Yotsuba groans, holding her hands over her head in sinking misery.

"What about breakfast? What are we going to do about breakfast?!" Itsuki frets with panic.

"Ugh, I need to go do makeup, quick..." Nino grumbles as she takes off swiftly for the second floor to her room.

"Mmmmunya, munya...Onee-chan is still pretty sleepy, so she's gonna go back to sleep...make sure to take my midterms for me, pwetty pwease..." Ichika mumbles as she lets her face sink back down into her arms against the glass tabletop, but Itsuki reaches over and manages to catch her face before it can land against her hands.

"Oh no you do not, Ichika, we're about to be late for our _midterms _and you _still _want to sleep?! Please wake up!"

"I've got breakfast taken care of, and I'll put your stuff into your bags. All of you, change into your uniforms, _now!" _Fuutarou barks at the girls, and the force he puts behind his voice startles the girls, even Ichika, because not once has he raised his voice like that at them before with such intensity. "You don't change, you don't eat!"

The threat of going to school and taking their midterms of all things without any food in their stomachs is enough to incite action in the girls, and most certainly for Itsuki, who positively turns and bolts like her name's Yotsuba to go to her room to change into her school uniform, as do the rest of the sisters - with Ichika, naturally, lagging a little behind, dragging her feet up the stairs sleepily. As the girls are busy changing and doing makeup in their rooms, Fuutarou carries the small bowls with seasoned rice and egg over to the glass table all at once, putting his prior restaurant waiting experience to good use here, and he makes a second trip back to the kitchen to grab five glasses of water to put next to the rice bowls waiting for the girls to come back and eat them. He also packs the girls' belongings together wherever he can; Itsuki's and Ichika's bags are already down here on the first floor, so the young tutor takes the liberty of packing those two girls' school stuff into their bags so that they don't have to worry about doing it themselves, and for everyone else, he stacks up their books, papers, and pencil bags neatly in small, consolidated piles so that it's easy for their owners to pack them once they come back down from their rooms.

Just as Fuutarou is working on packing up his own books and papers, most of which are just reference books, worksheets, and practice tests that he's had the girls take, the girls begin filing down the stairs to rejoin him.

"Here, grab a bowl from the table and pack your stuff," Fuutarou urges them, clasping the main pocket of his messenger bag shut and pulling it up over his shoulder.

"But...we just don't have enough time," Miku worries aloud, glancing urgently up at the clock, which now reads 8:14. "It's about a forty-five minute walk from here to school. Even if we run, we won't be able to make it..."

"I can! I've run back and forth from home to school before!" Yotsuba interjects energetically as she wolfs down her rice bowl alongside her younger sister Itsuki, though for markedly different reasons.

"Well, _other _than you then...the rest of us don't have three-minute kilometer times like you do," Miku retorts.

"That's right, Yotsuba might get there in time, but that doesn't account for how the rest of _us _are gonna get there," Nino says, having done her makeup as quickly as she could, though she dabs a bit at her face at places where she feels she could use a bit of touch-up.

"You either walk or get a ride to school, right? What were you planning to do today?" Fuutarou asks.

"We've been walking to school lately; we didn't expect _this _all to happen, so I doubt we would've planned otherwise," Nino answers. "We can't call a cab or anything now, the services we normally use need at least a half an hour's amount of advance time to schedule one of their drivers."

"Goddamn bourgeoisie."

"Shut yer trap! And besides, even if we were to go with the el cheapo taxi services, it's not like they can get here instantly either! And with traffic and other stuff to consider, by this point, we'll be late either way!"

A tense silence befalls the six high schoolers, broken only by the clinking of chopsticks and sounds of munching.

"So? Anyone got any bright ideas, then?" Nino shrugs, taking her time with her own rice bowl, now that she's resigned herself to the fact that they're going to be late to school, no matter what.

"Well, since Yotsuba can make it to school, let's have her get there. Even if we all get screwed and can't take our midterms, at least Yotsuba should be able to," Ichika suggests quickly.

"Ah...but..." Having set down her empty rice bowl on the table, Yotsuba hesitates, glancing first over at her eldest sister, then to everyone else. "...but I don't wanna feel like I'm leaving everyone behind."

"Oh c'mon, don't be like that _now _of all times. Just because we all overslept, doesn't mean we have to drag you down and make you unable to take your midterms."

"And speaking of oversleeping, shouldn't _you _have woken us up on time? _You're _our tutor, you know! And this whole fucking overnight studying thing was _your _idea! Us being late for school right now is _your _fault, you know! What do you have to say for yourself, huh?!" Nino jams her finger in the direction of her tutor before her, who's got a difficult expression on his face and a hand up to his chin, deep in thought.

"Nino, stop it! It's not his fault!" Miku flares up alongside her sister, immediately jumping to her tutor's defense as she's prone to do whenever Nino starts criticizing him for something.

"Yeah, I'm with Miku on this one, Nino, that's pretty unfair for you to put the blame on him when all of us just drifted off to sleep in the middle of studying and forgot to set alarms on our phones," Ichika points out, and Nino herself squeezes her lips together, remembering the small amount of time she spent earlier this morning drinking hot chocolate with Fuutarou out on the veranda.

But to the girls' surprise, Fuutarou interrupts.

"No, Nino's right, this is my fault. I put these little runes over everyone when you all fell asleep that block ambient noise so that you all could get a good night's sleep, even down here," the young tutor explains quickly. "I was planning on waking up early to wake the rest of you up so we could have plenty of time to get ready and head over to school, but I was the one who overslept instead. This is my bad."

"Hey, see? Even he says so!" Nino folds her arms in a see-I-told-you attitude to her two neighboring sisters.

"Aha...uh, well, I guess, at least, it did its job super well? I _do _feel really well-rested, more than I usually am..." Ichika shrugs awkwardly.

"Er...yeah...maybe...maybe it wasn't such a good idea to do that for us right before midterms...?" Yotsuba mentions slowly, afraid of sounding like she's trying to criticize Fuutarou herself.

"It's because of your injury the other night, wasn't it?"

Ichika, Nino, Miku, and Yotsuba all turn quickly to their youngest sister, who, having finished her rice bowl as well, lowers it in her hands while gazing intently back at their high school tutor.

"You are not the type of person who would oversleep, especially not for such an important day like today," Itsuki continues quietly. "And there is only one explanation that I can think of that would account for your mistake today."

"Wait, wait - Fuutarou-kun, is that true? You got hurt _again?" _Ichika spins around again the opposite direction to gawk up at her tutor, who clicks his tongue with sharp irritation and rubs his forehead in frustration.

"Itsuki, I _told _you not to talk about that. And we really don't need to deal with this at _this _point in time, either," Uesugi insists intently, glaring back at Ichika before she can say anything more on the subject. Both Yotsuba and Nino look away with two different degrees of discomfort, while Ichika stares back at their tutor in somewhat watered-down shock. Miku also looks down at her feet; she, too, had an idea about what had happened because she was the one who greeted Itsuki when she returned home that night and spied the blood splattered on her clothes and school bag, but she didn't ask Fuutarou about what happened since he was at school and seemed to be doing well enough, and she didn't want to bother him about it just to sate her own morbid curiosity. "Right now we need to settle on a way to get to school, and I've come up with a plan just now. I'll explain it as we go; if you're done eating, hand your bowls to me and I'll go put them away. In the meantime, go to the door and get your shoes on. Yotsuba, if you have more of those hair ribbons that you wear, go grab four of them, one for each of your sisters."

With their tutor in full manager mode, the quintuplets don't find it in them to protest his directive and head to the lobby collectively while Yotsuba dashes back up to her room to grab extra hair ribbons for everyone and Fuutarou makes a detour to the kitchen to put their bowls and chopsticks in the sink to be washed later; the half-drunk glasses of water will have to be taken care of later.

Once their tutor rendezvouses with the girls and pulls on his own shoes, he ushers them out and heads with them to the elevator lobby, talking to them while they walk:

"Itsuki already knows about this because we used one the other night, but I have a system of runes set up throughout the city that can act as one-time-use teleporters; I have them set up in case of emergencies, and today's an emergency, so we'll use it here. The closest - "

"Wait, wait, hold up, hold up, you can make _teleporters?!" _Nino blurts out, unable to hold her amazement back. "What is this, Star Trek!?"

"...the fact that you even know what that show is aside, yes, I can make teleporters. They're probably among the most complicated things I can do with the magecraft I know how to use, but I can still manage them, if only pretty inefficiently. But I can't just have us teleport anywhere I want; there needs to be an exit rune that we can teleport _to_, and unfortunately the closest one to school that I have active right now is still like ten minute's walk away, and right now it's already - " Fuutarou checks his phone, which reads 8:22. " - only eight minutes til the first bell rings."

The elevator arrives, and the six of them file in swiftly. Miku reaches for the lobby button, but Fuutarou swiftly reacts and grabs her wrist, causing her to jump a little - Fuutarou's grip is scarily strong. Instead, Fuutarou drops her wrist and punches the button for the roof.

"R-Roof? How do you have roof access, Fuutarou? Not even we have that..." Miku mumbles, realizing what button her tutor's just pressed.

"Let's just say that knowing your dad has its perks," Fuutarou grimaces with a dark grin. "Either way, the roof is where I have one of my teleporting runes, so we'll use that. I figured it'd come in handy one day, but I didn't quite expect to have to use it like this..."

"What, for your students who're running late for their midterms?" Ichika giggles.

"Yeah, see? Even you know how absurd that sounds. Anyways, we'll teleport over - once we do, Yotsuba, you run straight for the school as fast as you can; you should still be able to make it even with the time we have left. The PE teacher should be on duty to catch late students coming into the first-year student lockers, and especially today when it's midterms. Make sure he sees you, Yotsuba. The rest of you, get your best Yotsuba impressions ready."

The elevator doors slide open to let them out into the roof access lobby, and climbing the stairs nervously after Fuutarou, wondering if they're really allowed to be here, the quintuplets, except for Itsuki who's been here before, trot after their tutor, who points at Nino.

"You have that passcard I gave you from before? I need that one, specifically," he says, and so the quintuplet fishes it out for him, who uses it to unlock the roof access door before handing it back to Nino.

The quintuplets head out to the large pentagonally-shaped rooftop of the high-rise, still following their classmate down to the helipad before them.

"Wow ~ so this is what the roof looks like. Gosh, the view must be absolutely killer from up here..." Ichika wonders breathlessly, taking as much of a look around as she can while Fuutarou preps the large rune that he's planted here.

"Was this how Uesugi-kun brought you back home from that other night?" Nino mutters to Itsuki, who nods a little shyly. "Wow, lucky you."

"I-It was not lucky at all! Uesugi-kun made so much fun of me when we returned!" Itsuki pouts impatiently.

"Did he? About what?"

"About - about - _stuff!"_

"...that's awfully vague, don't'cha think?"

"Girls, pay attention, please!" Fuutarou barks back at them once the teleporter rune is ready to be used. "So let me repeat the plan real quick: Yotsuba, you run in ahead of us and make sure the PE teacher sees you. Afterwards, the four of you should've gotten a ribbon from Yotsuba; wear that just like how Yotsuba wears hers and go in posing as Yotsuba. This'll be our little Operation Doppelgänger that'll get you girls around being late."

"Ugh...I'm...I am not so confident in my impression of Yotsuba..." Itsuki worries as Fuutarou beckons the girls to follow him and step onto the rune, and once everyone's standing in the center, he activates the rune, giving the girls a countdown.

"Stay relaxed, girls, you're gonna feel like crap if you tense up when this thing 'ports us. Take a deep breath and loosen up, I'll count us down. Five, four, three, two, one!"

* * *

The flash of light that flares up from the helipad on the high-rise roof dies down, revealing a drastic but expected change in scenery - the quintuplets and their tutor find themselves now standing in a moderately sized pocket in a back alley somewhere.

"W-Whoa...! It...it actually worked..." Ichika remarks breathlessly, blinking about them because she's hardly able to believe that teleportation is actually a thing. "Wow, being a mage has its perks, huh..."

"Not...not really..."

The palpable amount of strain immediately grabs the attention of the quintuplets, who all turn around sharply to see what the matter is, and Itsuki and Nino both throw their hands over their mouths: an unmistakable blotch of blood the size of a large fist is blooming slowly over his right side, with a marked trail dripping down to make its way towards the waist. Fuutarou doesn't let their blue eyes dwell on it too much; he puts his hand over it and presses it firmly against the reopened wound, squeezing his eyes shut while letting his head hang as a painkiller as his hand over his side works urgently to stop the bleeding.

"Uesugi-san?! Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no - " Yotsuba begins to panic, wide-eyed, at the sight of the wound Fuutarou told her about yesterday morning being reopened, and she paces up to him, with Miku and Ichika also following suit. "Uesugi-san, please, if you need to go to the hospital - "

"Shh, keep your voices down," Fuutarou hisses at the worrying girls. "Right now we're next to a pretty busy street at this time of day; if you know where Hanamaru Udon is, we're literally right behind it."

"Oh! Hanamaru is like, right outside campus, if you walk west!" Yotsuba notes, momentarily distracted by her tutor's diversion.

"Right. This isn't serious; what happened was...I forgot to account for all of us teleporting at the same time, since I usually only ever teleport myself and that's pretty simple. But for every person I teleport, I have to commit more mana and do more magic calculations to make sure the teleportation process executes smoothly. Since we were in a rush, and because I forgot that I wasn't teleporting just myself this time around, I had to do what's called an emergency surge, which forces my body to produce a whole bunch of mana to fuel the teleport, but it puts a whole bunch of strain on the body as a result. That strain made my injury open back up, but it didn't hurt my liver at least, so I got pretty lucky there."

Taking the time to explain quickly, Fuutarou then raises his head back up to stare hard back at the hesitant Yotsuba.

"Get going, we'll follow after you. Don't worry about me, this won't kill me."

_"That kind of makes me worry even more if you say that, though?!"_

But Yotsuba feels her will to protest slip away when Fuutarou's steeled gaze turns into a full-on glare.

"Either you can let me deal with this on my own, or you can make all your sisters _and _you fail your midterms instantly, Yotsuba, I don't think this is a very hard decision to make."

The fourth quintuplet freezes where she stands; Fuutarou might as well slap her across the face to get the same effect. The rest of the quintuplets, also growing wide-eyed at Fuutarou's words, glance nervously back and forth, slowly, from their sister to their tutor.

Nodding suddenly, Yotsuba then turns and bolts out of the alleyway at top speed, towards the direction of their school.

"Hey, Uesugi-kun..." Ichika mutters softly after Yotsuba's well and gone from the scene, "...don't you think you were a bit harsh on her? And it's not like she was the only one who reacted like that."

"And let's not forget whose fault it was that we're even in this position," Nino adds with crossed arms.

"But - but - !" Miku once more tries to come to Fuutarou's defense, but the boy in question speaks up first before she can get started.

"Right, I get it. And I know I was harsh on her, but I don't have much of a choice at the moment. I'll make it up to her later; make sure to tell her the next time I see her. In any case, the rest of you, get your ribbons on, and I hope your Yotsuba impressions are good."

"How do you suppose you'll walk around school like that, though?" Ichika points down at the blood trail streaking down his shirt. "You don't seriously plan on going around and telling people that it's just paint or something, are you?"

"...I'll be honest, I'm not terribly sure of that myself..."

Once she's put on her hair ribbon, Miku quickly takes off her signature pale blue cardigan and hands it to her tutor.

"Wear this," she offers. "It'll hide your shirt underneath. Don't worry about the blood getting on it, I can just wash it once you give it back."

Strapped for choice, Fuutarou nods and receives the cardigan from her, finishing his emergency treatment at around the same time.

"I'll probably look pretty weird in this, but it's better than the alternative..." Fuutarou remarks to himself as he pulls the cardigan on. "Thanks, Miku. Everyone else ready?"

The four remaining quintuplets nod, and together, they emerge from the alleyway and cross the street to get onto campus.

"Ichika, text Yotsuba to make sure that she's gotten in without any problems," the young tutor orders, and Ichika complies.

"You really ought to take the time to get our numbers, Uesugi-kun," Itsuki suggests. "You only know Ichika's, right? After midterms, the next time we all meet together, we will give you our numbers so that you can communicate with us more smoothly."

"Huh? Wait, _I _have to give him my number too?" Nino asks incredulously.

"Last time I checked, you were also a quintuplet, Nino."

"Yeah, that's a good idea, but let's leave it for later. For now, let's just concentrate on taking those midterms before your dad fires my ass," Fuutarou agrees.

"Not that our scores right now would be of any help to you in that regard anyway," Nino scoffs caustically.

"Right, it's not, but _a _chance is better than _no _chance. Not to mention, it's gonna be pretty fucking pathetic of me to tell your dad that the reason why you all failed your midterms is because I overslept and forgot to wake everyone up on time."

"I still don't think that's your fault. None of us set any alarms...!" Miku insists.

"Maybe not, but the spells that I mentioned that I put over all of you would've blocked those from reaching you, so none of you would've woken up on time anyway. Nino isn't wrong, Miku, the burden of responsibility of how things are turning out right now is on me alone. Ichika, did Yotsuba get back to you?"

"Yeah, just now, she said she made in it safe," the eldest quintuplet relays, holding up her phone.

"Okay, good. And right on cue..."

The young mage gestures quickly to the four quintuplets with him as they approach the first-year student lockers, where, just as expected, the scary-looking PE teacher infamous for his strictness and nonexistent tolerance for rule breakers and deviants across campus is standing guard, ready to catch any students coming in late.

"Alright, ladies. Operation Doppelgänger starts now. Good luck," Fuutarou nods at the four girls as all of them hide around the corner of the school building whose entrance at which the PE teacher is standing guard.

"I'll go in first..."

Nakano Miku, perhaps contrary to her reserved nature, surges forward and fearlessly approaches the intimidating teacher, who notices her walk around the corner and scowls at her deeply as she bids him good morning.

"Hey, you're late!" he booms at her, but Miku stops him in his tracks by pointing up to her hair ribbon.

"Whoa, whoa, don't you recognize this ribbon, sir? I had to step outside for a second to help a teacher out," Miku informs him cheerfully, just like Yotsuba would. Fuutarou and her sisters stealthily watch the encounter go down from their corner of the building.

"...must be nice, being able to pull something like that off, huh?" Fuutarou remarks under his breath.

"Says Mr. Mage over here who can literally teleport around the city," Nino retorts swiftly without skipping a beat.

"Touche. But seriously, I see now why you all say Miku's the best at impersonating you guys."

"Just Miku things, really. I don't know where and when she's learned to mimic us so well, but that's kind of how it's always been," Ichika smiles in amusement. "Oh, looks like they're about to be done."

"Hmmm...yes, that face, and the ribbon too, as you mentioned...I do remember seeing you come in earlier. Well, your midterms are about to start, so hurry it up and get to class," the PE teacher says gruffly, pointing his thumb over his shoulder.

"Yes, sir ~ !"

As Miku heads in, Fuutarou ushers in the others one by one, giving each of them a few minutes' berth between quintuplets so that their repeated appearances will at least seem believable. As Itsuki is admitted without a hitch, Fuutarou can't help but grin a little at the PE teacher, who is growing very visibly confused as to why he's seeing the same student walk through his posted entrance four times over in a span of ten minutes. Though, Fuutarou wonders to himself why the teacher isn't stopping Nino or Itsuki, the last two to enter, to verify whether or not it really is the same student; they're all even sporting different clothes, too. Maybe the teacher is just too dumb to notice? How the hell did he even become a teacher here at this school if he keeps rolling less than 5's on all of his spot checks?

"Oooh...I...I deceived a teacher...what have I done...?" Itsuki groans shakily as she joins the rest of her sisters, including Yotsuba who's waited outside the student lockers for them. Nino just scowls at her.

"Ah, get over it already, no one likes that teacher anyway with how hardass he is with everything and everyone."

"Well, in any case, we all got in, which is good. Now's the hard part though of actually doing well on our midterms," Ichika reminds her family, and Itsuki nods, getting out of her miniature depression of having lapsed into a school deviant for a moment.

"Yes...all of us have worked and studied hard so far. It is now time to show Uesugi-kun and Father what we can do, what we are truly made of," Itsuki states confidently.

"And Nino, don't go failing your tests on purpose," Miku glares a little at her older sister, who snaps back,

"I won't, I already said I won't! Fuck's sake, you _still _haven't let that one go?"

"Ah, speaking of which..." Yotsuba looks around quickly, "...where's...where's Uesugi-san?"

At the mention of their tutor, the quintuplets look around as well, realizing that their tutor has not joined them.

"Wait a minute...of course he wouldn't come in with us, he can't pretend like he's one of us," Miku groans loudly, her chest filling up with cold ice at the uncomfortable epiphany. "Did he...did he only focus on getting _us _into school, but not...himself?"

"Sounds like him, alright," Ichika sighs. "Ichika-onee-chan's gonna give him a good talking-to after school, don't you girls worry - "

"Spare me that talk; you all should be in class by now, no?"

Fuutarou's voice pops in out of nowhere, and the girls swiftly turn to face the lockers, where Fuutarou is casually walking in from to join them.

"Sorry that took a bit longer than I expected, I had to make what's called a Presence Concealment spell to slip past the teacher outside. Makes people unaware of my presence, as long as I'm not doing anything that would explicitly draw attention to me," Fuutarou explains again. "Anyway, c'mon, let's go. It ain't my fault if you all are late to the actual start of midterms by this point."

As Uesugi is heading off to their classroom, the quintuplets all look at each other.

"We haven't done this in a while, but should we do a quick Quintuplet Special?" Ichika asks.

"Yeah, yeah! Let's do one real quick for good luck!" Yotsuba nods wholeheartedly, and she grabs Nino's hands. "You too, Nino!"

"W-Why?! Why do I have to do it too? This kind of stuff's lame to do at our age!" Nino tries to protest, but the sisters all convene their hands, holding each other's thumbs and pinky fingers that intertwine and lock with each other.

"Let's all get good grades and surprise Fuutarou-kun and Dad, yeah?" Ichika asks her sisters.

"Let us fight like our lives depend on it. Uesugi-kun has been doing the same for us; it is only right that we behave the same towards our own battlefield," Itsuki nods.

"Yeah," Miku smiles brightly. "Let's do this, everyone."

"Ou ~ !" Yotsuba cheers. "C'mon, Nino, you too!"

"Ergh...O-Ouuu..." Nino awkwardly mimics Yotsuba, causing the sisters to all giggle together and head off after their tutor towards their homeroom to take their midterms.

* * *

The final bell of school rings to signal the end of the day, as the classroom is filled immediately with the groans of relief from all the students eager to go home after all the studying that they've done for the sake of their midterms today.

Having packed up her backpack the fastest, Miku hurries over to where her tutor is sitting in the middle of the room as Fuutarou is putting his pencils back into a side pouch of his messenger bag.

"Fuutarou, how are you feeling?" she asks with subdued concern so that their classmates around them won't eavesdrop on them.

"I'm good. Hanging in there, at least," her tutor responds with a quick thumbs-up gesture as he gets up from his desk. "More importantly, how well did you think you did?"

"Well...I..." Miku lowers her gaze, almost in shame. "...I...tried my best."

Miku peeks back up at him through his bangs, expecting him to sigh heavily or show some other sign of frustration or disappointment, but instead, she just finds a small smile peeking back down at her.

"Then that's all that matters. Good work, Miku."

The third quintuplet blinks silently back up at her classmate, but before she can say anything else, the rest of her sisters join them as well, ready to head home after a long day of testing.

"Hanging in there, Uesugi-san?" Yotsuba asks as well, and Fuutarou nods, turning to her.

"Sorry for earlier this morning, yelling at you like that. That was unwarranted," he apologizes to her calmly, but Yotsuba shakes her head back at him.

"I shouldn't have let myself be distracted. I mean, you know yourself better than anyone else does, so I should have trusted you. I mean, we already trust you enough as our tutor, right?" she points out. "So let's go home together, Uesugi-san ~ "

"Hmm..."

"What, you seem pretty uncertain," Ichika pipes up. "I thought you said you'd be fine by now?"

"I am, but I _do _need to head home. Work-related stuff...that, and I haven't seen Raiha in a bit, so I'm sure she's getting a bit worried about me."

"Why, was Raiha-chan not at home lately?"

"No, she was. It's just that I'd been busy prepping for midterms myself, but mainly because I've been taking care of this - " Fuutarou points down to his right side. " - and I'd been prepping for the tutoring stuff that we did yesterday. Lots of prep work, basically, and I had to run around the city the last few days anyway just to get ready. Let's get a move on, we can talk as we go."

So the quintuplets and their tutor begin heading for the girls' penthouse, bidding goodbye to their friends whom they run into on their way out of campus.

"So what's our tutoring schedule gonna look like now?" Nino asks, walking with her phone out while checking the Twitter feeds of her favorite Japanese actors.

"I don't know. That'll depend on what kinds of scores the five of you are gonna get on your midterms today, remember?"

"Ah..."

The girls are all once again reminded of the condition that their tutor informed them of during their first overnight study session that their father apparently put on him, and a heavy air hangs over them as they shuffle down the street towards home.

"...so Dad really _was _serious about all that..." Ichika mutters under her breath.

"The tests were still as hard as ever...I'm not so sure if we'll be able to make it..." Yotsuba adds sadly.

"Before any of you even ask, I did the best I could on mine. I didn't try to intentionally fail any of them," Nino repeats herself, just to cover all her bases.

"No one even asked you," Fuutarou scowls down at her.

_"Just in case anyone asks, okay!?"_

"I just...regret that I did not join everyone else in studying with Uesugi-kun. Maybe it really would not have made much of a difference, but...it would have been better than what I ended up doing, which was to _not _join and have regrets about it all," Itsuki admits somberly.

Miku shyly tugs on her own pale blue cardigan that Fuutarou is wearing to hide the bloodstains on his white dress shirt underneath to get his attention.

"...what's going to happen if Papa fires you as our tutor? Do you know?" she asks uncertainly.

"Hm. Well, let's start with the obvious, and that's that I won't be teaching you girls anymore, which means I have no reason to stop by your place anymore," Fuutarou says plainly. "So Nino's gonna finally get what she wants after all this time."

A few of the quintuplets force a few chuckles, and Nino grows irritated at Fuutarou's statement.

"...did you _really _need to point _me _out on that? Go fuck yourself..." she swears under her breath, turning away from her tutor. Something about Fuutarou saying that about her genuinely pisses her off somehow.

"But your dad mentioned nothing about my other responsibilities in regards to the five of you," Fuutarou continues. "His words were 'if even one of the quintuplets fails, I will be terminating your contract _as their private tutor_'. So you'll still see me around, but it'll mainly be at school. And unless we specifically arranged to meet at some point, if you see me outside of school, it probably won't be for a good reason."

"So what you're saying is, if you stop working as our tutor, every time we see you, you'll end up with another new injury or something like that, right?" Ichika doesn't even bother trying to smile try to lighten up the mood. "...I can't exactly say that I'm a fan of that."

Fuutarou pauses.

"I agree," he says quietly. "I'm not a fan of making my friends worry about me."

Ichika's blue eyes dart to the side, over at Fuutarou.

"Things are only going to get harder from here on out for me, regardless of whether or not I end up keeping this whole tutoring thing going," he continues. "And your dad, being who he is, probably knows this too. There's a chance that he's aware of the situation that I'm in right now, and that he's asking me to test my skill as a tutor to make sure that I'm able to do everything that my contract with him contains with results that he finds satisfactory. So if it turns out that I can't tutor you girls adequately enough, what are the chances that I'll be able to focus on protecting you, too?"

"But that's - that's ridiculous. What if you can't do as good of a job protecting us because you're busy tutoring us and preparing lessons for us in the meantime?" Miku counter-argues.

"A good point, but when it comes to business, it's rare for people to care about the reasons behind why things happen if it's between two parties that aren't already in an intimate relationship or something. Your dad doesn't really give a shit about _how _I go about doing my job; when it comes to tutoring, all he cares about is that we're not doing anything explicitly shady like cheating or forging test documents or anything of the sort, and when it comes to bodyguarding, he doesn't give a shit at all what I do so long as it's nothing blatantly drastic or wrong. All Dr. Nakano cares about is whether or not the five of you are passing your tests like you should be, especially now that I'm here, and that you all stay safe under my watch."

Uesugi Fuutarou takes a look around at his quintuplet students.

"My point is this: in the likely event that I step down from my tutorship position, things are going to be a _lot _simpler for me. I don't need to worry about keeping up with class studies, I don't need to bother with crafting lessons, I don't need to grade any more papers or tests that I have you all take, and I don't need to go through the pain of making those tests in the first place. I'll admit, this tutoring thing was a lot harder than I expected - I went into this being all arrogant and stuff, thinking that this would be a walk in the fucking park. I'm a mage; my usual jobs consist of me doing stuff that's a thousand times more dangerous, of _course _I'd be able to handle tutoring a few kids, even if they are quintuplets."

Fuutarou shakes his head, which serves as a mental reset for his thoughts.

"No, I was wrong. Individually, if I could have done each part of my contract with you separately - as in, I _only _had to worry about tutoring you all or I _only _had to focus on keeping you all safe - I probably wouldn't have had any problems. But I didn't anticipate that having to do both at the same time would turn out to be so draining. And as a result, as of the last two weeks...I've been slipping up."

He then removes the pale blue cardigan prematurely, handing it back to its original owner.

"Again, sorry for getting it dirty," he says down at Miku.

"Wait, are you sure it's - ?" Miku inhales sharply as Nino and Itsuki again avert their eyes to avoid having to look at the dried bloodstains on his white dress shirt.

"The cut itself is fine; I just need to restitch it later tonight. And I don't need to worry about people noticing this, they're going to assume that I'm okay because I'm walking with a bunch of cute girls," Fuutarou replies swiftly and mechanically.

"Ah - Uesugi-san called us cute," Yotsuba points out.

"Wow. So you really _are _a proper high school guy, why didn't you say so earlier?" Ichika snorts a little, reaching over and ramming her fist lightly into her tutor's left arm. "Well, at least you know how devilishly cute we all are ~ "

Sighing and refusing to take Ichika's bait, Fuutarou stays on track with his own thoughts.

"Like I said, I've been slipping up. It's now made clear to me that I don't quite have what it takes yet to be both a good tutor and a good mage, to do both sides of my contract well. So whatever happens when we get our midterm scores back, I'm not going to be upset, and neither should any of you. Even if we didn't have enough time to make all the studying you've done worth it, the improvement that you've all shown, even Nino's and Itsuki's, are impressive in their own rights, because you all went from basically guaranteed failure to having a decent chance at passing your midterms. And don't take this the wrong way, but that's a kind of accomplishment that most people can't say they have."

Approaching a certain intersection, Fuutarou stops, causing his students to stop with him.

"...are you so sure that we're all going to fail? I mean, look, we all have our good subjects. With a little bit of luck, we can - " Ichika begins to say, but Fuutarou talks right over her.

"I'm not saying that I'm certain you're all gonna fail, but given the progress that everyone's made and where you all currently stand now, as your tutor, I feel obligated to tell you that I'll probably lose my job as your tutor."

Fuutarou raises a hand up to scratch his cheek a little.

"...I guess I'm just venting a little while I still have the chance," he determines.

"Well, if that is supposed to be venting, Nino could sure learn from you," Itsuki chuckles a little, drawing the ire of Nino beside her.

"Maybe. But she wouldn't be Nino if she did." Fuutarou gestures down the path perpendicular to the route they usually take to go to the penthouse. "My house's this way, so I'll be going on ahead. For now, we won't have any lessons so I can focus on recovery, and because it's a bit pointless for us to keep having lessons, given the situation right now. See you all at school next Monday."

The quintuplets bid him goodbye, but with much quieter and much less expressive ways than they normally do lately, and they watch him walk off on his own, with his quick and efficient gait making his profile smaller and smaller every time the quintuplets turn to watch him leave.

"Hey, guys..." Yotsuba wonders aloud softly, "...do you think Uesugi-san's tired of dealing with us, after all?"

To everyone's surprise, it's Nino who answers Yotsuba first.

"That guy's not being honest with himself, it's so obvious," Nino snaps quietly with a firm arm-fold to go with her remark. "One day he's joking around and having fun with us, the next day he's like this. You don't do that unless you can't make your mind up about the people you're with."

"But Fuutarou's different; his case is way more complicated," Miku points out. "We've never known someone like him before. And he leads a life that's so different from ours that...he might have different reasons to act the ways he does than what we expect."

"Regardless of why he's behaving like that, are you all fine with how this's turning out, then? We studied all this time, studied so much, just to have him go away like this? Are you girls fine with that?" Ichika briefly pauses on Nino. "...well, maybe except you."

"Oh, fucking quit it with that gag, already!" Nino hisses at Ichika, who parries her malicious intent with a stone-faced grin.

"Now you know what Itsuki feels whenever we make fun of how much she eats."

"Indeed. Welcome to the Bullied Quintuplet Club, Miss Nino, please enjoy your stay." Itsuki gives Nino a wide but empty smile as she puts a hand on her sister's shoulder.

"I don't _want _to be in this club in the first place!"

"But what exactly are we supposed to do, though? Because Uesugi-san's right, the only thing that matters now is how well we score on our midterms. If we don't do well on those, then...it's all over," Yotsuba laments softly.

"What do you mean? You're making it sound like this is something _we _have to decide on when it's not. This is _his _responsibility, let _him _handle it," Nino declares. "Hey, the crosswalk's going, let's go already."

Yotsuba and Itsuki follow after Nino as she leads the charge of the quintuplets across the pedestrian crossing lane to reach the other side of the intersection to continue on their way back home, while Ichika lags behind with Miku to bring up their rear.

"Hey, this isn't what you want, is it?" the eldest asks the third quintuplet. "You don't want it to all end just like this, do you?"

"...I don't know," Miku mumbles sadly. "On one hand, I don't want it to end. I want Fuutarou to keep teaching us; some of the most fun we've had lately is when he's around. But on the other hand, I also can't help but maybe think that Yotsuba has a point. What if Fuutarou is tired of us? And even if he isn't...you saw how he's been getting more and more hurt because of us the past two weeks. The fact that he's getting hurt out there while we were all studying for midterms isn't a coincidence, I don't think. Maybe for his sake, he shouldn't teach us anymore. Maybe we're just getting in his way. I don't want someone who's our friend constantly getting hurt like that. I get that it's his job to protect us and whatever, but...knowing that he needs to do that _on top of _making sure to tutor us as best he can, given his circumstances..."

Taking a deep breath, Miku lowers her gaze, letting her bangs shift and cover more of her eyes than usual.

"...I don't know if I can handle knowing that."

The two sisters at first walk together silently, but then another quintuplet comes to join them from ahead of them.

"I noticed you two talking on your own. If it's about Uesugi-san..." Yotsuba says quietly so that Nino and Itsuki, who are now talking about the parfait place that their tutor promised to take them to if they did well on their midterms, discuss what kinds of parfaits they'll go for.

"Er, well...we weren't really talking about much. Just...what we could do to...keep Fuutarou-kun as our tutor," Ichika says quickly, and Yotsuba also hangs her head alongside Miku, also at a loss for ideas. But contrary to her two sisters, Ichika hardens her resolve. "Then I guess this'll have to be a job for Ichika-onee-chan, huh?"

"Huh? Do you have something in mind?" Miku asks, and she and Yotsuba perk up at her.

"It's just a preliminary idea for now. It might work...but I'll wait until after we get our midterm scores back and decide what to do from there. You just need to sit back and have a little bit of faith..."


	41. Deception

Nakano Miku opens her eyes to peer into darkness that slowly clears a little to reveal the faint outlines of the ceiling in her room.

The digital clock on her desk reads 3:02 AM when she glances slowly over.

Miku made sure to use the bathroom before going to sleep for the night. She begins to groan faintly, because there's only one reason that she knows of that would explain why she's randomly woken up at three in the morning.

As expected, the pain returns to her eyes. The stabbing, biting, ripping sensation - she hasn't had another attack like this since the last time it happened, which she's grateful for, but it seems that her good fortune has run out, and now she must pay the price for it with interest. This time, not only do her eyes suffer the same tremendous pain as they always have, but to make things worse, her eyeballs feel like they're slowly freezing from the inside out, as though they're turning into dry ice inside her sockets.

"Hnnng...auuughhhh...aaaaaaaaaoooooowwwww...! ! !"

This freezing pain in her eyes now is brand new; she doesn't remember these attacks of hers ever coming with this feeling that her eyes are freezing inside her own skull. And as such, Miku is not mentally prepared to deal with this type of pain - as of late, she'd been getting better and better at enduring the pain, with her body and mind adjusting its levels of pain tolerance to help her withstand these attacks, but now that she's been thrown another curveball like this, Miku is dragged back in time, back to the days when she first began suffering from these attacks, when the most she could do was roll over in her bed with her face buried into her pillow and cry helplessly, quietly, and miserably.

"...please...stop...stop...stop..." Miku croaks, her cold tears already moistening her pillowcase as her arms, stricken with sleep paralysis yet again, are barely able to edge forward to clamp awkwardly around her pillow. "...I don't...want this...please, stop...! Hrrrk...!"

The moment the freezing sensation in her eyes encapsulates her eyeballs whole, the darkness induced in her vision by her pillowcase swallows her senses whole too, and Miku can sense her body transition mysteriously from her room to the other place that she's also familiar with, but not by choice.

Now that she's here, the tormented quintuplet finds that it's not just her eyes that feel cold; now, her entire body experiences the same stingingly chilling sensation. It can't be because of the environment...is what Miku thinks at first, but it's impossible for her to simply ignore the fact that it is raining in this ocean of blood noticeably harder than before. Is it because of this stronger rain that she's feeling cold like this for the first time, as far as she's aware? No, it can't be, because she's feeling cold from the inside out; this bloody rain alone cannot be responsible for this extra layer of torment that's seemed to have developed for seemingly no reason other than to torture her even further.

Once again, after a few moments of standing on this harrowing mirror sea of blood, Miku is forced to watch the same pale body from before surface before her. This time, her terror and pain are so great that they manage to force her arms into action, which cover her eyes with their hands so that she doesn't have to witness the mortifying scene of the body crumbling into a million pieces just to sink back down into the sea of blood.

Whatever or whoever is inflicting this phenomenon onto Miku must really have a grudge against her, because as soon as Miku sinks her face into her hands, she feels a sharp pain slashing through both of her wrists, and immediately after that, her arms feel a little bit lighter, and Miku can no longer feel her face with her hands. Opening her eyes, she discovers why: both of her hands are missing.

As her hands are slowly sinking into the sea by her feet as though they're sinking into a pit of molasses, Miku lets out a terrible scream of agony. Not from the physical pain, but from the horror of having her hands cut off. She can't even feel any pain coming from her wrists where her hands have been taken off, apart from the initial slash, but the pain might as well be there with how much she wants to scream. But that scream never comes; all Miku can do is open her mouth and twitch her lips about like a fish out of water, unable to make any noise with her vocal chords that have mysteriously gone AWOL. Now that she realizes, Miku doesn't remember being able to make any kind of sound in this place at all, so why did she think that screaming would have any different outcome?

But little did she know that the worst was yet to come. Instead of crumbling into shards of ice as it's done before, the floating, surfaced corpse of the beautiful woman begins to crack, like the surface ice of a frozen lake that is beginning to thaw with the advent of spring and warmer temperatures. Three times in total does the body crack, etching three horrible, jagged blue lines streaking across the width of the corpse.

For whatever reason, Miku cannot handle looking at these lines. These are just ordinary lines; they cannot possibly be more frightening to behold than that body of a woman that disturbingly disintegrates into ice or the mirror sea on which she stands that very well may be made up of nothing but human blood. Yet these lines that she sees cracking the body apart is what sets Miku's senses over the edge and tumbling down into the quagmire of instability - and a result, Miku once more feels her body retch and quake dangerously as she tries yet again to scream out her intensifying agony.

And as if to simply give her one last kick in the face while she's down, Miku happens to crank her neck downwards in her maddening agony when her shaking, constricted Mystic Eyes are forced to angle themselves downward, back at the bloody stumps of her arms where her hands used to be. While the stumps look as expected if one's hands are cut cleanly off, it's what coats the edges of the stumps that gets Miku, because they're outlined in the same blue color of the lines that mark the corpse floating on the water before her.

_"Miku! Miku, Miku!"  
_

Snapping her flooding eyes open, Miku finds herself in the arms of her sister Nino, who's staring with acute terror down at her younger sister. Nino has climbed onto Miku's bed and pulled her off her pillow in an effort to try to figure out what's going on, and eventually the low hisses that she's been using to call out her sister's name succeed against her expectations in getting Miku to come back to reality.

Miku's skin is much clammier than usual, this new bout of induced panic affecting her much more than the past couple of times that it's happened. Fat tears are still escaping from the corners of her eyes, and, worst of all, her icy blue Mystic Eyes are shining in the darkness, in full view of Nino's own purple Mystic Eyes.

Without warning, Miku buries her face into Nino's soft chest, causing Nino to yelp quietly in surprise, but as embarrassed as she feels that her sister is glomping her like this, Nino swallows her embarrassment for her sake and cradles her sister back, silently comforting her until Miku has calmed down enough and is able to pull away from her older sister on her own.

"Feeling better?" Nino asks softly just to make sure while Miku is wiping the rest of her tears away with her sleeves, and she nods back, but slowly and uncertainly. Nino takes the liberty of reaching back to Miku's desk nearby and turning on the desk lamp so that they can see each other as they talk, with the old blue paper crane still sitting directly underneath it on the lamp base. "Was that one of those...those things you have sometimes at night that you told Uesugi-kun about?"

"...yeah. I - " Miku hiccups terribly because of how hard she was crying, both into her pillow and into Nino's shirt. " - I'm okay now, it's...it's done for tonight."

Nino continues to somberly watch Miku keep drying her eyes in the dim light of the desk lamp behind them. She's not sure what to say in this kind of a situation, so Nino elects to stay silent to let Miku take the initiative once she's ready.

"...this is the first time you've come into my room to find me like this," Miku manages to force a small, sad smile back at her sister. "How did you know?"

The second quintuplet averts her Mystic Eyes uncomfortably, finding Miku looking at her with her own still active too.

"...don't laugh at me or anything, but...I...I, uh, felt something...going on in your room..." Nino mumbles, afraid of sounding like she's got the middle-school syndrome all of a sudden when she was the one who used to make fun of Miku and Yotsuba with because they're the ones who regularly watch anime. "...and I remembered that you have these panic attacks at night or something, so I came in to see if you were okay."

"Wait, but weren't _you _the one who used to make fun of me and Yotsuba back in middle school that we had chuunibyou?"

"Oh for fuck's sake, I was really hoping you wouldn't mention that!"

Nino's angry hiss provides Miku the therapeutic giggle that she needs to give her terrified and shell-shocked senses a much needed rest, and understanding this, Nino lets this one slide for Miku's sake.

"No, seriously...I woke up because I felt something going on here. I've...I've never had that happen before, I swear," Nino says somewhat breathlessly, holding a hand slowly over her face to shroud her eyes a little. "It's hard to describe...it's like I just..._knew _something was wrong. Geez, I really don't get all this magic stuff..."

Pulling her hand off her face, Nino locks eyes with her sister again, not letting the discomfort of her blurry vision being able to focus on only her sibling's Mystic Eyes clearly get in her way.

"I know this might seem a little weird for this time of night, especially since it's going to be Monday tomorrow and we have school, but...wanna head downstairs and have a cup of hot choco?" Nino offers.

"Hot choco? Er, well..." Miku tilts her head a little. "...you know I don't like chocolate, Nino."

"Then you can just have green tea or whatever."

"Is that okay, though? I feel like we might wake up the others..."

Nino shrugs widely. "I dunno, we might, but if we do, we'll just treat them to some hot chocolate or green tea, whatever."

Miku smiles gently at her sister in the dim light from her desk. Conversing with her like this has helped her get over the post-panic shock that she usually has to deal with much more quickly.

"You're just trying to make sure that I'm feeling better, right? Thank you, Nino," Miku says with soft earnest. "Even just talking like this a little bit with you's done so much more than what I could do alone."

"What, as in after you have one of these, uh, panic attacks?"

Miku nods.

"Do you even _do _anything?"

"...not really, no. I just...go use the bathroom to wash my face and stuff...and then come back and go to sleep, I guess..."

"So you don't really do anything."

"Like I said, not really."

Sighing deeply, Nino lowers her eyes down at her sister's blanket. "...I know we've fought a lot before, but...it'd make me feel bad knowing you were going through something like this and I just sat around knowing you were going through it and not doing anything about it." She swings her feet around and hops off Miku's bed lightly, pulling back her blanket for her sister. "C'mon."

The two of them gingerly tiptoe out of Miku's room and make their way downstairs, where they begin fixing themselves their beverages of choice after Nino puts her contacts back on in the bathroom.

"Also, hot chocolate at the end of May?" Miku questions, gazing down at the cup of hot chocolate that Nino is mixing. Remembering her nighttime escapade with their tutor, Nino jolts a little where she stands - she's quite thankful that they have the bathroom hallway light on as their only source of light so that Miku won't be as likely to see her face redden in the relative darkness.

"I-I just...felt like having something sweet. Y'know me, I like my sweet stuff," Nino says quickly, and the two sisters head over to the dark living room to sit down on the couch and enjoy their hot beverages together. "Besides, you brewed your tea hot, so what's the difference?"

"...that's true..." Miku murmurs in brief self-reflection as they both take initial sips of their drinks. "How have your eyes been so far, Nino? I hope they haven't been giving you trouble like mine have..."

Nino lowers her hot chocolate. "They haven't bothered me for a little while now, so I'm glad about that, yeah. But..."

"But what?"

"...seeing you tonight, how you were just a few moments ago..." Nino takes another sip of chocolate. "...I don't know if I can compare what happens to me with what happens to you."

Miku puts on an uncomfortable, sad smile. "I mean...we shouldn't try to compare them. It doesn't feel right..."

"Yeah, I get you..."

"Oh, add that to the short list of things the two of us can actually agree on."

Nino scowls over at her sister briefly. "I would _hope _that this would be something we'd be on the same page about."

Nodding, Miku also lowers her own hot cup of tea. "I might've told you this before, but I'd intended to keep those panic attacks to myself. If we'd never found out that we both had Mystic Eyes, nothing would have changed," she says. "I didn't want to bother everyone with what I was going through, you know? That, and...traditionally I've always been the weird one out among the five of us. Weird tastes, weird attitude, weird everything...so if you guys found this out about me too, then it would've just been one more thing that I would've made you all worry about."

"Well, that's certainly the case with me," Nino grumpily replies, watching the hot vapor rise from the contents of her own mug into the dark air of the early morning living room.

"Mm. Sorry..."

The sisters take a moment to enjoy their respective drinks, but Nino lowers hers first.

"Remember the last time we talked like this in the middle of the morning?" she asks Miku without looking over. "It was right after Uesugi-kun saved us from those crooks in the warehouse, and we were arguing about our stances on having him as our tutor."

"Of course. Why, what about it?"

Nino gazes straight ahead, pondering her next words as she stares into the empty television screen.

"...I remember arguing with you about how...you shouldn't let him tutor you because you wanted to help him with his family troubles and stuff. Y'know, his money situation and how he's super poor and he needs the tutoring job and all."

"Mhm. Yeah, I remember that."

"Well, I guess it's fair to say that...even if our problems aren't exactly the same or even comparable at all, I'm starting to understand...what he feels, as in what it feels like to have family problems on your mind."

"...what do you mean? As in, you were thinking about our Mystic Eyes?"

"I guess. It's...it's complicated, I don't know how to explain it..." Nino sighs heavily. "Ever since we found out that we both had Mystic Eyes, it's kinda been...on my mind, on and off. Because we both know that they're something that's been with us for a long time; they didn't just pop up out of nowhere, we just didn't know about them existing in the first place until really recently. Like...sometimes I'll find myself thinking about it in class or something, about...all the signs we got that our eyes were weird, and...how it...how it kind of makes sense how everything that's happened until now turned things out this way. I've just...been thinking about that a lot, and...and what everything means for me and the promise I made to everyone."

"Mmnn...yeah, I can see how that...would make you worried..." Miku agrees morosely.

"Haha, yeah. It was...all this was...something I didn't expect to have to deal with, naturally..."

Nino finally sets her mug on the glass tabletop so that she can focus on articulating her thoughts.

"I spent the past week or so thinking about it in class. Because on one hand, I don't want all this magic bullshit to tear us apart. We almost did that in that alleyway that you dragged my ass into...who knows what would've happened if things turned out worse than they did, now that I think back on that. I want us to stay the same as we've always been; I want us to stay together. Up until now, I was able to do that, or at least I think I was able to. But I don't know what to do about all this magic shit, you know? It's something we have absolutely no idea about, and it's not as if Uesugi-kun's teaching us anything magic-related and I don't really want him to either. But then on the other hand, if we just keep going on like this, we don't know what'll happen. We developed these fuckin' Mystic Eye things because we've probably had them for a long time and just never knew it until they popped up like they did, for both you and me. And we don't even know if the others have their own or not either. And if things keep developing like they have been and we're not doing anything to keep track of them, then we can't do anything but to rely on Uesugi-kun to guide us through them, and we're already letting him do that enough with our schoolwork."

Miku again awkwardly smiles at her sister. "Like I thought...you're still not too fond of Fuutarou tutoring us, are you?"

"Of course not! And besides, I said I'd only let him tutor us up until midterms, remember?" Nino hisses hotly, making sure to keep her voice down so that it can be contained to the first floor only. "So now that midterms are done, I'm done too!"

"Aw...but it was fun being able to study with everyone..." Miku murmurs sadly. "And Itsuki didn't say she was stopping either, even though you were the one who dragged her into it..."

"That's...that's Itsuki's decision, okay? I'll at least give Uesugi-kun his just due for the work he's done, so if Itsuki feels like she'll get results out of working with him, then that's her decision to make. But I'm still staying out of this, now that I've kept up my end of the deal."

"You're sure that you can keep up your studies on your end by yourself like that?"

"Obviously! My midterm scores'll show you that when we get them back tomorrow."

"Er, well, actually, you sit at the dinner table with us while we're studying with Fuutarou anyway, so I guess it's not that big of a deal..."

_"Then I'll go stay in my room, how's that!"_

Miku suddenly cracks up, causing Nino to turn to her sharply with an angry pair of normal blue eyes.

"W-What's so funny!"

"It's...nothing..." Forcing her amused smile to go away, Miku lowers her hand that's been hiding it until it can recede on its own. "It's just that...ever since we'd known Fuutarou past a few weeks, I think it's safe to say that you've been changing a little, Nino."

"Changing? How so?" the elder sibling demands.

"Well...before, you used to be the one who'd always make fun of me or the others, but you were never able to handle getting teased yourself. Now, you've been teasing me and the others less, and you've been able to banter with us more often, kind of like what we're doing right now."

Miku leans forward a little towards a hesitant Nino.

"...have you been hanging out with Fuutarou lately, Nino?" she asks softly, with another earnest smile.

This time, Nino can't possibly hide the blush that resurfaces on her face when Miku asks her this sudden question out of left field, and as she turns away quickly, Miku, spying it, lets out another calm giggle as Nino scrambles to deny such an allegation.

"N-No I haven't! You're so full of shit, Miku, there's no way that's right! I haven't changed at all! In fact, out of all five of us, I'm the one who's changed the least!" Nino grabs her long peachy-red hair to show her younger sister its sheer length. "See, look! Look at my hair, I haven't even cut it once all these years, ever since we had long hair as kids, and it's been like this for six years!"

"Well, people can change in more ways than just the length of their hair, you know."

"Even still, you're wrong!" Nino hotly folds her arms and turns away again, throwing her right leg over her left in indignation. "And that's just ridiculous...just because we've come to know Uesugi-kun, I've been changing...you couldn't have said a dumber thing if you tried."

Lowering her gaze as her reactionary indignation has a chance to settle back down, Nino twists the left corners of her lips, which Miku can see, sitting to Nino's left.

"I have a promise to keep to you guys...a promise that I still feel really strongly about, as you know," she murmurs tensely. "So out of all five of us, I won't change. I _can't _change..."

Nino then looks back up at her younger sister.

"...and sorry if this gets under your skin because I'm mentioning it here, but...what I saw happening to you earlier tonight is just another reason why I can't. If we don't stay together, if I don't keep everyone together...what's gonna happen to you? If we all go our separate ways, if Uesugi-kun comes in and puts a wedge in between us because of everything that he's doing, whatever it is, how do I know that you're not going to be fine on your own?"

"But I'm not a little kid anymore," Miku pouts at her older sister.

"I know you're not, but I'm not talking about basic-ass stuff like brushing your teeth or cooking for yourself or - " Pausing for a moment, Nino doubles back on her words when she realizes what she's saying aloud. "...er, I take back that last statement, I guess you really _can't _take care of yourself just yet - "

"Mmmmmmuuuu!"

Pouting even more intensely, Miku pulls her knees up to her chest with her feet on the edge of the couch.

"...what? I'm just saying you can't cook very well yet."

"...but I've been practicing with you."

"Yeah, but it only means you've still got a long way to go."

"I _know _that, but..."

Miku sighs into the top of her knees, letting her own peachy red hair drape about her sides.

"...but I know what you mean," she mutters with a more serious tone. "Even when we put the little things like cooking aside...I know where you were getting at just now. You don't need to tell me how much I made everyone worry, back when I had to be hospitalized during middle school."

Nino also looks away yet again, somewhat relieved that she didn't need to be one to bring that sensitive topic up. "Yeah...that's what I'm worried about. Now that we're probably going to get more and more involved in more magic stuff, that means that we'll have bigger problems to worry about...problems that could be just as serious as the time you got put in the hospital; maybe even worse, honestly. And who knows, with how much Uesugi-kun's been getting hurt, we might not know it, but those kinds of problems could be closer to our doorstep than we think, and right now we're the only ones who know we've got these Mystic Eye thingies, which means we only have each other to rely on if we don't want to drag the others into this, right?"

"So you _do _care about Fuutarou."

"N-No, I don't, don't you dare twist my words around! I'm just using him as an _observation_, goddamn it!"

After giggling a little bit more, Miku returns to her somber state more quickly than before.

"...Nino, how do you feel about...learning more about magic?" Miku ventures to her sister, causing her to scowl back at her.

"Pretty sure you can guess the answer to that one, no?"

"...yeah, like I thought."

"So you want to after all, then? I guess it's just to be expected, coming from an otaku like you..."

"I-It doesn't have anything to do with that! Well, uh...maybe just a little..."

"So it's got _everything _to do with that."

"Geez!...but really, um...I _have _thought about maybe trying to convince Fuutarou to...teach me magecraft whenever he can."

"Then why though? He's already said lots of times that he's got no intention of teaching us stuff like that, and for as much as I disagree with him on most things, that's the one thing I'm glad I agree with him on."

"Because...I don't want to wait around for things to happen. The fact that we've gone through these last few years not even knowing we're mages ourselves doesn't really help, either, even if we could've never known or figured it out on our own. But I get the feeling that Fuutarou showing up the way he did, how we discovered these Mystic Eyes that we've had all this time...it's probably not just a coincidence. And because of that, I want to do something about it. Like you said, Nino, there are still lots of things about me that make me dependent on everyone to get by, and I know that I can't just sit around and continue on like this, which is the main reason why I started asking you to teach me how to cook."

Miku's eyes meet Nino's eyes.

"I know that this might end up ruining your promise. But if we really are mages, if our Mystic Eyes really can give us the power to do something, whatever that something may be, I want to learn about it. I want to know the truth about myself, if it'll give me the power to...be something more, I guess. I don't want to sit in my room like tonight, all scared and helpless because something's been happening to me for the last couple of years that I don't understand. And now that we have a classmate and a friend who knows stuff about magic, I want to invest myself in this."

"But you saw how banged up Uesugi-kun's gotten over the past two or three weeks or so. You really wanna end up like him? Itsuki even mentioned yesterday at dinner when we asked her more about it that he even needed to go to the hospital himself that night when he brought her back home. As your older sister, I don't want you to keep going _back _to the hospital, once is more than enough!"

"Older sister by, what, barely a few minutes or something," Miku scoffs.

"Oh c'mon, Miku, you get what I mean."

"What _I _don't get it why you don't feel the same here," Miku rebuts. "You said it yourself, didn't you? You said that you're worried about all this magic stuff, right? And how it's going to develop from now on. If you're so worried, why are you so against asking Fuutarou to teach us magic?"

"Like I said, because you know damn well he's not going to!"

"I'm not talking about what Fuutarou's going to say, I'm asking about _you_. Do I have to point this out to you, Nino? If you've been thinking about all this magic stuff and all the potential problems it could cause for us as a family, and how we have only each other to rely on, do you think we'll be able to hold our own against something that we have no knowledge about right now? And if you could have your way, you wouldn't even have Fuutarou around to protect us because you don't want him hanging out around us. Which would mean that we'd need to rely on each other even more than before, right? Do you think that as we are, we'll be able to hold our own against whatever problems we have to take care of ourselves that Fuutarou's usually taking care of for us out there in the city? And besides, just because he says no doesn't mean he can't change his mind. And lately, he's been getting more comfortable talking about magic-related stuff with us, haven't you noticed? So it's not a total impossibility."

Miku's scathing questions drill into Nino's conscience harder and harder with each inquiry that the latter cannot answer.

"So is it because you think that you can handle whatever problems we'll have regarding magic in the future by yourself? Or just as we quintuplets are right now? Now, when the most the two of us do is roll around in bed not knowing what our own eyes are doing to us in the middle of the night like what happened to me just half an hour ago? Might I remind _you_, Nino, about why Fuutarou needed to come save us from that warehouse in the first place!"

"You know what, _I've had enough!"_

Suddenly getting up from the couch, Nino storms away from the living room, not even bothering to put her mug away that still sits on the glass tabletop or drink the rest of the hot chocolate still remaining in the mug. Without turning to watch her sister leave, Miku listens to her angry but manually muffled footsteps as they climb up the stairs and vanish behind the crisp, quiet snapping of a door against its hinges as it closes behind Nino. The third quintuplet simply takes a sip of her green tea, but as she lowers her hands holding the cup, she closes her eyes tiredly and rests the back of her head against the couch pillow she's leaning against.

For all the talk she gave Nino about how much she's changed as of late, perhaps there's still one thing that won't change just yet.

Once she's done chuckling to herself over this, the third quintuplet lets her usual frown return to her face. For all the determination that she feels, the motivation that she can scrounge up in her desired pursuit of magical knowledge, Miku knows that this isn't without a fair share of hesitation on her part. What if Nino and Fuutarou are right? What if involving herself with magic really isn't worth it? They've all seen the injuries that their tutor and classmate has been sustaining recently, trying to juggle both their studies and his own magework at the same time, and she certainly doesn't want to be hurt like that, and neither can she imagine what horrors and tragedies Fuutarou has seen in his own history of magework.

But the combination of seeing Fuutarou hurt like that and the knowledge that he is protecting her and her sisters mainly from the shadows inspires her to want to try her hand at it anyway. It just doesn't make any sense to her why she wouldn't at least _want _to; as a girl whose only talents are playing video games, listening to music, watching anime, and being a shut-in girl, she sees a potentially new avenue that could provide an actually useful talent that she could obtain to give back to her sisters for all the things that they've done for her, and all the more so since Nino clearly doesn't want to and none of their sisters, as far as they're aware, have any magical self-awareness yet.

For all the motivation that she currently has, though, Miku still finds a reason to hesitate: is all this worth ruining her relationship with Nino? Again, maybe she's right; maybe they really ought to leave all this magic stuff to Fuutarou to handle on his own. After all, up until now, they've never had a problem that involved magic, right? Unless she counts her own hospitalization, but she can't really do that. Maybe this is just a stage of their lives where they just _happen _to have bad guys coming after them, and once Fuutarou gets rid of them, their lives go back to normal as before; maybe their Mystic Eyes might keep giving them some trouble, but maybe they just stay the way they are for the rest of their lives, since as they are, they don't terribly affect Nino's or Miku's daily lives much. Or even worse, what if it's not just Nino's life she ruins by wanting to pursue a focus on magecraft; what if it's rest of her family's lives that she'll be changing just because she sees an opportunity to banish her own sense of inadequacy once and for all?

Feeling her sleepiness finally catch up to her, Miku briefly sits on the couch, still with her eyes closed, and remains this way for a few minutes.

"...Mama..."

And with that, she urges herself off the couch to return her and her sister's cups to the kitchen sink before brushing her teeth again and doing her business in the bathroom before returning to her room for the rest of the night.

In the furthest room from the top of the stairs, however, Nakano Itsuki listens to Miku's door shut quietly after her. Having awoken to Nino barging into Miku's room earlier, Itsuki was tempted to go investigate and see what the matter was, but she was too sleepy to get out of her warm and comfy bed to bother, though she did wonder to herself how Nino was able to get into Miku's room when the quintuplets normally all lock their doors at night when they go to bed. But before she could fall back asleep, she heard the two of them emerge from Miku's room and head downstairs, which really piqued her interest and compelled her to open her own door to tiptoe outside onto the second floor while Nino and Miku were busy in the kitchen so that she could sit behind the tall railing and eavesdrop on her two older sisters downstairs. And once Nino said that she was done talking to Miku, Itsuki quickly dived back into her own room and pushed her door shut, but not all the way into the doorframe to make noise and give herself away. If Nino had been paying attention when she was returning to her room, she probably could have seen Itsuki's door left slightly ajar, but given her irritation, she did not notice, and Itsuki was able to slowly close the door all the way before Miku returned to her own room too.

Still sitting on the floor of her room next to the door, Itsuki has not yet budged. She was able to listen in on her sisters' entire conversation; not a single detail has been spared. Now, with a wealth of information that she had no idea existed, Itsuki slowly blinks down at the floor with everything that she's heard still swimming around in her head because she has no idea where to even begin processing it all. After a few minutes, though, she does slip back into her bed, pulling her warm covers over herself to try to coax herself to sleep, but Itsuki knows that she won't be able to do so, at least not so soon...

* * *

The next afternoon, with the final bell of school having rung to dismiss the students from their first day of school after the first set of midterms for the year, Uesugi Fuutarou stands before the assembled quintuplets in the school library, with the girls seated at a table big enough to accommodate their large number.

"Mmmkay, we're all here," the young tutor nods at his students. "Now it's time to see if I get to keep my job or not."

The quintuplets all chuckle with varying degrees of awkwardness, with one exception.

"I do not wish to show you my scores."

Fuutarou turns to the youngest quintuplet sitting to his left, next to Nino.

"And why not?" Fuutarou asks calmly.

"Because...one's test scores are not meant to be shared with others, as they are personal information. Therefore, I absolutely refuse to show you."

Pursing her lips together as best she can, Itsuki entrenches herself into her chair, bracing for the inevitable dispute that she's set up for herself.

Fuutarou simply breaks out a small grin of amusement.

"Personal information, you say...and you say this to a classmate of yours who was hired to be your tutor and has spent anywhere from two to six hours almost every weekday for the past seven weeks with only a few exceptions?" he points out.

"He's got a point, Itsuki," Ichika shrugs with a smile of her own as well. "When it comes to our academics, there's practically nothing he doesn't know. Even if we don't show him our midterm scores today, I'm sure he'll find a way to grab them. Probably through Dad, to be honest, I'm sure Dad has a way of getting them from the school if he really wants to."

"Uuuu..." Itsuki moans under her breath. "...I knew it..."

"You _knew _you wouldn't be able to hide your scores from me, yet you tried anyway?" Fuutarou sighs lightly. "Well, I can at least commend your efforts...but enough of that, I've already prepared myself to see the results. Show your scores to me, please."

The girls rummage through their bags and/or backpacks to fetch their midterm results papers and test sheets, and on the count five, they all flip them right-side up and push them towards their tutor for him to inspect. From left to right, their scores correspond to the subjects of Japanese Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and English.

Nakano Ichika: 25, 45, 22, 20, 28. Combined score: 140.

Nakano Nino: 20, 18, 26, 16, 51. Combined score: 131.

Nakano Miku: 24, 29, 28, 72, 10. Combined score: 163.

Nakano Yotsuba: 32, 5, 20, 28, 19. Combined score: 104.

Nakano Itsuki: 29, 29, 60, 21, 25. Combined score: 164.

"Only managed to pass math," Ichika sighs with a defeated smile on her face this time. "It's the best that I can do right now..."

"Failed everything but English, as expected," Nino says with crossed arms. "And no, before you even ask, I didn't purposefully fail the others."

"I got my highest score ever on Social Studies," Miku says, her voice filled with conflicted emotions, "but math and science...they were so close..."

"Honestly, I don't even know how I scored this high, these are like the best scores I've ever gotten, ehehe ~ !" Yotsuba giggles merrily. "I guess a lot of my guesses in Language Arts and Social Studies paid off."

"Science was my sole passing grade, perhaps to nobody's surprise..." Itsuki mumbles dejectedly. "But I _almost _passed Language Arts and math...ugh, I have so many regrets with some of the answers I went with...if only I had taken the time to double-check my answers..."

Thoroughly scanning their results and flipping through their exam sheets as if he were a human scanning machine memorizing them, Fuutarou looks up at the quintuplets after having taken a good look through them.

"Hm. I guess to address the elephant in the room first, you scored the highest this time around, Itsuki," the tutor points out, indicating her combined score physically with his index finger. "You beat Miku by literally one point."

"Whoa ~ Itsuki managed to outscore Miku this time around? That's pretty rare, isn't it?" Ichika gives Itsuki a little series of rapid claps in congratulations.

"It's happened before. And Itsuki's been studying hard on her own all this time as well," Miku nods, accepting her narrow defeat gracefully.

"N-No, I...I was simply fortunate that there were a lot of easy questions for me to answer in Science. That, and there were quite a few questions that were similar to each other between Science and Mathematics, so I was able to score higher than usual in Math because of that," Itsuki hurriedly explains. "I do not think this will be a recurring theme; please do not get used to this. Also, I only beat Miku by just one point, that is nothing to be proud of!"

"Awww, c'mon, Itsuki, it's okay to brag a little bit here and there ~ " Yotsuba reassures her younger sister with a bright smile, but Itsuki continues to cast doubt from her face.

"Though, if I may be a little cathartic for a second..." Fuutarou sighs deeply, hanging his head over the quintuplets' results sheets as he leans on the edge of the table with his hands, "...this reminded me again just how dumb all of you are. I know we didn't have that much time to work with, but still..."

"Oh, shut it, you," Nino snaps quietly, pouting a little back up at her tutor as the rest of the quintuplets either grin back sheepishly or, in Itsuki's case, frown awkwardly. "What did you expect us to get then, all 100's?"

"Obviously not. But there _was _a part of me that was at least hoping you girls would be able to pass more than just _one subject each..."_

"Hm...well, you do have a point, it really is totally like us that we'd all pass different subjects," Nino admits as she glances back at their aggregated results.

"That, and compared to the combined 100 points we got on Fuutarou's mock exam that he had us take a month and a half ago..." Miku smiles gently, which Fuutarou responds to.

"Yeah - while I did call all of you dumb, I can't say that without also pointing out that you all have shown some serious improvement ever since we started working together seven weeks ago," the young tutor declares before glancing directly over to Ichika to go down the line. "Ichika, I see that you're still too unconcerned with individual questions; it's a problem I've noticed with your test-taking and I've told you about it. You know the formulas, but because of how you approach individual questions nonchalantly like this, you get questions wrong because you either don't apply the formulas correctly or you just forget about them entirely. Take your time and go through each question thoroughly."

"Ah...okay, gotcha ~ " Ichika continues to smile up at her tutor, though she gives her cheek a sheepish scratch.

"Nino, I see that your vocabulary still needs work. Even though realistically you probably won't use a lot of these words when you're just speaking everyday, conversational English, that doesn't mean you get to neglect studying the ones you'll need to know for an exam like this. Make sure to brush up on vocabulary that you'll be tested on, and not just words you hear from TV shows and whatnot."

"Grr...fine, I get it, I get it..." Nino grumbles back, turning her gaze away sharply.

"Miku, you scored super high on a test that even I thought was pretty difficult for the average student here; I see that you got pretty much every question that was Sengoku Jidai-related right, and there were a lot of them in this test. But just like what I told Nino, don't neglect to study other aspects of Social Studies in case we get a test that isn't so heavy on the Sengoku questions like this one."

"O-Okay..." Suddenly turning a little red in the face, Miku ducks her chin into her collar so that her Audio-Technica headphones can wrap themselves around her cheeks.

"Yotsuba, you have a tendency to give up way too fast and just resort to guessing right away, I see a lot of questions that I know you can answer if you just slowed down and took your time with them to think them through; you probably could have even passed Social Studies if you did that. Fight your bad habits of guessing on everything you're not sure about and only do it if you truly have no idea how to solve the question, alright?"

"Yup, aye-aye, sir!" Yotsuba cheerfully responds with an enthusiastic salute.

"And Itsuki, you had the exact opposite problem: I see that you actually weren't able to answer a lot of the questions towards the end because you ran out of time, and that tells me that you spent too much time on each individual question in the first halves of your tests because you weren't confident in your answers."

"Ugh...I am...I am aware of that problem of mine..." Itsuki mutters. "I get...a little nervous during actual examinations like this...so I could not help myself and kept second-guessing myself..."

"At least you know about it, so remember how you felt during this exam and make sure not to recreate that. Since you were able to take the practice tests that I gave you just fine, that's a kind of problem you can only really solve whenever we have an exam at school, so not all that frequently, but it will be something you'll get used to with time. That, and you should try to come up with a way to instill confidence in yourself going into an exam so that you can move on from a question comfortably."

Fuutarou surveys his students one last time.

"You're all on the right track. Like I said, showing this much improvement in just seven weeks is nothing short of impressive, especially for the lot of you who couldn't break a hundred points combined before I started working with you. The hard part from now on, though, is whether or not you'll be able to maintain this rate of improvement even without me. It'll be difficult, for sure, but if Itsuki was able to study on her own most of the time for the past seven weeks and still manage to outscore Miku in these midterms, you all can pull off the same thing."

With their tutor's tone noticeably shifting, whatever smiles that are remaining on the quintuplets' faces are now evaporated.

"...so...you'll really be gone, then...?" Miku asks, her voice cracking as she speaks.

"I can't imagine how he'd be able to convince Dad to let him stay when we got scores like these. That, and Fuutarou-kun's a man of his word," Ichika sighs softly. "Isn't that right, Fuutarou-kun?"

"...'a man of my word' is a bit generous for my tastes, but sure, let's go with that, I suppose," Fuutarou shrugs slightly. "But yes, I will have to report these scores to your dad. And let's just say, knowing him a little bit myself, I can't imagine what kind of a world we'd have to live in where your dad thinks these scores are acceptable."

"But couldn't you explain to him how you'd gotten injured leading up to midterms? About how busy you were other stuff?" Miku tries to bargain with her tutor, but Itsuki shakes her head in Fuutarou's place.

"Father's word is absolute; you know this, Miku. If the condition for Uesugi-kun to retain his post as our tutor was for us to pass all the subjects, then that is that," Itsuki mutters with melancholic sentiment. "I am unsure what he can do by this point."

"Yep, and there you have it. And let me reiterate: the way your midterms turned out, it's no one's fault but mine," Fuutarou insists. "Maybe I can fault Nino and Itsuki on the grounds of a lack of cooperation for the first five or so weeks, but considering how closely your scores turned out with everyone else's, I don't know how strong of an argument that would be for me now. For the others, obviously cooperation wasn't an issue at all. And even when everyone got together to study, both Nino and Itsuki cooperated with me just as well as everyone else did."

"Well, Nino did give you an attitude the whole way," Yotsuba points out, causing her sisters to share a round of laughter at Nino's embarrassed expense.

"Yeah, she might've, but she still took the tests I gave her and answered my questions whenever I asked her. Maybe that won't fly with other tutors, but for someone like me who's used to dealing with bad guys with potty mouths, that's a non-factor for me personally."

"Yeah, says another potty-mouth right fuckin' here," Nino gripes back.

"I mean, like they say, it takes one to know one."

As the quintuplets all laugh at Nino almost immediately again, Fuutarou's Google Pixel 3 begins to vibrate in his pocket, and he pulls it out to see who it is and smirks a little when he reads the name of the caller.

"...and what do you know, just on time," he chortles. "It's your dad. Time for the reckoning, girls..."

The quintuplets all look on tensely, even Nino, as their tutor taps his phone on and answers the call.

"Good afternoon, Doctor," Fuutarou says, his voice steeling itself now that he's addressing the girls' father.

_"The same to you. I'd like to ask about my girls' midterm scores, as we agreed. I was actually debating whether or not I would ask my daughters directly for their scores, but we did have that talk from last time, if you recall."_

"Yeah...can't say I could forget about that one so easily," Fuutarou replies sarcastically. Most of the quintuplets begin to fidget in their chairs; they've never heard their classmate sound so..._spiteful _towards someone before.

_"And in case you were thinking about lying to me about their scores, just remember that I can ask the school board for their results directly."_

"Ah, yes, because _lying to my clients _is what I'm known for when contracting with my clientele, I'd like to ask where you got _that _idea from...but some other time. But before I tell you their scores, I'd just like to say while I have the chance that maybe it would've been better off for the girls if you got them a more, how should I say, _dedicated _tutor to work with them next time."

_"Mhm. So then..."_

"Your girls f - "

Standing up suddenly and pushing her chair backwards, Nino immediately reaches out and, with her surprising strength, pulls Fuutarou towards herself so that she can reach over with her left hand and snatch her tutor's phone right out of his hand. Her sisters look on in partial alarm as she resumes the call in Fuutarou's stead.

"Papa? Sorry about that, this is Nino," the second quintuplet says clearly to make herself heard to her dad. "I just wanna ask you one thing: why did you give that kind of a condition to him? I'm just curious."

_"I have a responsibility as a parent to see you move through school and ensure that you all graduate properly and become good members of society. The reason why I hired a tutor for you and your sisters was because your scores did not reflect that you would be able to do so on your own, so as your father, I made the decision to hire external help to address the situation. However, it is also my responsibility as a parent to make sure that the help I enlist for my daughters is adequate and is doing the job I have intended for it to do; if the tutor I have hired for you is not doing a good enough job that I want, I will see to it that he is replaced with a better one. I think you will agree with me, Nino, that this is a natural course of action for me to take."_

Nino listens patiently to her dad as he takes his time to elaborate to her.

"So it's for our sakes that you did that, right? Thank you, Papa, that means a lot to us, but I don't think you can tell if he's suitable for us by numbers alone."

_"But it is the best method of evaluation. Is it not?"_

Nino's lower lip twitches hard.

"No, you're right," she says crisply, "and in that case, I'll tell you how we did myself."

Turning to face the rest of her sisters, Nino refocuses her blue contacted eyes.

"The five of us avoided failing all five subjects," she declares strongly.

The quintuplets blink back up at Nino, stunned. Fuutarou says nothing.

_"...hm. Is that so..."_

"I'm not lying to you, Papa," Nino says, driving the nail home.

_"Then I see. Since this is you telling me this, Nino, I will trust your word. Kindly inform Uesugi-kun that he has done well to get you all this far, and make sure to continue working hard with him."_

"We will. Thanks, Papa."

After her goodbye, Nino immediately hangs up before her dad has a chance to say anything else and hands the phone calmly back to its owner, who eyes her with furrowed brows.

"Think about it," the second quintuplet answers him with a hand on her hip. "Ichika passed math; I passed English; Miku passed Social Studies; Yotsuba passed Language Arts; and Itsuki passed Science. Altogether, we passed all five subjects. I really wasn't lying to him."

Fuutarou suddenly snorts rather loudly, and Nino glares scathingly at him.

"I saved your ass from getting the boot from Papa, and _that's _your first reaction? Show some fucking gratefulness, you son of a bitch!" Nino hisses angrily at him.

"It's not that I'm _ungrateful_, it's just...I didn't know you had the guts to be able to give your dad a technical answer like that," Fuutarou grins approvingly at his student. "Well played, Nino. You were able to do what even I didn't dare to."

Her tutor's genuine words of praise take Nino by surprise, and she quickly looks away to her left, away from everyone else, as she gives her long hair a quick tussle.

"Y-You're looking too deep into it, I didn't do anything special or anything. And anyway, in the end, I was able to get Papa off your case for a little bit longer by tricking him a little bit, and it probably won't work again, not against someone like him."

Nino points back up at Fuutarou, gazing up at him with one eye open.

"...just make it true next time," she says quietly but clearly.

Grinning back with renewed motivation, the young mage nods firmly.

"You got it," he replies, gazing straight back into Nino's blue eye. Once again, Nino blinks quickly, finding herself a little short of breath all of a sudden, and she turns her face away a second time to break eye contact.

"Yaaaaay ~ ! Then that means we get to keep studying with Uesugi-san, right?" Yotsuba cheers, with Miku next to her breathing a big sigh of relief.

"Seems like it, if your dad ain't gonna fire me right away." Fuutarou turns to the rest of the quints. "And make sure to thank Nino, because she basically saved my job just now."

So the quintuplets immediately break into a chorus of "Thank you, Ninooooo ~ " to her chagrin.

"W-What's with you idiots?! I _said _I didn't do anything special! Stop acting like it is!" she gripes back at everyone before spinning back to her tutor. "Speaking of which, Uesugi-kun, you _soooo _owe me big time for saving your ass!"

"So what, you want me to get you something? I'm a broke-ass motherfucker, whatever you want's probably gonna be way too damn expensive."

"You said it yourself, I don't even _want _anything from you, your tastes are probably dirt-cheap anyway with how you think about money all the time!"

"That's also true." Fuutarou folds his arms at Nino, however. "But why did you decide to trick your dad like that? Weren't you the one who wanted me to quit tutoring your sisters the most in the beginning? What changed between then and now?"

"Why, you want me to call Papa and tell him the truth?" Nino threatens, but Fuutarou isn't fazed and calls her bluff.

"Sure, go ahead if you really want, I came to school today expecting to lose half my job by the time I walked out. I just want to know why you, of all people, went out of your way to give me a hand."

"That's right, Fuutarou-kun's got a good point, Nino," Ichika calls over to the two of them. "You spent all those weeks sitting at the dinner table listening in on our lessons, right? Maybe you've become a kind of...secret admirer? Ahahaha ~ !"

"B-B-_Bullshit! _I am _NOT_ a dumb fucking _secret admirer!" _Nino starts to yell back at her older sister but lowers her voice when Fuutarou hisses at her with a quick "shhh!" to remind her that they're still in the school library, even if school has ended for the day.

"Then if it's not because of that, why?" Fuutarou presses her on.

"It was because of...y'know, your injuries, okay? I'll admit it," Nino pouts, not even looking back at Fuutarou as she talks. "It's obvious that the other half of your job in regards to us is really dangerous; we've seen it firsthand ourselves. At first, I thought you were just some kind of...Superman, I guess, as in you were some high school prodigy who could do it all, get good grades and run around the city like a superhero to fight bad guys and never be touched. But that's not the case anymore; you can get hurt and you _have _gotten hurt, yet you kept sticking with us to teach us and all that because it was your responsibility. Even on the day of our midterms, when it was your fault that we were going to be late for school, you still managed to get us into school and take our midterms without a hitch because of your quick thinking and your...teleporting things, I guess. As much as I don't like you tutoring my sisters so much like you have been, and I still don't for the record, even I'd feel bad if all that effort you've committed to us for the past two weeks went to waste just because we're a bunch of stupid idiots who can't pass tests to save our lives."

"That so? Appreciate the sentiments, then."

Nino gawks dramatically at Fuutarou, swinging around to face him yet again.

"'Appreciate the sentiments, then'? Some gratefulness _that _is!"

Sighing exasperatedly, Fuutarou scratches the back of his head. "You should kinda expect that outta me by this point, no? I'm just the kinda dude who expects the worst to happen no matter what, to a fault, even. And I don't really take to receiving praise all that well myself. It's either tell me what I did wrong with my job or just tell me 'good job' so that I know to keep doing whatever I'm doing."

"But you were the one who asked me why I went through the trouble of talking to Papa!"

"Yeah, I did. Now I know. Thanks a lot, Nino, for giving me a second chance."

The last three words echo through Nino's ears as the quintuplets' tutor turns to the rest of the girls to discuss their tutoring plans from here on out. A second chance...Nino wants to tell him that that wasn't her intention, but he's busy talking to the others now. Was that what she intended, though? Did she want to give him a second chance? But then that would imply that she _wanted _him to stick around for a little bit longer, when she wants the exact opposite of having him leave. But then if that's the case, wouldn't her reasons for deceiving her dad like she did be null and void? She said that she felt bad for him because of how he's been having to keep up with both halves of his contract with the Nakanos, but just how much of that is true?

"Then, since we're already at the library, wanna review our tests right now?" Ichika suggests eagerly, stoked that Fuutarou will remain their tutor for at least up until their first trimester finals.

"Yeah, that's a good idea - reviewing tests is one of the best forms of studying you can do, after all. But!" Fuutarou holds up a finger to the girls. "It doesn't have to be right away. Since Nino was kind enough to recognize the efforts I've been putting into tutoring everyone through the past two weeks, I'd like to do the same for you all for showing such huge improvements in such a short amount of time. I made a promise earlier to Itsuki the night I had to escort her home that I'd take everyone out to a parfait place that she told me about, but unfortunately I'm kinda short on cash, so I'm gonna have to ask you all to give me some time on that until your dad pays me for this month. But in the meantime, we can head out and grab some snacks on the way to your place and just kick back and relax for today."

"E-Eh!? Fuutarou-kun's suggesting that we take a day off that we don't have to and just be lazy all day? _Who are you, and what've you done with the REAL Fuutarou-kun!?" _Ichika cries jokingly, getting up from her own seat and shaking her tutor to and fro.

"That's right, we wanna study some more with you, Fuutarou," Miku pouts back at her tutor from across the table.

Fuutarou puts on a very concerned look as Ichika keeps gently shaking him back and forth. "Aaaah, shit, this is bad...I might've made you all study so much you all can't think of doing anything _but _studying..."

"Geh...maybe I should've told Papa the truth after all...?" Nino broods to herself.

"Ah, Nino, please don't, ehehe..." Yotsuba chuckles awkwardly, and the quintuplets pack up their things to head out of school with their tutor to stop by the Family Mart convenience store on their way home to pick up snacks.

"By the way, what was your score, Uesugi-san?" Yotsuba asks Fuutarou as they head towards the edge of campus.

"Ah, about that...I, too, reserve the right to withhold such information to third parties."

"How unfair, Uesugi-kun! When you were the one who told me to show mine!"

"...you're not gonna like what you see anyway. But if you're so curious...here."

"Aha, we shouldn't have even asked...all perfect scores..."

"Aaaah, how embarrassing..."

"You barely sound embarrassed. Is that like a gag of yours or something?"

"If I cared enough about it, maybe..."


	42. A Good Big Sister

_Knock, knock, knock._

"Enter."

The door to Dr. Nakano Maruo's office in the city hospital clacks open and shortly clacks shut, and the head physician turns in his office chair just in time to find Uesugi Fuutarou enter with a white school binder that's rather stuffed with a fat stack of papers riding inside.

"Your associates seem to have taken their sweet time with this," the doctor remarks casually, turning fully to his employee to give him his full attention as Fuutarou seats himself with the usual plastic folding chair that he pulls over from the nearby wall against which it rests when not in use.

"That's how it goes for no-names like me," Fuutarou grumbles in annoyance. "It's nice that, given the magical crisis the world's in right now, the Clock Tower's opened up its services to the general magical populace when it otherwise wouldn't, but as you might imagine, the bigger magical families and the ones who can afford to pay bigger bucks for their services get priority. Not much a poor bastard like me can do about that except swing my dick around and wait for them to get back to me."

Dr. Nakano gestures slightly at Fuutarou. "I have heard about this...Clock Tower. You will forgive me for asking this as an outsider, but my understanding of the Clock Tower is that they are quite the self-preservative organization."

"Self-serving would be the more correct term, honestly. And the real name for their organization's the Mage's Association; these days, mages like me refer to the Association as just the 'Clock Tower' since that's where their headquarters and main branch are located in London. That way, it's easier for mages to discuss business related to them out in public so that people who accidentally overhear don't think twice about what they heard; 'Clock Tower' sounds a lot more benign than 'Mage's Association', even if most people will just think we're talking a bunch of crap."

"Because you are afraid of accidentally introducing unwanted outsiders into the world of magecraft?"

"The Association is, despite the fact that magic is dying in this world. While personally I don't care too much since that's pretty similar to how I got my own start as a mage, I do have to care a _little _bit since another mage running around is potentially another enemy."

"Like Shirazumi Rio."

"Yeah, you get it."

Fuutarou flips open the cover of the binder to reveal the first page of the binder's immense stack of contents.

"In any case, the Clock Tower boys got back to me on the Heisei samples I sent them a month ago or so...maybe even two months by this point."

"Mhm. So what did they find?" Doctor Nakano eyes the binder's title page with keen interest for a moment before glancing back over at the tutor he's hired for his daughters, who clears his throat and takes a somewhat deep breath.

"Long story short, as I thought might be the case, they found that the Heisei samples I captured off Rio's boys two months ago when they tried going after the girls are an even more magically altered drug that's even more dangerous than the usual Heisei we've seen and dealt with over the past year or so. The tests that they conducted produced similar, if not identical, results to the ones I got from my own little testing I did, in that as a liquid-based drug, if it's injected directly into a person's bloodstream, it will cause immense cellular death on an irreversible scale, which is a fancy way of saying once you've injected it, you're fucking dead in a few minutes; it's basically melting you from the inside out. The rate of cellular death depends on the dosage, but it only takes a few millimeters of the drug to reach a fatal dose which can kill you."

Fuutarou raises a finger.

"However, what the Clock Tower was able to test that I obviously couldn't was the effects that this liquid Heisei has on magical entities; my own testing was limited to test subjects who were _not _mages and thus had no mana circulation. Liquid Heisei does _not _affect magical entities in the same way that non-magical entities are, and if nothing else, at least it doesn't _kill _them, at least not right away. But they report that it _does _react strongly with mana and causes the mana to amplify erratically, which can result in dangerously stronger acts of magecraft, like spells and runes and the like. Some of their tests showed that sometimes, the drug reacted so strongly with mana that it caused the magical test subject to lose control over its mana circulation, which went haywire anyway, and other times it overloaded their Magic Circuits and shut them down for a period of time, depending on how badly the Circuits reacted to the drug."

Dr. Nakano fixes himself a cup of coffee from the coffee maker in his office as Fuutarou is busy explaining the tl;DR for him, and he sits back down in his chair just as the young tutor wraps up his explanation.

"I have to wonder how the Clock Tower was able to procure these test results," he comments dryly before the coffee moistens his throat for him.

"Ha, ha, that's rich coming from you." Fuutarou's voice is somehow even drier than his employer's.

"As dull and dry as I am, I am still a doctor and a physician, Uesugi-kun. Just because I am used to seeing and hearing the worst that humanity has to offer does not mean I have to _like _seeing and hearing them."

"You should; it'll make life easier."

"Ah yes, because I should learn of life lessons from a fifteen-year-old."

"A fifteen-year-old who kindly reminds you of all the inhumane testing that pharmaceutical companies and medical research labs do on animals for the sake of developing medicines and drugs for humans, but that's besides the point. To answer your question, obviously the Clock Tower tested the Heisei samples I sent them on live subjects - I hear they're using criminal mages that they bring in from around the world on charges of risking the emergence of magic into the public world domain."

"Could they not simply use homunculi?"

"You'd think so, but in a time like this, I can see homunculus production being pretty expensive. If they could produce their own homunculi as test dummies, I don't know why the Clock Tower would render its own services available to the magical public like they have since they're obviously in a position where they wouldn't have to. And that's before whatever they might think of homunculi production in the first place, which I have no idea about since I'm not very involved with them in the first place."

"So prisoners and those they press criminal charges against are used as live test subjects instead."

"Probably. It's the most likely explanation." Fuutarou sits up in his seat a little to better his posture, closing the binder cover with his right hand and pushing the binder along the desk closer to Dr. Nakano. "And all this is the most likely explanation of why Shirazumi Rio is, or was, going after the quintuplets two months ago."

Setting his cup of coffee down on his desk next to the binder that Fuutarou is giving him, the head physician slowly crosses his arms. "I see; it seemed that we would come to that conclusion when you began discussing the Clock Tower's test results on magic entities. Shirazumi Rio perhaps wished to test the liquid Heisei's effects on live subjects, which would explain the Heisei abuse deaths around the city this year, and targeted my daughters as a result."

Fuutarou nods. "There's still a lot of questions that I still need to find answers to. For one, how the hell did Rio know that the quints are mages?"

"Better question is, _does _he know? He may have gone after them simply because they are quintuplets; I believe you gave a similar rationale in the past."

"I know I did, but now, especially after I've had a run-in with him, I'm willing to bet that he's aware of their magical status; I'm not sure how, but he knows them by name, even though he mistook Itsuki who was with me at the time for Nino instead for some reason. Mages like us for the most part don't care about identifying individual outsiders, especially the bad ones like Rio, because for the most part they just treat outsiders and anyone they don't like as either pawns, guinea pigs, or just straight-up trash, so it's pretty telling that the quints are especially important to him if he's bothered taking the time to know their names. And not to mention, the girls got targeted before we started seeing the liquid Heisei death cases start popping up around the city. So again, the question from this angle is now: _how_ did he know?"

"It sounds as though he is working with others, perhaps someone who is feeding him intel. The drug trafficking problem is quite widespread throughout the city, much more so than what the city itself reports, after all. While of course I would not know this for sure myself, I would not be surprised if Shirazumi is in direct contact with other drug traffickers who can sell him information along with drugs."

"But that doesn't make sense; Shirazumi's either producing or importing his own drugs by the looks of things, with how he had his own drug cache in the middle of the city. Not to mention, I've run into a few gangs of his boys running around with liquid Heisei samples on them, so it's very likely that _he's _the only one with access to them, and now that we know what liquid Heisei does to magical entities, we can clearly see why he'd want to keep them to himself. So it doesn't make sense for him to really interact with any of the other drug traffickers at all; I think he's basically running his own show within this big drug ring he's got going on. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he came to the city _because _there was already a drug crisis going on and took advantage of the situation to build up his own operations while the police are busy dealing with everyone else."

"Be as that may, Shirazumi could not have found out about the girls all on his own; we have made sure of that and you know this. This means that he must have been fed information about the girls from somewhere, from someone. I believe you mentioned that you have info-dealers in the city with whom you sometimes collaborate?"

"I do, but they're not that many and I have my eyes on them in case they step out of line. Though, I'll admit it's not out of the realm of possibility that one of them could have been meeting up with Shirazumi in secret or something."

"I suggest, then, that you go investigate your info-dealers, if you have not done so already."

"That I'll do, yeah. And that's funny, you're finally giving me a direct order for once and it's _not_ unreasonable."

"Whatever could you mean? Everything I ask of you is completely reasonable."

"Bullshit." Fuutarou scowls lightly at his boss. "Out of curiosity, how long did you know that your daughters were magically inclined?"

"I believe a topic like that should remain within the family, Uesugi-kun. Unfortunately, while I recognize the work that you have done for the girls thus far, I do _not _recognize you as part of the family."

"Whether or not I'm 'part of the family' is secondary to the fact that the girls are starting to discover their latent magic potentials, which I notified you about when I first detected them having Mystic Eyes. Even if _you_ don't tell me, Nino's already told me about how she'd been aware of it herself ever since middle school, when her vision suddenly worsened and she needed to start wearing contacts. And those aren't just any contacts, those are goddamn Mystic Eye Killers that even change her eye colors back to blue like before her eyes turned Mystic. So it's safe for me to assume that you've known about them being mages for a long time if you already had connections to people who could get Nino those Mystic Eye Killers, and some damn good ones at that."

Dr. Nakano lets a slight, wry grin curl his lips.

"Impressive deduction, Uesugi-kun. However, I will only leave it at that; I continue to maintain that such matters are for the ears of my daughters only, not yours."

"That's fine. But I have to wonder when it is that you'll actually bother talking to them about this."

"Again, that is for me to decide, not you."

"I never asked you to tell me either, I'm just wondering aloud."

As Fuutarou stands up out of his chair to leave, having delivered his findings courtesy of the Clock Tower research team to his employer, Dr. Nakano raises a hand to stop him from flying out of his office, and so Fuutarou complies and stares down at his boss standing up.

"What now?" he asks with a hostile edge to his voice.

"It has been a while since your last report regarding the girls' progress. Is there anything that I ought to know about?"

At this, Uesugi simply scowls with disgust down at the quintuplets' father.

"Last time I checked, you didn't care about how well your girls are doing, only that they weren't failing," he snaps back at the head physician. "But if you must know, we've managed to drag their grades just above failing, as you heard from Nino after they got their midterms back. We're working on having them maintain those grades since they all seem to have a bad tendency of forgetting everything they've learned for a test once that test is done, and I can't have them doing that for their finals next month for this trimester. Other than that, everything's going okay. I'm still having some trouble getting Nino to study with everyone sometimes, but that's about it."

Not even bothering to bid the head doctor a good night, Fuutarou, having rid himself of his burden of the binder carrying the Clock Tower's test results, removes himself from his employer's office to leave Dr. Nakano alone, once more, in his office in the hospital in the dead of the night.

Once the door is shut firmly again with a bit more force than necessary, Dr. Nakano, briefly wondering if he should call in one of the hospital staff to take a look at the door to make sure the hinges are alright, turns to the binder that Uesugi has left behind for him so that he can begin perusing its contents. As he opens it back up, he pulls out his smartphone, whose locked screen reads June 12th, dials a number after unlocking, and waits for the call to connect.

"Good evening, Mr. Mayor. I'm surprised that you are still up at this hour..."

* * *

"Ah. O-ha ~ "

The same day, Uesugi Fuutarou finds himself greeted by the eldest quintuplet just outside a Starbucks chain, the same one that they had met in some time prior before midterms. Ichika gives him a slight wave of morning greetings as he approaches her with his usual messenger bag hanging by his left side.

"Morning. Mind explaining to me what you want this early in the day, since you wouldn't tell me about it over our texts?" the young tutor asks with a slight scowl down at the oldest quint, who pushes off the railing that she was leaning against while waiting for her tutor to arrive so that the two of them can head to school together for the start of the week.

"Well, before that, you don't wanna comment on my summer uniform?" Ichika asks him teasingly, tugging lightly on her popped dress shirt collar. Now that it's just about the middle of June, all the schools in the city have mandated summer uniform dress code, and Asahiyama High is no exception.

"Not particularly. What's there to comment on?"

"Plenty, if you know where to look! And I daresay with a girl like me, it's _really _easy to figure out where to look ~ " Ichika suggestively pulls again on her collar, this time directly over her bust.

"Hm, now that you mention it, I do notice you're not wearing your jacket around your waist," Fuutarou remarks alternatively without even looking over at her.

"You didn't even _look _at me while saying that, though!"

"Because I noticed it as soon as we met."

"Then why didn't you say anything?"

"Because it didn't seem worth mentioning. You'd probably just say something like, 'haha, okay, but what _else _do you have to say' or some shit like that."

Ichika hangs her head dejectedly. "Sometimes, Fuutarou-kun, I really wish you weren't so darned smart..."

"_Sometimes? _The hell's _that _supposed to mean? You think I can just turn my brain off some of the time and turn it on other times?" Fuutarou raises his hand up to his right temple, pretending to be twisting an imaginary switch attached to the side of his skull and reacting appropriately. "Duuurrrr, hiiiiiii, I'm Yooooooootsubaaaaaaaa, breathing is, like, preeeeeetty fuuuunnnnn ~ "

The eldest quint, who'd been waiting to meet up with Fuutarou with a latte that she bought from Starbucks in hand and was in the middle of taking a sip, snorts suddenly, ducking her face away as she coughs a few times lightly to clear her throat. Still in character, Fuutarou twists his hand back the other way to turn his brain on again.

"You alright?" he asks, watching Ichika pull out a napkin that she took from the Starbucks store before leaving to wipe her nose.

"Yeah, I'm fine, don't worry, that just...that just came out of nowhere..." Ichika is trying _very _hard to suppress the silly grin and laughter that she wants to let out as she cleans herself. "Just hold my drink for me for a second..."

So the two of them momentarily stop so that Ichika can blow her nose, with Fuutarou acting as her human cupholder, waiting for her to finish.

"Was that really _that _funny? I never thought of myself as a comedian," the young tutor thinks aloud as the two of them get a move on again, with Ichika taking her drink back.

"The joke itself was pretty good, I'm not gonna lie, but it's the fact that it's _you _doing it that makes it funnier, you know?" Ichika explains, properly sipping from her latte this time. "You're always so straight-faced and stoic and stuff...it's so easy to forget that you _do _have a sense of humor. It's like you know how to get people with it when they least expect it. And not to mention, you go from all stone-faced to a goofball so smoothly like that. You really ought to consider becoming an actor or something if your whole mag - er, I mean, your other job falls through or something."

"I think Yotsuba has a better chance of graduating by herself than that ever happening."

"Wow, it's really _that _bad, huh? Also, you're dissing Yotsuba a lot, aren't you?"

"Can't blame me when last Friday, she somehow scored a perfect _zero_ on that practice test I gave you to round out the week, and it was specifically filled with questions that _she'd _been asking all last week! How the hell are you gonna ask all those questions, study them hard, and then just magically _forget _all of them when you get tested on them!? Forget Nino being a dipshit towards me, Yotsuba's the worst out of everyone because it feels like she _pretends _to be learning yet isn't learning anything at all!"

Fuutarou is speaking with obviously exaggerated anger polluting his tone so that it's clear he's still joking around about Yotsuba.

"Yeah, you were really popping off after you graded our tests last Friday. I don't think we'd ever seen you get so pissed off that you started slamming the glass table. I'm surprised you didn't break it with how hard you were hitting it."

"I had a rune underneath my fist where I was hitting the table where it was absorbing most of the shock so that I wouldn't break it. I was going for the comedic effect, after all."

"I mean, you don't need to tell _me _about it, everyone was already howling at you getting tilted off the face of the planet."

"Yeah, even Yotsuba, which triggered me even harder. Goes and gets a big fat _zero _on a test that's filled with nothing but questions that _she _asked all week, and then goes on to just laugh in my face about it - oh yeah, talk about getting absolutely triggered..."

"You ought to talk to Yotsuba directly, then. Maybe give her an extra lesson after school in the library or something. You know, kinda like a punishment game."

"Except in this case it's not a game."

"Okay, then something similar to it."

Fuutarou glances over at Ichika briefly. "Then enough of that, why did you want me to meet up with you like this? Usually I'm already in homeroom by now, waiting for class to start."

"You mean sleeping in class."

"To me, they're the same, you know this."

"That I do. But no, um...I just wanted to walk to school with you today."

"...that's it?"

"That's it, yep. That's all."

"...why, though? We walk back to your place from school a lot of the time anyway."

"But it's a different feeling, walking _to _school like this, don't you think?"

"It is, yes, but if you're going for the whole 'oh, I want to walk with Fuutarou-kun to school' experience, then that's no different from what we usually do anyway."

Ichika puckers her lips hard up at her tutor. "Fuutarou-kun, you dummy! I can't believe it's possible for a guy to be so dense like you! Density of your magnitude should be a crime, damn it! A criiiiiime!"

Fuutarou snaps his fingers into finger guns to point quickly next to him at his student. "Quick, what's the equation for density?"

"Mass over volume!" Ichika recites immediately, as if Pavlov'd into recital.

"Excellent. At least one of you's retaining what we're learning."

"Ehehe ~ Are you proud of me, Fuutarou-kun?"

"More so than Yotsuba, that's for sure."

"Oof, but that's a pretty low bar..."

"It's either you can clear a low bar and be disappointed, or you can set a high bar and not clear it and still be disappointed."

"So either way I'll be disappointed?"

"Welcome to life, Nakano Ichika."

"Oh, shut it, you wannabe boomer. Also, for someone as dense as you, you have no right teaching us the formula for density."

"You sure as hell aren't gonna teach it to yourselves."

Ichika reaches up with her plastic cup and knocks the side of Fuutarou's head with it.

"In any case, Ichika, even if you don't tell me, I get the feeling that you didn't just want to walk to school with me by calling me out here. Knowing you, you'd ordinarily never bother getting up this early on your own, so clearly something's on your mind," Fuutarou determines as they approach another crosswalk, and this evokes a small sigh out of the quintuplet.

"As perceptive as ever, huh. Even if I sit here calling you denser than a rock, you'll just prove me wrong by saying things like that..."

"It's nothing to feel bad over. I've been working with you girls for more than two months now; anyone who's even remotely paying attention should be able to pick up on other people's quirks after spending as much time as I've spent with you and your sisters. That, and it doesn't take a genius to know that you'd much rather sleep in than get up on your own."

Ichika pouts again up at Fuutarou. "Th-That's true, but still, you didn't need to put it _that _way..."

Uesugi waits patiently for the eldest quintuplet to finish sulking slightly so that she can explain herself.

"...but yeah, you nailed it just now. Obviously I didn't _just _want to walk to school with you, since like you said, we do that a lot of the time already. It's about, y'know...the last time we were together like this, just the two of us."

"At the Starbucks that we met at today, right?"

Ichika nods.

"I won't apologize for all the things I said. They were harsh and I'm sure to you, it seemed to come out of nowhere that day, but I still stand by what I said. I think it's ridiculous for you to still _not _consider us to be your friends, especially now that you've got, what, two full months of knowing us under your belt."

After pausing to take a sip from her latte, Ichika continues.

"But with that being said, I haven't forgotten what you said to us the day we took our midterms, after we were done and we were heading home. Maybe you were only saying that to make me happy; maybe you genuinely meant it when you finally did call us your friends. Either way, though, because of all the stuff you must've had to deal with during that week leading up to midterms, I still want to give you the benefit of the doubt, that you actually did listen to what I said after I left, even if you were arguing with me the whole time. I didn't expect you to do that, I'll be honest."

Looking up at her tutor, Ichika casts a bright and lovely smile towards him.

"It's not often that I get the feeling that people listen to me and what I have to say. So...thanks."

"Even though you're the oldest?"

"Well, I don't usually go around telling my sisters what to do. Besides, we all have the same birthday...well, technically, anyway. So me being older is just pedantic most of the time."

"Then what makes you feel like people never listen to you? From what I understand, you're pretty damn popular at school; you won't have any shortage of power being able to tell the boys in our class what to do and stuff."

"Aha, well, you have a point there. But it's not because of school, per se..."

"If it's not because of school..." After a quick moment of deliberation, Fuutarou glances back over at Ichika. "...I can only think of two other possibilities: whatever your part-time job is, or your dad."

"Haha, bingo. As expected of the great Uesugi Fuutarou-kun..."

"Spare me the flattery, it's not like I'm popular with the girls at school like you are with the boys."

"Ugh, how rude! Besides, you _are _popular with the girls, in a sense!"

"I don't count you quints, for the record."

"Tch! What, are we not good enough for you?!"

"I would like to practice my right to remain silent."

_"You sure as heck aren't practicing it now!"_

Sighing deeply again, Ichika presses her lips over the tip of her yellow straw jutting out of the plastic cup cover.

"So just to make absolutely sure, we're your friends now, right? Is it alright for us to establish that and make that all official and stuff?" she asks.

"Sure, I guess."

"Oi oi, what kind of attitude is that..."

"Well, just like how you said that you still stand by the stuff you told me back then, I still adhere to the shit I was going on about when we were arguing, that it's hard for me to call others my 'friends'. Honestly, I think the best we can do is agree to disagree on this topic. However, the argument that we had did point out to me that if there were ever a situation where someone asks us about us, like someone notices that I'm hanging around you quints a lot and they come up to ask me what my deal is, then telling them that you're my friends is the easiest way to deal with that situation."

"Ah...geez, I knew it. So then it's literally just a placeholder, then? It doesn't mean anything?"

"Normally, yes." Fuutarou rubs his chin thoughtfully. "...but maybe, just maybe, you girls are an exception."

"Haha...I guess we'll have to settle for being 'exceptions', huh? Is that, like, a lowkey roast or something? You're calling me and my sisters freaks, pretty much, aren't you?"

"...that wasn't what I had in mind when I said that, but sure, if that's what makes you feel better about it, go ahead, be my guest..."

"Fuutarou-kun, eventually you'll realize that that's _not _how you talk to a girl if you want to make them feel better about themselves."

"That's funny, I don't recall 'knowing how to talk to girls' being part of our curriculum..."

Ichika's drink once more bonks against the side of Fuutarou's head.

"Okay, I'll stop it with the dry jokes."

"Yes, please do. At this rate, I think I'll have to buy another drink before heading to class..."

"You're gonna need to use the bathroom in the middle of class if you keep drinking like that, so don't."

"What, it's not like we pay attention in class since you're just gonna teach us everything anyway."

"Goddamn it, that's _not _why I'm tutoring you all."

"But c'mon, you know I'm not wrong. Our teachers all suck compared to you, you teach the material so much better than they do."

"I mean, that's not exactly hard to do with I only need to teach the five of you at a time when our teachers need to deal with twenty or thirty."

"Even if you put it that way, it's not like that's any of our concern, as bad as that sounds, I know. All we care about is passing our own grades, right? And you're the one whom Dad hired to do that. So if that's the case, and you do such a good job of it anyway, why should we bother paying attention to our teachers in class?"

Fuutarou's expression darkens suddenly. "Guess I'll have to request our homeroom teacher to let me move my seat to the back of the class so that I can make sure y'all're paying attention."

"Aaaaaaaaah, don't do that, don't do that, we'll pay attention, I promise, okaaaaayyy ~ "

Scowling at Ichika, Fuutarou rolls his eyes somewhat.

"And besides, the main reason's because I myself didn't do a good enough job on my own, so you still need to pay attention in class."

"Oh, there you go again about not having done a good enough job. In hindsight, you basically did the impossible, you know that? You taught us enough to help us pass a subject each, and some of us got close to passing two. All that in less than two months! You should be proud of what you've managed to accomplish."

"Are you gonna lecture me about that one too, just like how you did in regards to the whole friends thing?"

"Oh ho ho, that's not a _challenge _I hear, is it? Because I'll do it, don't you try me!"

As Ichika giggles, the young tutor lets his memory recall the paralyzing sensation that followed immediately after Ichika spoke those same words last time.

"Are you gonna paralyze me like you did the last time when you left Starbucks after saying that?"

Ichika's giggling immediately ceases as though jazz music stopped playing, even though there was none to begin with. Her hand cautiously lowers her drink.

"...I figured you'd ask about that eventually. I'm just surprised that it's taken you this long to bring it up. I thought for sure...that you'd pull me aside at some point to talk to me about it, but it's been two weeks since then and it's only now that this's happening," Ichika smiles weakly.

"Because as much as I would've liked to ask you about it, my responsibility is to be your tutor, so that comes first, and we had a lot to review and study after midterms so that if they come up on finals, all of you'll be prepared for them."

"At least, we hope."

"Yeah. Hopefully. But in any case, since you decided to text me and ask to go to school with me, I figured this would be a good time to talk about it, and even better that you started off with something that would've lead naturally into this eventually."

"Heh heh...you're not wrong there. Guess I really dug my own grave, huh?"

Ichika takes one more deep breath.

"Do you want to see it one more time? I promise I won't, uh, do the thing I did you to last time."

Fuutarou nods. "Just make sure not to have it on for too long, since we're out in public and all. But just a quick peek should be enough."

So Ichika closes her eyes briefly, stops walking to turn to her tutor, and looks back up at him. Reciprocating, Fuutarou catches his quick glimpse of Ichika's single Mystic Eye in her right eye, with its bright golden hue, thin blue outline around the constricted pupil, and the thin black belt in the iris.

"Aha...I'll admit it's pretty weird bringing it up like that and then not use it," Ichika giggles quietly as she shuts her eye to put it away, opening it again to reveal its regressed blue eye. "The vast majority of the time, I only bring it up if I'm dead serious on using it, like you saw last time. How do you like it? It's cool, right?"

"What does it matter if it's cool or not to the person looking into it?"

At first glancing back up at her tutor in subdued confusion, Ichika then understands what Fuutarou's getting at and turns away slowly.

"...yeah, I guess the people who see it don't really care about that. It's just...I think it's...pretty cool, okay? Don't judge me." Ichika gives a tiny pout.

"...Ichika, this is a very important question I have to ask, and don't ask why I have to ask this, but..."

"Fuutarou-kun, stop."

"...are you..."

"Don't say any more."

"...by chance..."

"Shut up, Fuutarou-kun."

"...a closet..."

_"Kyaaaaaaa...!"_

"...chuuni?"

By this point, Ichika is reeling badly with her free hand over her head.

"Aaaaaaaaaaah, Fuutarou-kun went and said it! You actually went and said it! I can't believe you, I can't believe you, I can't believe you...! ! ! ! !"

"Wait, but...technically that's not chuunibyou, because that describes kids with delusions of grandeur or some shit like that," Fuutarou mutters to himself critically. "In your case it's not, because you really _do _have a secret power."

"Y-Yeah, yeah, uh huh, that's exactly it, right, right! I'm - I don't have chuunibyou if my powers are real!"

"The fact that you're talking like one isn't helping your case."

"Gaaaaaah! I-I-I _know_, I know, I know, but - but - but - ! ! !"

"But what?"

_"It's just so embarrassing if you put it that way, gosh!"_

"Well shit, imagine what I must feel then every time I need to cast a spell or something."

"Then that means you're even _more _of a closet chuuni than me, aren't you?"

"Maybe, but the difference between the two of us is that I don't feel the need to get embarrassed just because I can use magic and have magical powers. And back on topic, it seems like you've had that Mystic Eye for a while now, given how good your control of it is."

With her classmate anchoring the topic like this, Ichika manages to calm herself down. "'Mystic Eye'...so that's what it's called, huh?"

"It's not my area of expertise, but I have been studying more about them, so I know a few things about them...hopefully enough to tell you a bit more about them if you have any questions."

"Mmm...maybe later. Not really in the mood to...talk about it, y'know?"

"Even though you were the one who said that it was pretty cool having a special power in your eye like that?"

"Sh-Shut up. Forget I said that."

"No."

"Then next time, when we're at home or something, I'll paralyze you again to teach you your lesson!"

"Bring it on, next time I'll be prepared."

Glaring indignantly at Fuutarou for a moment, Ichika lightens up her expression, but the frown still lingers on her face.

"You're not scared, Fuutarou-kun?"

"Scared about what?"

"That...I have this power that you didn't know about until two weeks ago."

"If I were, you'd know by now that I am."

"That's...that's true...but still, I thought you told us before that mages don't like other mages, generally speaking."

"That's also true. But for the time being, I don't need to worry about you posing a serious threat to me because you're not exposed to the magic world completely yet; right now, you're just a high school girl who happens to have a Mystic Eye. I don't know to what extent exactly you've been using it for, but given your relative control over it, it's clear to me that you've used it plenty of times, like I said, enough to know what your Mystic Eye does. But you don't know how to fight, and you obviously don't have any knowledge of magecraft. Now that you've wasted your Mystic Eye's gimmick the first time and I have an idea of what it does, I should be able to know what to do to counter it, thus neutralizing the potential threat you pose to me."

Rolling his neck a few times and yawning, Fuutarou rubs the back of his neck.

"And that's before the whole tutoring side of my contract, too."

"What, you'd still try to teach me even if I did pose a threat to you?"

"Yeah, of course. If you're concerned about the danger concerning a contract like that, just remember, I do far more dangerous shit normally. What _does _concern me, however, is the fact that you've chosen not to share this with your sisters, and so they have no idea about it for the most part. Why is that?"

Ichika tenses up nervously at Fuutarou's biting question.

"...how did you know?" she asks slowly, and Fuutarou also slowly turns to Ichika while they continue their walk to school, which feels like it's taking forever.

"About three weeks to a month ago, Nino and Miku came to me asking about them, back when we had our first overnight cram session, if you remember that one, so I talked to them about their own Mystic Eyes at night in Nino's room while everyone else was sleeping. Neither of them mentioned anything about you having one; as far as they're concerned, they're the only two in the family who has Mystic Eyes. But then you showed me yours on me last week at Starbucks; not only did you show me, you _used _it on me, which neither Nino nor Miku can do, actually _use _their Mystic Eyes. For you to be able to know what your Mystic Eye does and use it in a definite, tangible way, despite the fact that I called you nothing more than a high schooler with a gimmick power, you at least do have a basic understanding of magecraft - and thus, as far as I'm concerned, you are a mage. The fact that Nino and Miku both have Mystic Eyes as well also makes them mages, but you're the only one I've seen actually use your Mystic Eye like one. All this to say, you're probably aware of the fact that your sisters also have Mystic Eyes, but because neither Nino nor Miku mentioned you at all when I talked to them about theirs, you've elected to _not _tell them and keep this to yourself. And I want to ask you why."

Ichika stays silent for a long time - and by 'long time', she does so until they reach campus, which they were close to anyway at the time Fuutarou pitched this pressing question to her. Having sipped quietly on her latte the entire rest of the way so that she can toss the empty plastic cup into its appropriate recycling bin before the two of them head into their school shoe lockers, Ichika stops and gestures to her classmate to the side so that their conversation won't get overheard by passing schoolmates.

"...sorry, but...I don't think I can answer this now. I have my reasons...it's just...I wasn't exactly prepared to...talk about it, you know? I know you want me to talk about it because you're concerned for me and my sisters. But...now's not the time. Maybe...maybe later."

Fuutarou nods curtly. "That's fine. Whenever you're comfortable - in fact, actually, you don't even need to tell me at all. I only asked that out of concern because right now, among the five of you, there are three Mystic Eye holders: you, Nino, and Miku, and Yotsuba and Itsuki aren't accounted for here. With Nino and Miku knowing about each other but not you, and you knowing about the other two - answer me this then, you _do _know about those two having Mystic Eyes, right?"

Ichika nods slowly.

"Right. So the situation's kind of like this - and as you should be able to tell, it's a potential trainwreck waiting to happen. What if Nino or Miku or God forbid both of them find out that you also have a Mystic Eye and that you've been using yours for a long time compared to them? How do you think they'll react? Because I can't answer that, right? You're the one who can, you're the one who knows how they'll react. If this situation isn't handled correctly, this can really blow up in our faces, and possibly at a time when we really don't want it to, like before a midterm or finals or something."

"But is it really going to be _that _bad of a trainwreck? Aren't you maybe exaggerating this a little?"

"I'm just saying the potential is there. Maybe Nino and Miku won't really react that strongly if they find out that you also have an active Mystic Eye. But given what I've seen personally during my own years as a mage, sometimes...people can overreact to their discoveries of magic powers and whatnot. I can't say for sure what'll happen here because this is such a unique situation with the five of you being quints and all, but it's perhaps _because _of a situation like this that this all has the potential to be an even bigger trainwreck than it needs to be. Maybe I really don't have anything to worry about, and I pray that's true. I just hope that your reasons for keeping your Mystic Eye secret from your sisters are good ones."

"Just trust me, Fuutarou-kun, I'll handle it. I know I shouldn't really say something like this to you at this point, but...I think that this is one of the few things that...I should keep within the family, you know? Like I said, when the time's right, I'll...explain everything to you."

"Just trust you, huh? I've heard that one before...too many times..." Fuutarou sighs lightly, turning to leave for their homeroom. "But if you insist, then I'll hold you to it. Let's get to class, we spent so much time walking and chatting that we're about to be late."

As the two of them hurry to their classroom and take their seats for first period, Ichika has one preceding thought stuck in her head as she greets her sisters who are all already in class, since the route Ichika and Fuutarou took to get to school was purposefully longer than usual due to the location of the Starbucks that Ichika texted Fuutarou to meet her at. Does she want to tell Fuutarou about this? As much as she considers him a friend now, a friend to all of her sisters and not just herself, as much time that they've spent together so far, Ichika isn't sure if she wants to make this jump just yet of entrusting some of her deepest sentiments to a boy she's only known for a little over two months.

Funny, because these days she feels like she's been warming up to him more and more. She even foresaw a conversation like this happening between them ever since their less-than-friendly meeting at Starbucks during midterms week, but now that it's actually happened, Ichika couldn't seem to muster the same courage that she imagined herself having and talking to Fuutarou straight about the circumstances surrounding her Mystic Eye and why she decided to go about behaving the ways she has over the years.

Besides, she wants to convince herself that Fuutarou is just exaggerating; surely her sisters will accept and understand her rationale for keeping her Mystic Eye secret from them for the past however many years. The fears she had from before where she was afraid of being branded as the outcast among the five of them should be gone, since the girls have all grown up since then; that, and Fuutarou's right in that Nino and Miku both have their Mystic Eyes awakened; as a matter of fact, both of them had Mystic Eyes ever since middle school, but now that Fuutarou is their tutor, Ichika supposes that it only makes sense that Nino and Miku truly discover what their eyes are.

But what if Fuutarou is right? What if Nino and Miku hold it against her that she's kept her own Mystic Eye secret from them for all this time? What if they blame her for not helping them and comforting them during the times when their eyes caused them trouble? And now that Ichika thinks about it, wouldn't that invalidate everything that she'd been doing for her sisters' sake by using her own Mystic Eye? As in, what was the point of going around acting like a cool vigilante for the sake of protecting her sisters if she never acted like a real big sister and stepped in to comfort them, when Nino lost most of her vision and when Miku came out of the hospital and subsequently began suffering from her nightly panic attacks? Was preserving her identity as a Nakano quintuplet worth letting Nino and Miku suffer the ways they did as a result of their Mystic Eyes first developing?

Was all this what a good big sister should have done?

* * *

**A/N**

**Apologies for the sudden week break, had to be a mobile game degenerate in FGO for the Apoc raids. Now that they're done, it's time for me to get back to writing.**

**...or so I would like. Long story short, without going into too much detail, I have quite a few IRL problems that I must take care of. For now, for maybe the next month or so, my current situation shouldn't change, allowing me to get out some chapters like I have done up until a week ago, but there may come a point in the near future where I'll have to take another extended break to handle those IRL matters. Ideally I won't even need to take time off writing at all and it'll seem like I'm just whining about nothing, but I just want to account for all the possibilities that can happen.**

**Thanks for your understanding, and of course, thanks for reading.**


	43. Senbazuru

Uesugi Fuutarou stares down at their table in the school library. He's gathered the girls in the library once more for another after-school study session, though Nino and Itsuki are markedly absent due to their own circumstances; Nino is hanging out with her friends after school in the city, and Itsuki is consulting with one of their teachers about an assignment, so for the time being, it's just him with the original three stooges who've been working with him since Week 1.

"I'd like to ask...what the hell are you doing?"

Yotsuba, to whom he's directing this question, immediately draws her head back from being hunched over her spot at the table to reveal what she's working on.

"Ta-da! I'm making senbazuru!"

In Yotsuba's outstretched palms sits a single neatly folded paper crane made with green origami paper. Fuutarou simply stares down at it, though he does note that for as clumsy as Yotsuba is sometimes, it would appear that her paper crane-folding skills are pretty good...though she could use a little help in folding the wings properly.

Sighing irritably, Fuutarou also sits up in his own chair. "Even though I said we'd be meeting here to do your homework after school since Ichika said she wanted a change of locale one of these days?"

"But - but one of my friends' friend is in the hospital right now! Or so I hear!" Yotsuba insists, defending the pile of her precious origami paper cranes that she's folded up until now. "So obviously I wanna help! And they said that I could by doing this!"

"And let me ask, how many have you gotten done so far?"

"Uhhh...lemme count..."

Fuutarou looks on patiently as Yotsuba counts her paper cranes while Ichika and Miku are completing their homework, though Ichika does take a moment every so often to look over at the two of them.

"Forty-two! I've got nine hundred and fifty-eight left to go!" Yotsuba announces cheerfully.

"Then let's leave that for _after _we get your homework done and we get back home, yeah?" Fuutarou suggests, but Yotsuba's hair ribbon jolts upright, indicating that she's just thought of an idea.

"Oh, I know, I know! Uesugi-san, how about _you _do my homework _for _me, and I'll keep working on these paper cranes!" she counter-suggests.

_"Then what the hell is the point of me being your tutor. _And besides..."

Sighing with a sense of capitulation, Fuutarou reaches over and grabs a few pieces of origami paper himself, and to Yotsuba's and Ichika's surprise, Fuutarou swiftly folds a paper crane of his own, taking roughly only half the time that Yotsuba needs to fold one of her own, before sliding it across the table over to Yotsuba.

"I've folded a few in my time before. Your paper cranes could use some work on the wings, so if you do your homework, I can teach you how to fold a crane properly at your place."

"Geez, is there anything you _can't _do?" Ichika chuckles while Yotsuba, enamored with the elegant paper crane that Fuutarou's folded for her, picks it up and marvels at its fine craftsmanship before looking a little depressed comparing it with the ones that she's made, which admittedly contrasts the craftmanships between them rather noticeably.

"Of course, like getting you all to pass your midterms."

_"Yellow card, yellow card! _Unnecessary roughness on the field, Uesugi Fuutarou-kun!"

Cracking a wry grin of amusement, Fuutarou glances over at Ichika's and Miku's homework to see if they're having trouble with anything while Yotsuba quickly puts away her origami paper and finally pulls out her own homework, motivated now that her tutor's promised her origami-folding lessons of sorts.

"You must've folded a lot of paper cranes to get to that level, though," Miku observes quietly, having taken a quick peek through her long bangs to see what Ichika and Yotsuba were marveling at.

"Fuutarou-kun _does _work at the hospital, after all," Ichika nods. "So the question has to be, for _whom _you made paper cranes before. Was there, like, a patient you made paper cranes for, maybe? Maybe...a girl you cared about, so you made paper cranes for? Like your own Sadako Sasaki?"

Ichika begins to gesticulate with her arms, as if performing on stage in a play.

"Alas, our dense and headstrong tutor harbors a tragic past, a fragile secret! The love that he first found in the depths of the hospital, in the patients' ward, to which he could respond only by folding a thousand paper cranes! Or something like that ~ "

"Exaggeration aside, yes, I did fold paper cranes for someone in the hospital."

"Eh? Really? You did?" Ichika blinks awkwardly at Fuutarou, while Miku's pencil stops writing on its notebook.

"Oh, oh! Who was it for? Who was it for?" Yotsuba also chimes in.

At this, Fuutarou grins deviously back at the girls. "Well, like Ichika said, it's a fragile secret. I'll leave it to your imagination."

"Awwww, c'mon, you can't just blue-ball us like that!" Yotsuba whines, pouting indignantly back at her tutor. "I told _you _why I was making paper cranes, right? That's not fair ~ "

While Yotsuba is whining about Fuutarou's unfairness, their homeroom teacher, holding a tall stack of papers and walking through the library, notices them because of Yotsuba's whining and approaches them.

"Ah, good timing, Uesugi. Take these worksheets and place them on everyone's desks, they're for tomorrow's homework; I've got a teacher's meeting to catch," he says hurriedly, practically dumping the worksheets right in front of him before scurrying off and out of the library.

"Mmmmuu...how rude, just dumping off all those worksheets in front of you like that," Miku complains quietly, her lips curling at their left sides.

"Calm down, it's not worth getting worked up over. I'll go be a good little class rep and do as he says; in the meantime, take these worksheets since you'll be doing them for homework anyway tomorrow and work on your own while I go take care of this real quick..."

Picking up the stack of papers once he's distributed copies to his own students, Fuutarou swiftly walks out of the library to go fulfill his class representative duties.

Watching their tutor and classmate vacate the library temporarily, Ichika slowly turns to Miku, who's returned back to her homework before her.

"...this is just...a hypothetical question, but..." Ichika murmurs aloud, "...but...what are the chances that...the person he made paper cranes for is...?"

Miku's writing hand once more stops in its progress as Ichika begins to speak. Yotsuba, overhearing as well, can't help but stare too.

"...no way," the third quintuplet whispers, shaking her head slightly, but her voice is quivering and both her sisters can hear it. "There's no way."

"I mean...it's Fuutarou-kun we're talking about here, isn't it...?" Ichika shrugs. "I'm just saying that there might be a chance. Because Fuutarou-kun said that he's been working as a mage for a while, right? We just don't know for how long exactly, but we could maybe safely assume that he's been doing mage stuff for a good couple years, and that's within the time when...you know..."

"And...and don't forget..." Yotsuba pulls over a blue origami paper crane from the pile of paper cranes that she's made thus far, showing it to Miku. "You brought back that one paper crane when you got discharged. It's still in your room, right? Underneath your desk light."

At this point, Miku's head is tilted downwards so far that she's not even properly looking down at her homework anymore, and her long peachy-red bangs are hiding her blue eyes from view for the most part.

Her memories surrounding her hospitalization during middle school are hazy at best, but what she does remember most clearly was the single blue paper crane that sat on the edge of her hospital bed next to her. She also remembers knowing that it wasn't always there; it hadn't been there from the start when she first got admitted, or at least when she came to in the hospital, so at some point during her hospitalization, someone deliberately left it there for her as a gesture of kindness; it's not like it could've been placed there on accident or to signify some other meaning. While it's not quite the whole thousand paper cranes legend that's household knowledge in Japan, even that single blue paper crane alone brought much more solace and comfort to her than she ever thought a single paper crane ever could; during her torturous fits of fading in and out of consciousness when she desperately wanted _something _to mentally cling on to, that blue paper crane that now sits in her room on her desk became the anchor that would at least give her a sense of existential consistency that she sought in those seemingly endless days in the hospital.

What if the person who gave her that blue paper crane really was Fuutarou?

"...no...no, that's...that's too..." Miku once more shakes her head slowly. "...that's too convenient. Fuutarou didn't know us back then, and we didn't know him. I don't remember...when I found that paper crane at the hospital, it was just...there one day. Even if he was already working at the hospital...he had no reason to care about me. I'm sure...I'm sure there were more urgent patients he would've needed to tend to anyway at the time."

Both Ichika and Yotsuba shift uncomfortably in their respective seats.

"...well, you're...you're not _wrong_, per se, but...saying it like that's a little..." Ichika mumbles awkwardly before inhaling somewhat sharply.

But Miku stands her ground, continuing to shake her head in denial. "We know what Fuutarou is like. He's the type of guy who's too busy to care about things he isn't directly involved in. That's how he's always been; we've spent so much time with him these past two months that we know more about him than the entire rest of the school; the only people who know him better are his own family, his papa and Raiha-chan. So if he was working at the hospital back when I was at the hospital, it's safe to say that he was already a mage back then, which means that he was most likely already the way he is now. So why should he care about a girl like me who had to go to the hospital just because some bitch punched me in the back of the head?"

"I mean, that's...that's still pretty serious, don't you think? Besides, maybe...maybe Fu - uh, Uesugi-san was the one who came in to treat you, right?" Yotsuba wonders aloud. "Maybe...maybe that's when Uesugi-san first began working at the hospital, and so because he was just starting out, they had him treat you because you're maybe one of the easier patients to handle? Compared to like, whatever goes on in the ICU or whatever..."

"Like I said, though, I don't remember seeing him. It's only been a few years, I wouldn't forget someone like Fuutarou if he really did take care of me back then. I only remember Papa giving me checkups and seeing if I recovered enough to go back home and go back to school...and the other nurses."

"Well, you can always try asking him directly," Ichika suggests instead.

"When he just said that it's a secret he'll be keeping to himself? Fat chance he'll tell me anything," Miku scowls slightly.

"Oh c'mon, don't be like that, Miku. Look..."

Ichika leans in over the table from her seat with her big sister aura and drops her voice.

"It's no secret to the rest of us that you've got a thing going for Fuutarou-kun. You're just a happier person when he's around; you talk so much with him, you laugh with him, you study hard with him - heck, you're even studying and working on homework all on your own even when he's _not _here. And as much as we call him a dense idiot sometimes, Fuutarou-kun isn't really _that _dense; he knows that you're probably the friendliest out of all of us towards him and I'm sure he'll reciprocate that. So why not at least give it a shot? See if he'll make an exception for you. And if he does, you don't need to feel obligated to tell the rest of us."

Miku doesn't say anything in response, and so silence hangs over the three quintuplets for a few moments before it's broken by the low buzzing of Ichika's phone, which Ichika fishes out from her bag.

"Oh, whoops, I've gotta take this call...gotta make it quick since we're in the library..." Ichika mutters to herself as she excuses herself from the table and answers her phone, looking around as she walks away to make sure there aren't any librarians around to catch her talking on her phone.

Yotsuba blinks down at her own homework that she hasn't even started, not knowing what to do in this situation, now that she's alone with Miku. What should she say? What should she do? She is the sole quintuplet who has met Uesugi Fuutarou in the past, and consequently the only one who remembers him. The problem is that she doesn't know if the Uesugi Fuutarou she met six years ago in Kyoto was already a mage, even that long ago. That would mean that he was a mage at merely nine years old, and while she doesn't know if that's supposed to be common or rare in the magic world, to her, it sounds pretty unbelievable, unless that was around the time that he first became a mage.

But perhaps the more relevant issue is whether or not he knew the rest of her sisters. She's met him for sure, but has he met her sisters? No, wait, he did, he absolutely did meet one of her sisters back in Kyoto; it was Ichika, who saw that she'd gotten a friend in Fuutarou when they met and decided to take her place at some point when Yotsuba wasn't looking and pretended to be Yotsuba, and Fuutarou, not knowing that they were identical quintuplets, was none the wiser, or at least he shouldn't have been. But of course that would mean that to him, the only quintuplet he's met in the past was her, not knowing he'd also gotten to know Ichika at the same time.

But then wouldn't that also mean that Ichika still remembers him? No, that probably isn't the case; Ichika would've made it obvious if she recognized him like Yotsuba herself did when they first met two months ago, because that's just the person she is. She probably doesn't recognize him because when they met as kids six years ago, Fuutarou looked much different, with his dyed blonde hair and ear piercings that made him look like a juvenile delinquent. That, and given how Ichika turned out growing up, she's met so many people and made so many friends that it's probably hard to keep track of everyone, so a boy she met six years ago randomly in Kyoto probably isn't going to be a high priority on her list of people to remember.

In any case, the fact that Yotsuba remembers meeting Fuutarou opens up the possibility that he's met her sisters in the past as well. Or, perhaps more accurately, just because Yotsuba's the only one who remembers meeting him doesn't mean the others might not have run into him on their own at some point in their own lives. While Yotsuba's been traditionally able to read her sisters pretty well, there's nothing that says that her sisters aren't hiding their own special little memories with him, much like she's guilty of doing, with Ichika being the other most likely suspect since Yotsuba is privy to the twin-switching that she did back in Kyoto six years ago. And with the added dynamic of Fuutarou being a mage and all that, the possibilities are endless.

Did Fuutarou meet Miku in the hospital two years ago?

Was he the one who gave her that blue paper crane?

Yotsuba shakes her head a little, but she realizes that her thoughts must be affecting her appearance and so quickly glances sneakily over to Miku to see if she's watching, which she's not - she's returned to doing her homework in silence. Judging by the look in her eyes, the one Yotsuba can see from her angle, her older sister seems to have her mind made up that it wasn't him, so maybe there's no need for Yotsuba herself to be thinking so hard about this.

Even still, though, she can't help herself, because it just seems so convenient to believe that Uesugi Fuutarou was the one who helped Miku through her troubling days in the hospital back in middle school, even if it was only by giving her a single paper crane. It would be absolutely heartwarming to know that he has known them for all this time - not just herself, but all of her sisters. But obviously there's nothing concrete that supports that; all they have to work with are conjectures, guesses, and wishful thinking. Everything seems like they could fall into place nicely, but just because things seem one way doesn't mean that they are, and Yotsuba herself is a fine example of this.

So Yotsuba changes her mind on talking to Miku to encourage her like Ichika did and keeps her mouth shut, trying to focus on beginning to start her homework. If Miku herself chooses to believe that it wasn't Fuutarou who gave her that paper crane, then Yotsuba wants to respect that decision of hers. After all, Miku's the one who went to the hospital, not Yotsuba, so it's none of her business trying to convince Miku to believe otherwise when she'll most likely just be met with even more disappointment if she tries to.

Still...what if. What if it really was him. Yotsuba can't get rid of that nagging sensation that only the tiniest of the most improbable circumstances can have.

What if it really was him.

A buzzing noise comes from Yotsuba's own backpack, and it jolts her out of her thoughts. Quickly rummaging to get it out, she looks down at her phone to find that the basketball team captain is calling her.

"M-Miku, sorry, but - but I have to take this call too - it's the basketball team captain, and she probably wants to talk to me in their club room. Tell Ichika that I'm there for me, okay?" Yotsuba says hurriedly as she tosses her homework and school stuff into her backpack and rushies as quickly as she can within library limits out of there to head for the basketball clubroom - just as Ichika returns from her own call, in time to catch a glimpse of Yotsuba hurrying away.

"Oh? Does Yotsuba need to go somewhere too?" Ichika asks as she, too, puts away her homework and collects her belongings.

"Yeah...she said she needed to go meet with the basketball club president," Miku faithfully relays Yotsuba's message for her.

"That so. Fuutarou-kun's gonna get mad at her if she agrees to join the basketball club for good; she's been helping them out a lot recently, hasn't she?"

"Them and the track team. I assume you're headed out for your part-time, too, though?" Miku nods over at her oldest sister as the latter pushes her chair back in once she's gathered all her own stuff.

"Sure am. You're gonna have to let Fuutarou-kun know what we're up to, sorry about this."

"I don't mind, but Fuutarou will."

"I know, I know, I'll make it up to him somehow. Besides..."

Ichika takes a few steps over to her younger sister and leans in to whisper close to her ear:

"...this'll be a good chance to know if he's the one who gave you that paper crane, right? When no one else's around."

Giving Miku a soft pat on her shoulder for good luck, Ichika bids her sister good-bye for now and also vacates the premises, leaving Miku suddenly all alone in a matter of minutes. Not that Miku is unfamiliar to solitude.

As she returns to her homework, Miku feels her hand slow its progress again, now that she doesn't have the presences of her sisters to keep her anchored on her own work. Because like Yotsuba, thoughts once more invade her mind as she eyes a single blue paper crane that Yotsuba's neglected to take with her that sits on her side of the table. Eventually her right hand stops, and so she sets her pencil down and reaches over to take the freshly folded blue paper crane into her own hands, gazing down at it with her two blue eyes.

What if Fuutarou knew about her ever since two years ago? And if so, why has he kept his knowledge of her a secret from her?

Maybe he has his reasons, and if he does, they've got to be related to his magework. He strikes her as too smart and too intelligent to simply forget someone in just two years, and it's not like Miku's changed _that _much in two years, though she did have longer hair and shorter bangs back then.

The thought of Uesugi Fuutarou having known her beyond just their high school months clings to her mind like a parasite, and once it's latched on, Miku just can't expel it out of her head. Because if that's the case, if it really were him who gave her that paper crane while she was in the hospital, the fact that they've met again now, or two months ago, rather, might just be, as some may say, _fate. _And this is coming from someone who doesn't really care about that kind of stuff - that's more up Nino's alley with how she goes on about meeting her Prince Charming someday at times.

Miku finds herself smiling at this possibility. Even if it's not true, which most likely it isn't, the fact that it's a possibility itself warms her heart. Even if all it'll amount to is just a daydreamy delusion that she'll end up having to keep to herself...

"You wanna learn how to fold paper cranes too, later?"

Fuutarou's sudden voice almost causes Miku to jump out of her seat in surprise, so the paper crane that she's holding in her hands does it for her, jumping out of her hands as she clumsily tries to drop the crane as quickly as possible.

"Quite the reaction there, usually you don't get as rattled as the others," Fuutarou notes as Miku quickly composes herself with a bright blush starting to creep up on her face. "By the way, did the other two bail on me again?"

Miku nods. "Ichika said she needed to go to her part-time, and Yotsuba said she needed to go meet with the basketball club."

"Ah, for fuck's sake..." Fuutarou groans with a sigh. "Ichika's been starting to prioritize her part-time these days, now that midterms are done for now. Same goes for Yotsuba, she's been missing a few days because she's been hanging out with the track team and the basketball team. I'll have to figure out what I wanna do with those two..."

"It's even at the point where we had some lessons with just me, Nino, and Itsuki, which is pretty funny if you think about how we got started in the beginning."

"You said it. But that'll be for another time, I guess. Is there anything with your homework that you have questions about? Wait, you're almost done, too..."

Miku shakes her head. "No. None so far..."

Fuutarou leans back in his chair with an annoyed sigh. "Shame that the others aren't more like you, at least when it comes to getting your homework done. You and Itsuki, actually. Everyone else just fucks around until it gets to the point where I basically have to jump down their throats just to get them to start their homework sometimes..."

"Doing my homework _well _is another story, though."

"That's true, but being willing to get your homework done is the first step towards getting better grades, or one of them. At least that way, even if you don't do it well, you can review your homework and more readily fix your mistakes."

"If only it were that easy, too..."

"I never said it would be easy, either. And I'll be honest, you shouldn't have ever thought it would be easy."

Miku nods slowly. "...that's true."

After another minute, Miku hands her tutor her worksheet, and Fuutarou quickly skims through it to check her answers, taking out a pencil from his messenger bag that's remained in his seat while he went off distributing tomorrow's homework assignment in their homeroom to mark incorrect answers. He refrains from using a red pen here since this is something they'll have to turn in to their homeroom teacher, and he'll get pretty suspicious if there are already red markings on the worksheets when he grades them.

"As usual, you got all the Sengoku period-related questions right," Fuutarou notes quietly, handing the worksheet back to her. "Frankly, I noticed that you're really good at those types of history questions, even back when I first starting tutoring you. So I've been meaning to ask you, now that it's only you here right now: is that like, an area of interest to you or something?"

Pulling the worksheet up to her face to hide the lower half of it that's slowly starting to redden up again, Miku nods so slowly that Fuutarou is reminded of watching paint dry.

"D-Don't tell anyone about that, okay...?" she whispers so softly that her graded worksheet blocks most of her voice; Fuutarou has to amplify his hearing magically with an invisible rune just so that he can hear what she's saying without having to lean in like a creep. "That I like...Sengoku warlords...and stuff..."

"I didn't, and I won't. I was going to bring it up at some point before midterms, but I guess I never really got a chance to; either that, or I just forgot to talk about it until now. And when we went over your midterms here in the library and I mentioned to you in front of everyone that your answers had a big bias towards Sengoku era questions, you seemed to get pretty embarrassed over that, so I decided to not talk about it until I got a chance to talk to you solo like this, when none of your sisters are around."

Miku lowers her worksheet while her tutor is talking to her and puts it down on the table before her.

"It all started when I played Sengoku Jidai...it's a turn-based strategy game that Yotsuba bought for me last year. Something about Sengoku-era warlords fighting and having grand ambitions of conquering Japan and all that...really appealed to me for some reason, I guess...so I started reading up on the Sengoku period on my own. History books, mainly, but I even started playing other games and reading historical fiction that featured Sengoku settings. It wasn't long before I realized that I was...legitimately obsessed with Sengoku stuff. And since that happened last year while we were still at Kurobara, all my classmates were into actors or models...you know, the ones you see on fashion magazines or on TV. And here _I _am, looking at pictures of old men with their mustaches and beards and sideburns and whatnot in my history textbooks..."

Nervously glancing over at Fuutarou and looking away quickly when she notices him paying keen attention to her, Miku sighs lightly.

"...I know, it's...it's weird, isn't it," she mumbles dejectedly.

"Yeah, that's hella weird."

Miku's forehead promptly hits the tabletop.

"...actually hearing that from someone else hurts a lot more than I expected," Miku admits miserably, her forehead still glued to the table on top of her graded worksheet. "And more so because it's you, Fuutarou."

"Maybe so. But still, even if it is weird, it works out for you because it directly contributes to your grades. Out of the five of you, you're the one who consistently gets the highest scores thanks to all the studying you've done. So at the end of the day, you get the last laugh for having an interest in something that's actually relevant to your studies."

After pulling her head up and rubbing her forehead where it's hit the table, Miku frowns a little at her tutor. "But that wasn't studying, though..."

"Maybe at the time it wasn't, no. But the best kind of studying you can do is the kind that doesn't even feel like you're studying, just like how people say that the best kind of job you can have is one where you don't really feel like you're working. Because if you're having fun with what you're studying, you'll be able to retain that kind of information a lot more easily than if you aren't."

"Too bad I can't feel that way towards any of my other subjects, though."

"Yeah, that's the tricky part. And it's not like I can just magically force you all to suddenly _like _all the other subjects that you're _not _good at."

"You can't?"

"If magic were _that _convenient, I wouldn't even have this job."

Fuutarou reaches over and takes the blue paper crane that Miku dropped onto the table earlier to hold it in his own hands.

"That aside, even if I think it's weird, even if _you_ think it's weird, I don't think that should affect what you decide to like or not. Having different tastes by itself is not a crime, and while you could call yourself a deviant against the norm, that by itself shouldn't pose any problems. It's the people who pride themselves on being different to an annoying degree whom I have a problem with, but that's another story, and I don't have to worry about that with you. I guess more to the point is how the rest of your sisters don't know about you liking Sengoku warlords when you literally have the Takeda crest as your phone home screen."

Yelping lightly as soon as her tutor mentions her phone's home screen, Miku slaps her hand over her phone that's been sitting on the side of the table near her and hastily stuffs it into her cardigan pocket, out of view from her classmate.

"H-H-How did you know...!?" she nervously breathes at Fuutarou in a hushed tone, a sweat breaking out on her scalp.

"You think I don't notice you girls being on your phones whenever I'm teaching you? We usually work on a glass freaking table in your living room, I don't even _need _magic to see right through it!"

Miku's lips are trembling hard in embarrassment as Fuutarou exposes her dark secret even more so than she herself did.

"But...I'd like to honor your request of not telling the others if you're not comfortable with them knowing. You liking Sengoku warlords and stuff is your business and I want to respect that," Fuutarou reassures her calmly. "I wouldn't like it if someone I knew went around telling other people about my secrets, either."

Fuutarou's steady and calm voice that she's grown to love listening to swiftly cleanses her mind of all the embarrassment up until now, and Miku nods firmly.

"Thank you, Fuutarou. I'm sure...I'm sure there'll come a day when my sisters know about this part of me, and I know that I'll have to be the one to tell them when it comes."

Then, after a pause that she spends gazing down at the blue paper crane that her tutor has set down on the table before him -

"...Fuutarou, you wouldn't...happen to remember giving me...a paper crane in the past, would you? One that...sort of looks like that one?"

The young mage also glances down at the crane.

"No," he says, shaking his head. "I don't remember. Are you talking about when you were hospitalized?"

Miku nods slowly again, which prompts Fuutarou to shake his head.

"Yeah, then sorry, I don't recall doing anything like that."

Blinking with a bit of melancholy down at her side of the table, Miku lets her eyes wander across the incorrect marked answers on her worksheet.

"Then tell me this, Fuutarou: is paper crane-folding to you like what Sengoku warlords are to me?"

"...as in, something I like doing that I'd rather not tell people?"

"Yeah."

"Mm...well, it's not that I mind telling people. And it's not like I _like _folding paper cranes, though I'm not against it, either."

"Then why did you learn how to do it? Because, just from comparing the one you made to the ones Yotsuba's been making, it's clear that you've practiced a lot in the past. I know this is rich coming from someone like me, but I can't say I know anyone who's folded paper cranes for fun."

"Yeah, maybe it'd be more believable if someone like Ichika or Nino were telling me that. Or maybe even Yotsuba herself."

"Y-You get what I mean!"

Fuutarou exhales deeply. "And besides, I already told you when the others were here, didn't I? I did fold paper cranes for someone who was in the hospital. Same thing as what Yotsuba was doing. Senbazuru and all that."

"Yotsuba doing it isn't surprising since that's just the kind of person she is, always wanting to help everybody," Miku responds. "But you're different, Fuutarou. You're not the kind of person who'd just learn how to fold paper cranes for the fun of it or because it's simple, no matter how easy it is. And since you also did senbazuru for someone, that someone has to be very important to you - "

**"Miku."**

For a split second, Miku feels like she's just lost the ability to speak, and that is more than enough to break her train of thought.

"I don't know why you're looking so deeply into this, but for the record, unfortunately, I really did learn paper crane-folding for the hell of it because I overheard some of the nurses at the time talking about how some visiting family members of patients would sometimes bring in their own paper cranes and stuff. There was one patient whose family couldn't come in, so I decided to fold some cranes for them in my spare time. It took a while, since I didn't exactly have much free time, not even back then, but I did get it done. It's just something I decided to do on a whim, and I happen to have paper-crane folding as another skill under my belt because of it, for as much good it'll do me nowadays."

Miku turns away slightly.

"...sorry. I...got ahead of myself there," she mutters back. "Forget I asked."

"Sure thing." Fuutarou turns to Miku. "Wanna head out? You've already done your homework, and everyone else's off doing their own thing, so we don't really have much of a reason to be here anymore."

Nodding, Miku packs her own backpack, and she leaves the library together with her tutor and classmate to walk home, taking the same usual direct route.

"This might be none of my own business either, but I've noticed that you and Nino aren't really getting along that well lately," Fuutarou notes to Miku as they once again wait at a crosswalk to turn green for them. "If you don't want to talk about it, then you don't have to, but I'm asking because whatever's going on between you two has the potential to disrupt our lessons whenever I'm tutoring you girls."

Miku raises her head. She's been walking this whole way from school with her eyes down on the sidewalk.

"Nino and I had an argument right before we got our midterm scores back...earlier that morning, I had another one of those...panic attacks that woke me up in the middle of the night. This time, though, Nino sensed that I was having another panic attack and came into my room to check on me, and we decided to head downstairs to have some tea - well, Nino had some hot chocolate for some reason, even though it's practically already summer. We started chatting a little, and then...and then we started talking about the possibility of you teaching us magic, or magecraft, or however you say it."

"Huh."

"Nino was against it, as you might imagine. She already doesn't like the fact that you're our tutor teaching us school material, so she wasn't going to like the idea of you teaching us magic either."

"Then I take it that you're the opposite of Nino in this case?"

Nodding again, Miku turns to look up at her tutor.

"I've been thinking about it ever since you told us about our Eyes, Fuutarou. About how we're mages too, whether we wanted to be or not, because of them. And after seeing you get injured like you did during midterms week, keeping Itsuki safe and getting us to school on time so that we could still take our midterms, I decided that if possible, I want to learn more about magecraft...I want someone to teach me magecraft. And...the only one I know who can do that is you."

The crosswalk sign turns green, and Miku and Fuutarou proceed on their way back to the Pentagon high-rise.

"You already know what I'm going to say, though," Fuutarou says finally after about a minute of silence.

"I do. You don't want to teach me."

"Yet you decided to ask anyway, huh."

"Yep."

Fuutarou gives a rare chuckle. "Nino's probably right after all, I guess I _am _spending too much time with you guys."

"I can't speak for her, but I don't mind if you keep spending time with us like you have been," Miku smiles back at him softly.

"I'll have to anyway, so you're in luck."

"Mhm."

Running a hand up through his hair, Fuutarou gazes off into the distance, eyeing the high-rise that is growing taller and taller with each step that they take towards it.

"Why don't you want me to learn magecraft, then?" Miku asks. "Is it because you think that we're too dumb to learn it? I'd like you to be honest with me."

"Like I haven't ever been...but actually, no, that's not the reason. Magecraft and magic in general isn't based on your intelligence or how smart you are; that would imply that the human brain itself has a whole slew of Magic Circuits, which, while it does have some of its own, they're obviously not enough most of the time to create any meaningful amount of mana to adequately produce magic. Obviously intelligence and knowledge will affect magecraft in terms of what kinds of magic you can use if you take the time and effort to learn them, but if we're talking about just the raw ability to us magecraft in any form, then no, even the dumbest idiot in the world can use it to some degree because all you need for that is a set of Magic Circuits."

Fuutarou turns to peer down directly into Miku's blue eyes.

"Take this for what you will, but I believe that you can learn magecraft."

Blinking in surprise at her tutor, Miku at first begins to smile happily, but then it fades just as it begins to brighten, like an incandescent light bulb being switched on just as its filament sputters out and dies.

"...then why do you not want to teach me?" she asks, and Fuutarou turns away to look forward again.

"It's not magecraft itself that's making me not want to teach you, it's the magic world itself. The magic side of the world, the part of the world most people don't know about and will go their entire lives not knowing anything about, is an ugly one, and even more so in this era where it's no secret to use mages that magecraft is on the decline...hell, it's _been _on the decline for centuries, but in recent times, things have gotten so bad for mages in general that the disappearance of magecraft is a very real possibility in the next couple of centuries to follow, and it doesn't help that people becoming mages nowadays are nowhere near the quality and caliber of mages of old, mages who would have the power to keep magecraft as an institution alive or at the very least preserve it for posterity.

"But enough with the backstory. The short answer is that I don't want you or your sisters getting involved with the magic side of the world, and I'm pretty sure I've already told you this back when you all first found out that I was a mage on that one weekend. It's too dangerous, it's too filthy, it's too miserable. The mages I've met ever since becoming a mage myself make me fucking wish magecraft would die out as soon as possible; hell, that's not just limited to mages, I extend that to a lot of people I've met as a result of my magework, whether they're mages to begin with or not. People are already nasty enough when magic _isn't _involved, but when it _is_, their bullshit and degeneracy hits levels that shouldn't be possible for the sake of humanity as a whole. Things like power and money already corrupt people as they are, but magic corrupts people in ways not even those can. And if the magic itself doesn't, the people whom you start to meet after you begin to get involved will certainly try.

"I'm not saying that you aren't strong enough to resist the temptations that magic may bring. I'm not saying that you won't be able to handle the difficulties that being a mage brings. But speaking from my own experience, thinking back on all the close calls and narrow misses I've had working as a mage, I don't want anyone following the same path that I did. Sure, I probably didn't have any other choice at the time that I decided to become one, but that doesn't mean I can't think back and say I hated it, because I do."

"You hate being a mage..." Miku repeats quietly after him. "If you could stop being a mage, you would, huh."

"Hell yeah. I've had more than my fair share of magecraft; while I'm still obviously pretty young compared to a lot of other mages out there, I think it's fair to say that I've seen and done shit that kids my age shouldn't ever see or do. And by extension, I certainly don't want anyone I know and care about experiencing those same things."

Fuutarou points gently at Miku, specifically at her eyes.

"You want to learn magecraft because you want to become proficient with those eyes of yours, right? To learn about what they do and how to control them?"

"Well...not specifically _because _of them, but...yes, eventually, I'd like to know more about them..."

"Right, so either way, if you begin to study magecraft, it's inevitable that at some point, you'll come to know what your Mystic Eyes are and what they do. However, this is where I also need to mention that studying magecraft is potentially dangerous on its own too, depending on what you're learning and studying, and I consider Mystic Eyes to fall underneath that 'dangerous' category."

"...they're really that dangerous?"

"I told you before that Mystic Eyes are generally incredibly powerful conduits of magecraft for mages who have them because once you get the hang of them, they're extremely intuitive to use and, depending on what type they are, their power can be immense. But they can sometimes be a double-edged sword in that their immense power has a price of some kind, side-effects or whatever. If we're using you and Nino as examples, since I know the two of you have them, Nino lost most of her vision when her Mystic Eyes first awakened, and you're suffering panic attacks in the middle of the night as a result of yours awakening. And those might not be all that's bad about them."

"There could be something even _worse _than what's happening to me now...?" Miku wonders aloud, as she finds that rather hard to believe.

"Could be. As long as we don't know what your Mystic Eyes are, all we can do is guess, or wait for them to fully awaken, if they do. And I'm saying that it's in your best interest to leave your Eyes as they are in case they end up causing you even more trouble. These are Mystic Eyes we're talking about...ones that haven't even fully awakened yet, either..."

"But then...but then what if they fully awaken on their own? Then wouldn't it have been better for me to learn how to make use of them instead of after?"

"If that happens, then yes, in hindsight it may have been worth it to have taught you how to handle your Eyes, or whatever I can teach you as guy who's never dealt with Mystic Eyes before. But that's only _if _\- and I said that I'd rather your eyes never get to that point at all."

"...because you don't think I'd be able to handle them?"

"The odds are not in your favor, no."

Miku hesitates.

"So you won't teach me magecraft."

"No. Not only is that not part of the terms of my contract that I signed with your dad, but I also don't want to teach you in the first place."

"...it's not because you think you know what's best for us, is it? At least tell me that much..." Miku's voice has turned quiet and dark. "...it's bad enough we have Papa telling us that a lot, too."

"No, it's not because of that. As much as we might act and sound similar at times, please don't confuse me for your dad, that's a goddamn insult if I've ever heard one."

Finally a small smile breaks out on Miku's face.

"You really don't like Papa, do you?"

"I don't even like my _own _dad all that much, what makes you think I'll like yours?"

"Why? What's wrong with your dad?"

"Well, for starters, he's a beer-chuggin' masochistic idiot who likes it when my little sister slaps his ass with a kitchen ladle..."

"Pffft."


	44. Motivator

The digital clock on Uesugi Fuutarou's phone barely turns 23:21 when he slips it back into the right pocket of his jeans as he strides briskly down the street, next to the large sidewalk that grows more and more crowded the closer he draws to his destination. Young men and women, mainly of college and post-graduate ages, line the sidewalk for a respectable distance, though Fuutarou suspects that there are a few high schoolers hiding in the line, hoping to be admitted even when underage.

Not that Fuutarou himself is in any position to judge them, because he's about to do the same thing himself.

For this occasion, the young mage has chosen a fashion style that, again, does not quite suit him very well: form-fitting navy-blue jeans complete with a black belt to secure them in place, a black T-shirt with nothing but a curious logo consisting of two silver diamonds overlapping each other vertically printed on the chest, the smartwatch that Yotsuba bought for him during Golden Week, which Fuutarou repaired while recuperating from his wounds that he received from his duel with Rio, on his right wrist, and his usual black snapback cap with its odd six-line logo on his head. In addition, while he clearly won't need Presence Concealment for a setting such as this, he's made sure to cast a number of defensive spells on himself before heading out tonight, such as Presence Suppression, which is a weaker form of Presence Concealment that, while unable to render him unnoticed by non-magical personnel, will make it easier for him to blend in and disappear into crowds if need be, Runic Armor, which will protect him from being struck by blows that the runes deem malicious in intent in case he gets attacked unexpectedly in the venue, and Defensive Matrix, which is an invisible full-body spell that will protect him from incoming magical attacks that have a physical manifestation.

Normally Fuutarou does not bother casting such a number of spells on himself, as he operates alone most of the time and doesn't need them, and having all these spells active constantly drains him of mana much faster than he'd like, which can put him into dangerous situations if he's not careful. But given his assignment tonight, where he'll be operating in a setting that's much different than his usual solo escapades, he figures it doesn't hurt to be a little extra prepared.

As per his employer's suggestion, Fuutarou is looking to meet with one of his info-dealers tonight. While he has a few scattered throughout the city, this one that he's planning to meet is the one most likely to have intel on Shirazumi Rio, given the circumstances. The brief text conversation they had leading up to this night has given Fuutarou instructions to meet her at the city's downtown, in its famous entertainment district that's rapidly gaining infamy as a sort of red-light district, and with the rising problems of drug use and abuse in the city, its reputation should come as no surprise. Specifically, Fuutarou is headed for a large club, the biggest nightclub in the city, in fact, called the Night Crawler. Its name is in English, not Japanese, as the city has a surprisingly large international population thanks to all the foreign-exchange students studying at any one of the city's two freshly opened, state-of-the-art universities and the foreigners who have moved into the city to work for international businesses and companies like banks, hotels, high-class restaurants, tech firms, and biomedical groups that have established branches in the city. Combine this influx of primarily English-speaking foreigners with the city's own domestic population growth thanks to high-middle class and upper-class families moving in as a result of the city's rapid economic growth over the years, and the city's young adult population, perhaps contrary to the rest of the country's situation, is thriving and flourishing, and of course, the need for adequate entertainment for such a huge and thriving young population has given rise to the appropriate avenues of escape from the doldrums of their daily lives.

As he continues towards the venue, Fuutarou spies a few young men on the corner of a nearby street curb lighting up a few cigarettes. A quick second glance confirms that they're indeed just normal cigarettes, which are perfectly legal, assuming the men are of age, naturally, but Fuutarou darkly bets to himself that once he's inside the nightclub, he'll be seeing more than just tobacco circulating among these young adults.

The young undercover mage finally reaches the entrance to the large nightclub building. The main reason for its abnormal size compared to the other nightclubs in the city is the in-house stage that it features for its main dance floor; the building is fully equipped to host entire raves and concerts, and traveling musicians and artists frequently perform here, adding to the nightclub's wild popularity. Of course, tonight being a Tuesday night, it's nowhere near as crazy as if it were a weekend, God forbid a Friday night, but even still, given that there's apparently an overseas DJ visiting and performing for the rest of the week, attendees are already filling up the venue for some drinks and a good time.

The main entrance to the Night Crawler is, naturally, rather packed, so Fuutarou continues walking past the regular attendee entrance to round the building to reach the less traversed VIP back entrance, which is guarded by a pair of tall, casually suited bouncers. As the VIP line is not very long at all, with only a handful of people with VIP passes waiting to be admitted, Fuutarou gets in line himself and patiently waits until it's his turn to get checked.

"Good evening, sir. May I see your VIP pass, please?" one of the bouncers asks Fuutarou when it's his turn while the other bouncer allows the pair of girls before Fuutarou to enter the building.

Having prepped his phone, Fuutarou shows the bouncer the QR code on his phone, which the bouncer scans with his QR reader, which in turn blinks with confirmation.

"Thank God, someone who actually uses our QR code," the bouncer remarks with lighthearted amusement as he resets the scanner. "You wouldn't believe how many kids don't know that we have one despite us putting up ads all over the place about it."

"Kids like me're supposed to be up to date with the latest tech and stuff, aren't we?" Fuutarou jokes back as he passes.

"Yeah, exactly, you get it! We need more kids like you...it'll save us a whole bunch of haggling with the dumber ones, if nothing else..."

Sharing a quick laugh with him, the underage mage leaves the bouncers to their work and joins the rest of the attendees inside the nightclub. With the night still somewhat young, the party is only beginning to kick into high gear.

Doing his best to deal with the flashing lights and the blaring club music, Fuutarou wades through the throngs of people clogging the corridors to reach the central bar on the second floor, which is complete with its own balcony exclusively for VIP Pass holders to enjoy the scene below. A third bouncer, guarding the base of the stairs leading up to the central bar, asks for Fuutarou's ID to ensure that he is of legal drinking age, and the underage mage produces a fake ID that says that he is twenty-one, six years older than he really is. Normally his Presence Suppression spell should be enough to convince bouncers like these to just let him through without having to ask him for an ID like this, so maybe he ought to tune it once he returns home after completing this assignment. Either way, having passed the final boss, so to speak, Fuutarou climbs the stairs and seats himself at the large three-sixty bar on the nightclub's second floor. A tall column extends up to the ceiling, its interior glowing like an oversized lava lamp morphing with gentle colors to make the column easy on the eyes, with a small crew of bartenders serving customers all around the three-sixty bar.

"Good evening, esteemed sir, what may I get you tonight?"

A long, black-haired girl just a few inches shy of Fuutarou's own height, dressed neatly in dress slacks, a plaid vest, necktie, and puffy white dress shirt, with her long hair tied back into a high ponytail, approaches the young mage seated at his side of the three-sixty bar. Glancing up at her, the professional air with which she carries herself and that sweeping long ponytail already give her a striking enough impression, but to seal the deal, she wears a single hairpin on the left side of her front bangs.

"Orange screwdriver on the rocks. Go light on the vodka," Fuutarou says. "But only if it's on the house."

The bartender snorts with a wry grin. "Broke as usual, huh, Fuutarou?" she asks as she turns to grab a bottle of Sobieski and a carton of pulp-free orange juice to mix her customer a drink.

"You know me."

"Yeah, better than most people."

"Easy enough for you, given that I don't even know that many people to begin with."

"Bullshit, of course you do."

"If we take into account all the contracts that I've had, then sure. Problem is, most of them fucking hate my guts."

Having fixed his drink and even adorning the side of the glass with an orange slice, the bartender sets the glass down before her customer.

"Courtesy of the house," the bartender winks gently down at the young mage, who grins back with thanks before setting his five fingers over the rim of the glass. From his fingertips extends a small, dim blue rune that scans the contents of the glass for any impurities or foreign substances. "Oh c'mon, I've served you how many drinks now that you _still _act as if I've put something in it?"

"Can never be too safe. Not in a place like this," Fuutarou reasons calmly, waiting for his scan to finish.

"What, you're calling this place unsafe? I'll have you know that we're rated the best nightclub in the city for a _reason!"_

"And you know that's full of shit."

"No it's not, okay? As long as the city thinks we're all good, then that's all that matters!"

"Goddamn it, Takebayashi."

Having found no such foreign substances in his drink, Fuutarou raises his glass, gesturing it first towards the friendly bartender in thanks, before taking a long sip.

"Your screwdrivers are nice as always," he complements as he sets the glass back down.

"And thanks, as always," Takebayashi smiles back courteously. "Have you gotten over your dislike of booze yet? You've gotten enough free drinks off me by this point, right?"

Fuutarou scowls back at her. "Hell no I haven't."

"Then why the heck do you keep asking for screwdrivers every time you stop by?"

Shrugging, the young mage takes another long sip. "Tradition, maybe? You've always given me a screwdriver every time I'm here, after all. Wasn't it because back then, when you first started working here, screwdrivers were the first drink you learned how to mix?"

"That's right. I'm glad you still remember that, haha."

Takebayashi continues to watch her long-time customer drain the contents of his drink until the glass is about half-empty.

"It still doesn't feel that far off, back when I first started bartending," Takebayashi remarks, turning to lean against her side of the bar counter with the base of her back and setting her elbows against the edge, looking up at the brightly colored lava lamp column. "What about you, Fuutarou?"

"Feels like ages. I'm gettin' old over here, you know."

"Oh, there you go talking like an old man again. Girls won't like it if you keep talking like an old geezer."

"Since when have I ever cared about being liked by girls?"

"So, what, do you swing the other way, then?"

"I can't say I do, but just what made you jump to _that _conclusion, I wonder."

"I'm just saying. People can change, after all. Even if you seem like the same old Fuutarou ever since six years ago, what's to say that you haven't developed your own unique tastes and quirks?"

"Well, it's obviously because I'm too damn busy to be running around chasing girls like half the fuckin' idiots in this place."

Takebayashi laughs aloud. "I know I shouldn't be laughing at our customers, but yeah, you'd be surprised by how many idiots try picking up girls here. I know people come here for the music and concerts and stuff, but honestly, watching dumb boys try hooking up with the girls here is some of the best entertainment in the whole damn city."

"That so? I wouldn't really know anything about that..."

"I mean, you could be part of it if you tried."

"No thanks, I'd rather not embarrass myself."

After a quick laugh, Takebayashi swiftly turns it into a heavy sigh. "If only the rest of the boys here shared that mentality a bit more. Some of them are so thirsty, we need to have our bouncers kick 'em out if things get too cringe."

"Good, that's how it should be."

"Don't you forget that you were like that too, six years ago. You and your dyed blonde hair back then - what kind of a nine-year-old runs around with dyed hair?!"

"Let's just say...I had my reasons."

"Oh, yeah, _suuuuureeee _you did."

"Doubting me's not gonna make it any other way." Fuutarou shortly slides the now-empty glass with the remainder of its ice cubes back to his bartender. "Now, enough banter."

Nodding, Takebayashi takes the glass to empty out its contents, clean it, and put it away before returning to her customer. In the meantime, Fuutarou discretely establishes a small bounded field, the same kind that he used during his conversation with Ichika at Starbucks.

"There's another mage in the city, name's Shirazumi Rio. Heard of it?" Fuutarou asks once he's got Takebayashi's audience again.

"Shirazumi...Rio...kind of a strange name, but no, that's a new one for me. What about him?"

"You know about my current contract with the quintuplets. I don't need to refresh your memory on that one, do I?"

"Nope. In fact, I remember seeing them in Kyoto six years ago, when we were all there for a school trip or something, right? I thought they were only quadruplets because I only happened to see four of them. So he's the guy whom you've been working to keep away from the quints, huh?"

Fuutarou nods.

"Finally got a chance to meet him face to face the other week. Blonde hair, red leather jacket. At least, those were the clothes he was wearing when I last saw him. If he's got any brain cells, he'll know to switch his appearance since I don't know anyone else in the city who wears an obnoxiously bright red leather jacket like he does, but on the off-chance that he doesn't, you'll know him when you see him."

"I've never seen anyone like that here. Do you know if he's slated to come in or if he hangs out in this area? I can have our perimeter bouncers do routine checks around the building to see if they can't get a glimpse of him or something."

"That's the thing, I don't know how he moves around the city, or where he plans to target next. Remember the huge drug cache that the police found in the middle of the city? That's his doing."

"Ah, so that was him. Why do you suspect that he'd hang out here?"

"Because from what I've been able to find about him, he most likely runs his own drug gang and drug ring in the city. All those deaths by drug abuse that you've been hearing on the news? A lot of it's because of him. He's been testing out a new drug by distributing it to his boys and having them drag random people away to test the drug out on them. I've been able to stop them a few times, but obviously I can't stop them all. Lately Rio's boys haven't been going around doing this, but I expect them to start up again at some point soon."

"So you think that there's a potential that he could show up here because the people here might be taking some of his drugs."

"Something like that, yeah."

"This isn't like a roundabout way of telling me that our place is full of druggies and crackheads, are you?"

Fuutarou shrugs. "I could be, but if I were, I'd have to say that about every single nightclub in this side of the city. This one happens to be where you work."

"Hmph." Takebayashi folds her arms a bit at her customer. "So you're telling me to keep an eye out for him?"

"I am. I was hoping you'd know him yourself, since that would mean that he frequents this place."

"I mean, if he's the leader of a drug ring, what makes you think that he'd ever come out of the shadows? From what little I know about the drug rings in the city, the people who're in charge of them obviously don't step out into the public sphere unless they're Yakuza, and even then the Yakuza don't really operate in this city. Or at least not on the same scale as the other drug rings."

"The fact that I fought him when I met him proves otherwise," Fuutarou says. "Of course, maybe that was his one-off exception. But he's a modern mage like me; he's fine with heading out there on his own to get shit done. He's also a dangerous one too, I got pretty badly cut up that last time we met."

"Cut up? Did he use a knife on you or something?"

"He's a knife-user, it seems like, yeah."

"But I thought you were a mage too."

"Knife-fighting gets complicated when the person you're fighting against can stab you even when you're not close to him."

"That _does _sound complicated, unless you're just talking about him throwing a knife at you."

"He didn't need to throw it. He uses a kind of magic that lets him choose where he wants to stab you, even at a distance."

"Yikes...that sounds rough."

"It _is _rough. I had my liver cut open while fighting him."

"Ouch. It seems like you're doing okay now, though?"

"Yeah, it's been like two weeks since then. I also hurt him pretty badly myself, so it's safe to say that our fight ended in a stalemate. It seems like we've both been taking the time to recover, which I don't mind."

"Just make sure not to push yourself too hard. You've always done that, ever since we were kids."

"Eh, some things don't change."

"With you, it's not just _some _things!"

Fuutarou briefly gazes off towards the strobe lights swinging around down around the dance floor.

"So you'll keep an eye out for Shirazumi for me if you can, right?" he asks.

"I can, sure, but do you, like, want me to call you or text you as soon as I do, or what do you want me to do, exactly? And do you want me to let the rest of the staff know so that they can keep an eye out too?"

"No, don't tell any of the bouncers about this, they might be aggressive with it and Shirazumi'll get tipped off right away that he's being tracked. You can maybe ask the other bartenders, though, I can trust them better to keep a low profile about this. As for what you should do if you happen to see him around this place, just text me that you've seen him, though I'll also need you to tell me the time that you saw him here. Use the security cameras in this place if you have to, you have access to them and their footage, right?"

"Asking a whole bunch outta me this time around, are we? And well, I don't ever have a reason to check the security cams, but I suppose I could ask my parents if I can check them for you, and since they know you, I'm sure they'll let me." Takebayashi sighs and rests her elbows on the bar counter, leaning in towards her customer, who sits still, unflinching. "You sure do like asking a lot of things out of us, you know? Not to mention, we do all this for free, just for you. On the house. How do you expect to pay us back for all this service, hmmm...?"

"Tch. You already know how," Fuutarou frowns darkly, causing Takebayashi to grin deviously.

"Of _course _I do. It's been a while since the last time, too," she says softly. "I'm definitely looking forward to the next time, I hope you realize."

"Won't Sanada have anything to say about this?"

"Oh, phooey, he doesn't need to know about it. Just let me know when you'll come here for _real_."

The young mage shakes his head. "Goddamn it, Takebayashi. Besides, I'm way too busy to stop by other than for something like this. Honestly, with how deeply I'm involved with this contract, I don't see myself doing it again for at least another year."

"A full _year!? _Oh, _c'moooooon_..." Takebayashi groans, reeling backwards a little in complaint. "You really gotta make me wait _that _long...?!"

"It is what it is. Honestly, I should've never gotten involved with all this, and you know it."

Takebayashi pouts down at her customer. "It's because of those quintuplets, huh? The five of them got you all wrapped up around their fingers or something? I don't need to go over to their place and teach them a lesson or anything, right? I hope you realize that _I _knew _you _first!"

"Bossy as always, are we now," Fuutarou sighs. "And no, please don't do that, that'll cause more misunderstandings that I _don't _need to deal with at the moment."

He then gets up from his chair, the conversation beginning to draw to a close.

"You're still keeping up well with school, right? Bartending's not getting in the way, I hope?" he asks his bartender. "Considering that both of us aren't even supposed to be in this place to begin with."

"Nope, I'm still going to school and being class president and all that. Honestly, that's a question I should be asking _you_, you and all that magework you do," Takebayashi points back at her childhood friend.

"Originally, I wasn't even planning on attending high school. So you have the quints to thank for that."

"Not really. If I'd found out that you're not going to school properly, I would've dragged you to my school myself."

"Yes, because somehow that's going to work."

Takebayashi begins to crack her knuckles menacingly. "Is that a challenge I hear, Fuutarou?"

"Yes, a challenge you can't do."

"Fine, if you're so confident, your drinks won't be on the house from now on."

Fuutarou laughs shortly, raising his hands up in a nonchalant shrug. "And nothing of value was lost."

Takebayashi pouts hard after her customer as he slowly makes his way to the stairs to exit the venue. "You're going to regret saying that!" she also hollers after him, and Fuutarou, cheekily smirking back at her, waves her goodbye as he slips out of view down the stairs.

As Fuutarou exits the nightclub, thankful that nothing has gone awry with his assignment tonight, he considers his options now. If Takebayashi, who works late night shifts like these at the most popular nightclub in the city, doesn't know who Shirazumi Rio is when she usually keeps a good eye on all the noteworthy figures in the Night Crawler, then he can safely assume that Rio just hasn't been by this place or this area at all. For as much of a creepy asshole he was acting like when the two of them faced off, Fuutarou thought that maybe there's a chance that Rio would be good at acting or conducting himself around other people; a little charisma goes a long way in helping bastards like him get around the city, socially speaking. Maybe he avoids high-traffic areas like the nightclub here because he doesn't want to attract too much attention? But that would be contradictory to how he set up an entire drug cache site in the middle of the city, right? Fuutarou can't seem to get a read on this guy at all...he came to pay Takebayashi a visit because it's difficult tracking Rio even with his rune network throughout the city in the hopes that extra pairs of eyes being on the lookout in the right place would be able to uncover something, but it's looking like even this plan may not bear fruit after all.

But unwilling to give up so easily, Fuutarou makes a mental note to himself to check back on Takebayashi; maybe he's bound to show up to a place like this, and it's only because Rio hasn't actually taken the time to come here yet. Takebayashi's promised to text him if she sees anyone like Rio too, so there's that. For now, he'll need to pay visits to his other info-dealers to see if any of them have any sort of intel on Shirazumi Rio. The night is still young, after all, and the young mage wants to make the most out of the time he's got.

As soon as it strikes midnight, though, his smartwatch's screen begins to blink, and checking it, Fuutarou reads a scheduled reminder, and he figures he'll stop by a convenience store on the way back home.

* * *

The striking of a match; the birth of a small star that gives way to a pleasing scent fit for the gods in the heavens.

Kneeling before the tombstone marked with the kanji denoting the grave of the Nakano family, Nakano Itsuki, making sure that the incense is burning properly, puts her hands together and closes her eyes to pray. A small bouquet of flowers, specifically red hibiscus, that she's brought rests besides the incense urn quietly as Itsuki prays, with a 12-piece packet of individually packaged red bean paste dorayaki beneath them at the base of the tombstone that sits with a small bottle of Sayuri sake.

Today is June 14th...two months until the date of Nakano Rena's death. Yet the quintuplet most affected by the death of her mother does not let that discrepancy in timing stop her from honoring her beloved mother's memory: every single month since her mother's passing, on the 14th day, Itsuki has faithfully visited the grave of Nakano Rena. Every single 14th day of the month, without fail, for exactly half an hour each visit, Itsuki kneels with a standard seiza on a little red mat that she brings with her for this occasion to pray for her mother in the afterlife. It does not matter to her if it is windy, raining, hailing, or snowing. It does not matter if she has fallen sick with a fever or a cold. It does not matter if she has an urgent test later that week that she must study for. Everything short of the health of her own sisters becomes trivial in the face of this monthly ritual that Itsuki performs without fail, bringing flowers and incense for the one ritual that helps remind her of why and how she is the girl she is today.

The smell of the scented incense, due to the lack of wind today, slowly permeates the air around the tombstone, filling Itsuki's nose in an effort to distract her, but Itsuki is too well versed in her monthly ritual to let the familiar incense take her mind off praying for the sake of her deceased mother.

Finally finishing her prayer quietly, Itsuki pulls her eyes back open to gaze down at her offering in the name of her mother Rena, blinking calmly to match her steady breathing. This monthly visit to her mother's grave provides her a consistent escape from the oftentimes hectic and fast-paced life that she leads back home, in an unusual setting living with four other quintuplets and dealing with the shenanigans that comes as a result of it...and now, as of two months ago, the addition of a boy who's come out of nowhere to enter their lives and undeniably have the biggest impact on her life since her own father at the time her mother passed away. She unpacks her memories and lays out her thoughts before the tombstone, as though she's sharing everything that's happened to her mother in the hopes that she will be able to listen...even though Itsuki is fully aware that doing so for this expressed purpose is, for the most part, meaningless.

A small pang of pain jolts across her heart. Meaningless...no, it is not meaningless. If it were, she wouldn't find it in herself to pay monthly visits like this for the past six years. There _is_ meaning to this; that much is for sure.

Even still, no amount of self-righteous meaning is going to change the fact that their mother is gone. Itsuki, the quintuplet who most adored their mother when she was still with them, always finds herself confronted with this awful truth, just as reliably as these monthly visits to the grave themselves. Because how better to remind herself of the fact that her mother is dead than to kneel before a slab of stone that says so?

Itsuki finds herself closing her eyes again, and to her muted surprise, she feels them moistening. She hasn't cried in front of the tombstone for a few years...so why is she crying now?

Quickly wiping her tears away and suppressing the rest that haven't managed to emerge, Itsuki manages to calm her aching heart. The fact that she still manages to get emotional before her mother's tombstone also reminds her of the fact that even after all these years, Itsuki hasn't changed from being the resident crybaby of the quintuplets.

And on the topic of not having changed, Itsuki's the only one among the quintuplets who hasn't shown the impression of progress. Ichika, Nino, Miku, and Yotsuba have all found things that they are good at, things that they can act on to give themselves futures after high school, assuming all goes well with their graduations. What does Itsuki have? Eating?

"...will I ever be able to be like you, Mother...?" Itsuki mumbles aloud.

"You should focus on being yourself first."

Jolting upright while still kneeling in surprise, the youngest quintuplet, with her lengthy ahoge also standing on edge in shocked surprise, quickly turns to the source of the familiar voice that she hears right next to her.

"...would be my advice, at least."

Also sitting upright from a small, silent prayer of his own, Uesugi Fuutarou blinks slowly at the tombstone in front of him, next to the Nakano family's tombstone. It's a much smaller tombstone by comparison, and there isn't even any kanji to mark it.

"U-U-Uesugi-kun...?!" Itsuki blurts out, still gripped by surprise. "W-When did you - ?!"

"You seemed to be busy there, so I didn't want to bother you while you were praying," Fuutarou says calmly, producing something from his messenger bag and placing it on the small tombstone before him. Itsuki blinks a few times at it: it's a whole loaf of sliced whole wheat bread from an artisanal bakery Komugiya. "I see you've got an extra stick of incense there. If you don't mind, I'd like to use it."

"Um...s-sure...please help yourself..."

"Thank you."

Itsuki watches her tutor who seems to have appeared out of nowhere with eyes that are having trouble believing what she's seeing as he lights the incense, sets it in front of the small tombstone, and bows his head and puts his hands together in another small prayer. The tone of his voice that he's used so far to talk to her is much quieter than she's used to hearing from him; there's a degree of solemnness that she's certainly never heard him speak with before, different from the tenseness in his voice in times of duress or the annoyance he conveys whenever she or any of her sisters give him a hard time.

Though his prayer is short, it still gives Itsuki enough time to reflect on what he's told her just now. You should focus on being yourself first. But isn't that what she's doing...?

"I think I speak for both of us when I say...fancy seeing you here, Itsuki," Fuutarou gives Itsuki a small grin once he's done paying his respects.

"Indeed you do. What brings you here today?" Itsuki asks in return. "...I do not mean to be rude, but unfortunately, that tombstone...has nothing on it..."

"Oh, right." Fuutarou reaches out with his hand, whose outline glows briefly with light blue mana, and as he pulls it back, kanji begins to etch itself into the tombstone properly, merely spelling out his family name of "Uesugi".

"You...keep the marker hidden?" the quintuplet asks quietly, still feeling a bit unnerved watching another one of Fuutarou's acts of magic.

"For security purposes. Let's just say that I've made lots of enemies over the years while I've been working as a mage," Fuutarou sighs deeply, "people who'd stoop to any level to hurt me somehow. One of the easiest and worst ways to hurt someone is to target their family, people they care about. In my case, while I can keep my own family safe for the most part, there was one time when someone actually tried going after this tombstone because they knew my mom's ashes was interred here."

Unable to help herself again, Itsuki gasps lightly when Fuutarou mentions this.

"Th-That's...that's terrible...! How could they even...that's horrible..."

"Yeah, it's...it's pretty low," the young mage agrees, nodding his head slowly and broodingly. "Though I'm not surprised you're not worried about the fact that your mom's tombstone could've also been damaged in the crossfire."

Itsuki naturally cringes at the terribly uncomfortable possibility that her classmate points out to her. "Urk...um...I'm...I'm glad both of our mothers' tombstones are safe..."

"Yeah, same. That's why I keep the tombstone unmarked, and I even keep a few spells here to make sure that they'll be left alone, at least by people who aren't also mages who can break my runes."

The two classmates fall into an empty silence. The air is not tense, and somehow, it doesn't feel awkward - at least, it doesn't feel that way to Itsuki, perhaps because the two of them are paying respects to their respective mothers.

"...I never knew..." Itsuki speaks up again softly, "...I never knew that your mother was...interred here as well."

"Well...this _is _the more popular of the two cemeteries we have around the city. The other one on the other side from here was only built last year," Fuutarou explains. "Is that even the right word to use? Popular? Doesn't sound right..."

Itsuki looks around. "The cemetery _is _quite large. I suppose I should be more surprised at the fact that our mothers' tombstones are right next to each other."

"Yeah, I'll agree with that. And I don't stop by here that often, either. How about you?"

"Er..."

Hesitating, Itsuki wonders to herself if she should divulge such information to Fuutarou, but reasoning that if there's anyone she could feel comfortable talking with outside of her own family on this matter, it would be her tutor, the youngest quintuplet gathers her resolve to talk.

"...I come visit my mother's grave every month. Specifically, every 14th day of the month...because that was the day when Mother died," she explains softly. "August 14th was when she passed away. Her death affected me greatly...to the point where I made it a point to come visit her every month."

Fuutarou gazes over at her.

"...forgive me if I sound like I'm prying, but judging by the fact that none of your sisters are here, I take it that you come visit by yourself often?"

Itsuki nods. "My sisters got over our mother's death after a few months. Nino was the one who used to come with me to visit, but eventually she got tired of constantly traveling out here every month, so it is just me most of the time nowadays...though we all still do come out on the anniversary of our mother's death."

"So it's safe for me to infer that out of the five of you, you probably looked up to your mother a lot?"

A weak smile forms over the quint's lips. "Correct analysis as always, Uesugi-kun. Yes, out of the five of us, I believe it is safe to say that...Mother's death had the most profound effect on me. It is not to say that my sisters did not also love Mother either; we all took her passing very hard."

Itsuki looks up at the sky. It's a cloudy day, which is rather unusual for a day in the middle of June. Come to think of it, she can't seem to recall a day when she's visited her mother's grave that _wasn't _cloudy...

"...it is just that...to this day, I am the one among us who still has trouble...coming to terms with it."

"I see. Then...it is also safe for me to infer that you looked up to your mom the most out of your sisters, too?"

"Yes, though...that was not how it was at first, not when Mother was still with us. It was only after she died that I began to realize what she had gone through."

Turning to Fuutarou, Itsuki gives him a very weak smile, even weaker than the one from before. At this point, it only barely qualifies as a smile.

"We were very poor growing up, my family. When we were born, my mother was all by herself, as far as I am aware...and we never knew who our father was, and Mother never spoke of him, either. So she had to raise all five of us on her own. There were entire days and nights when she would be unable to come home because of work, and whenever she would come back home, she would be too tired to talk to us, though she always made us food and pancakes whenever we had the ingredients for it. She never showed us how tired she really was, and as kids, we were none the wiser because we had no idea what she was doing, and she always told us to not worry about her, that we should live our lives out to the fullest because we were still kids.

"But she could only keep doing so for so long. She could only look after the five of us, who were identical quintuplets back then and caused a lot of trouble for her, for so long. Naturally, she wrecked her own health doing everything she could to support us, and finally, six years ago, she had to be hospitalized. She died soon afterwards."

Itsuki, whose head has been drooping little by little as her monologue goes on, lifts her chin up again.

"Once she died, I started to grasp the sense that she had put herself through so much just to take care of us. Of course, as kids, we quintuplets could never have fully understood exactly everything that it was that she went through, but I did not want to use our youth as an excuse. After all, without our mother, we were basically on our own; even back then, we understood that we would need to fend for ourselves, since Mother was the only one who took care of us, and without her, we had nobody. That was when I decided to become our new mother, or at least become the mother among us, to take care of and guide the rest of my sisters. During that time when Mother's death was still fresh on our minds, when I saw all of my sisters around me crying as we were mourning her death, I resolved to fill Mother's shoes."

"That so, huh," Fuutarou nods slowly, having patiently listened to Itsuki's anecdote. "I'll be honest, though, Nino seems more like Team Mom to me."

Breaking into a few giggles, Itsuki lets her weak smile return briefly. "I...cannot refute that. I do agree that Nino is certainly doing a better job of being our mother. Compared to her, I..."

Itsuki's voice trails off.

"...is that why you're the only one among the five of you who speaks in keigo?" the young tutor asks in an attempt to shift the attention away from Nino.

"Sheesh, there really _is_ nothing you do not know, huh?"

"Okay, that time was mostly a guess, I'll admit."

"But surely you must have been led to make that guess with a solid reasoning?"

"No, not...not really. Most girls I've ever run into don't speak in keigo, so I'd noticed from the beginning that you spoke differently from your sisters and assumed that was because you all came from a private school setting thanks to Kurobara. But after listening to you talk about your mom just now, it just...makes sense to me that you must've decided to speak in keigo because of her. And if Kurobara was the reason why you talk in keigo, then more of your sisters would be speaking the same way. Sorry, I don't really have, like, any good reasoning for this."

"Is that so. Either way, yes, your guess is correct; I began speaking in keigo after she passed away. I did not always sound like this, believe it or not."

"Yeah, I know."

"...you do?"

"Sure. Remember that time when you tried acting like Miku to me?"

"Aaaaauuu..." Itsuki whines softly, unable to stop her cheeks from reddening out of embarrassment as she recalls that particular incident. "I-I did not want you to think of _that...!"_

"If it'll make you feel any better, Nino really popped me a new one."

"It really does not...!" After pouting a little, Itsuki lets her face grow disturbed. "...I feel bad enough being the reason you were hurt the other week..."

"Please don't, there's no reason to be, now that I'm all better."

Fuutarou shifts his gaze back to his own mother's tombstone.

"So you study hard to take care of your sisters, right?"

"Yes, that is correct. After Mother died, the doctor who treated her came to our apartment and told us that she had arranged to have him take care of us once she died, so we fell under his custody."

"Doctor...don't tell me..."

Itsuki smiles again. "That doctor was, in fact, Doctor Nakano Maruo. I am under the impression that you know him as well?"

Scowling over at his student, the young mage watches her smile brighten with amusement at his reaction.

"Kinda wish I didn't."

"Just 'kind of'? After how you were acting towards him?"

"Not much of a choice I have, but anyways, go on."

"Yes. So Dr. Nakano...Father, that is...began taking care of us. Unlike now, though, he did try to spend some time with us in the beginning..."

"And that's why you and your sisters act that way towards him? Because you want him to act like how he used to?"

Itsuki nods. "I understand that you do not have a positive outlook on him, and I am sure you have your reasons. But...I earnestly do believe that Father is a kind person. After all, you have to be a special kind of person to be willing to take in orphaned quintuplets like us, right?"

"Hmph...I suppose that's true."

"Indeed. And so in the beginning, when he did spend some time with us, I confided with him my feelings about Mother, and I asked him how I would be able to best follow in her footsteps, and he told me by studying and being a good student. And the rest is, well..."

"Yeah, I know the rest."

"Y-You do!?"

"Just by looking at your test scores, of course."

"Oh geez...I keep forgetting that Father gave you literally _all _of our test scores from throughout school..."

Fuutarou briefly checks his smartwatch for the time, which reads 5:18 PM.

"Though, even after I have said all this, I know that I still do not know everything that Mother went through because of us. I am also painfully aware that for all the studying that I have done, for all the aspirations I have to be a good student, my results have been...subpar, to say the least. Truth be told, I am the exact opposite of a good student, and Father did not need to hire a tutor to show me that."

"And that's why you were saying that before you realized I was here?"

It's Itsuki's turn to turn to her own mother's tombstone, and she nods slowly right after.

"...is there perhaps...something you do not like about what I said?" she asks back.

"It's more of a personal gripe. I don't want to sit here sounding like I'm judging you for the decisions that you make, especially when it involves your mom who's passed away."

"I do not mind; please let me hear what you have to say."

"Sure, but it's going to sound harsh. I think you're going about it the wrong way - I don't agree with studying hard or aspiring to become a good student just because of your mom. While I'm sure she was a great parent who did everything she could for her daughters, like you said, her death should not mean that you should focus your future for her sake."

Fuutarou turns to Itsuki fully this time, still seated on the cemetery path in front of his mother's tombstone.

"Remember how in the beginning, when I first started teaching you girls, I didn't try to force you or Nino to come join us for lessons? It's a bit like that, I guess; I wanted you girls to _want _to study, to let me tutor you. So let me ask you this, Itsuki: are you studying for the sake of becoming a good student? Or are you studying because you want to become a good mother, or in your case, someone who can take care of the rest of your sisters in the absence of your real mother?"

Having turned to him earlier, Itsuki averts her gaze again.

"Because if your motivation is to be like your mom, then there are plenty of ways to go about doing that, not just studying - in fact, studying's a pretty roundabout way to do what you're intending to do, honestly. More relevant to our situation, though, is the fact that your motivation's in the wrong place, in my opinion. If replacing your mom's role in your family is your primary motivator for studying and not becoming a good student, then it's not really a mystery why you keep getting bad grades all the time, right?"

Fuutarou is met with a long silence, so he continues on without her.

"I'm sure the others are like this too, in their own quirky ways, so don't think I'm singling you out or anything. I'm just saying this since you're kind enough to take the time to explain your situation to me," he clarifies calmly. "Sometimes, the problem in achieving a goal isn't the methods of the means by which you achieve it. Sometimes, it's the reasons why you go for that goal in the first place, and oftentimes those are the hardest problems to find."

"So...should I stop studying, then? Or what should I do?"

"No, I'm not telling you to _stop studying_, your dad's gonna fire me the second he fucking hears that. I just want you to think about why you study. While I can sit here telling you that it's a flawed reason that you have, it's still a reason nonetheless, and I can't stop you from continuing to believe in what you always have. I just want to convey to you that if you've been doing all you can to reach your goal and it doesn't seem like you've been able to make any improvements, maybe it's a good idea to step back and take another look at the big picture, to make sure you have your bearings straight."

Fuutarou points over to the dorayaki and sake sitting at the base of the Nakano tombstone.

"By the way, I've been meaning to ask, but...did you bring that?"

"Huh? The...the dorayaki? No..."

"Oh, right, because you would've eaten them all on your own by now..."

_"U-Uesugi-kun!"_

"Sorry, sorry, I hadn't made a joke about you eating for the past week, so I had to get it out there."

Still pursing her lips at her tutor, Itsuki grumbles back at him, "No, I did not bring them, they were already here when I arrived."

"Huh. So I guess there's someone else who visits your mom's grave, then."

"It is quite strange, though..."

"What is? The snack choice? I don't really know anyone who eats dorayaki with sake..."

"No, it is not about the food...or the choice of them. It is this..."

Reaching over to the dorayaki pack, Itsuki picks it up and flips it over. On its back is a little Sticky note, written with red ink: "For the quints"

"As far back as I can remember, someone has been leaving these gifts of snacks at my mother's tombstone, and the snacks are always addressed to me and my sisters; I assume that whoever it is, they intended for us to take them home to eat, though I am not sure what to do with the sake in this case."

"Maybe someone who also cared a lot about your mom," Fuutarou suggests. "Maybe your dad? He's the only one I know who could possibly do this."

"Perhaps. I have never seen who it is, either..."

Opening the dorayaki pack, Itsuki pulls out two individual packets, one for herself and one for her tutor.

"Would you like one?" she asks, and Fuutarou nods, accepting her token.

"Since you told me about your side of the story here, I'll tell you mine, if you'd like," Fuutarou offers as he begins to bite into his dorayaki. "I hope our moms don't get pissed at us because we're eating in the cemetery."

"Er...that's right...I am sure they would...not mind...I think..." Itsuki mutters nervously as she begins to nibble on her dorayaki.

"My story isn't as long as yours, though. My mom also died when I was young, but in my case it was eight years ago due to a traffic accident. My dad had her body cremated, and we keep her ashes here. We couldn't afford any fancier tombstones, so we just went with the smallest one we could find." Fuutarou points at the loaf of bread from Komugiya. "My mom loved baking bread, and she was really good at it, enough to the point where she even sold leftover bread she made to markets and shops that would resell them. Eventually, my mom was encouraged by her success with baking that she looked to open her own bakery and took out loans to rent out a place where she could establish it - and then the traffic accident happened."

Itsuki gazes at the loaf of bread still sitting in front of the forlorn, tiny Uesugi grave marker.

"Half the debt that I sometimes talk about having to pay off is that, the loans that she took out to get her bakery started; the other half's the money that my dad borrowed to get his office up and running. But anyways - that's why I try to bring along a loaf of bread whenever I stop by."

"Your mom loved making bread, huh. Ours loved making pancakes," Itsuki smiles again, nostalgically. "Looks like our mothers had something in common."

"I guess so."

After finishing his dorayaki, Fuutarou glances once more at his smartwatch.

"It's getting pretty late; I must've held you up for way longer than I should for a day when we wouldn't have any lessons," the young tutor sighs. "Do you want me to take you back home, or are you fine on your own?"

"Um..." Itsuki hesitates again, but she breaks out of it swiftly and answers, "...if you do not mind, please take me home."

"Sure thing. Though, I wonder what we're gonna do with that sake..."

Fuutarou points down at the small Sayuri bottle.

"Well...we are both underage...I doubt either of us will have any use for it," Itsuki wonders aloud.

"Yeah, maybe not us. But I know my dad can knock that all back in a heartbeat."

"...so you are just going to take an offering...?"

"It's either that, or the cemetery staff're gonna get rid of it when they come by. Maybe whoever brought the dorayaki also brought the sake for you girls to take home?"

"Again, we are _underage, _Uesugi-kun!"

Chuckling to himself, Fuutarou picks up the Sayuri bottle and stashes it away in his messenger bag.

"If you want, though, I'll give this to you too," Fuutarou says, offering the loaf of artisanal bread to Itsuki. "We already have two loaves of bread back at home; we don't really need a third one, otherwise we're gonna be eating sandwiches for dinner for the rest of the week."

"Er...we also already have loaves of bread at our place too...and besides, you said you would treat us to those parfaits you promised us after midterms this weekend."

"Oh yeah, that's right...hm, then I guess I'll hold onto the bread. Just don't run my wallet dry when we go in for parfaits."

"Ehehe, no guarantees, Uesugi-kun ~ "

"For fuck's sake, Itsuki."

The youngest quintuplet's giggles accompany the young mage's groans as the two of them depart from the cemetery.


	45. Fault

The shifting of pages and the jotting of a pen quietly dribble across the room of the second quintuplet in the Nakano penthouse. Nino is studying on her own in her bedroom, hunched slightly over her open mathematics textbook and her notebook on which she is working out practice problems that her tutor has assigned her and her sisters to do as review after their lesson today. Speaking of their lesson, it was on the shorter side of things for today, only about two hours when their lessons could easily stretch for four or five; it has become quite commonplace these days for Fuutarou to stay and eat dinner with the quintuplets, so often has he stayed long hours to teach the girls in order to ensure that they have understood the material he's taught them for the day. It's gotten to the point where the girls don't even need to ask him anymore, and Fuutarou will join them for dinner, and in the event that the girls haven't already ordered delivery, he now actively helps Nino cook in the kitchen, and frequently with Miku too.

Today, however, Fuutarou said that he was on some urgent business and so needed to keep their lesson relatively short, hence the two-hour tutoring session for today. While unusual, the quintuplets have figured that it is some more magework-related business and have let Fuutarou do as he must, and with the free time on their hands, Nino has made an early dinner for everyone for the expressed purpose of hanging out with her friends in an online video call.

That was a lie, of course. Why on Earth would someone like Nino want to hang out in a video call with her friends when they could easily just hang out in person in the city? No, that was just a cover-up: the real reason was so that she can do what she is doing now: study.

Even Nino is shocked at herself as she turns the page in her textbook to move on to the next practice problem. In just a little over two months, Nino went from a snarky schoolgirl socialite who didn't give a damn about studying for anything to a...still snarky schoolgirl socialite who now actually cares about studying, at least enough to go do it on her own. Hell, the only thing that she used to bother studying for was English, as she found it the easiest to study for, naturally, English being her best subject and all. But now she's taking the time to study all of her other subjects - she's even studying math on her own, which has traditionally been one of her worst subjects because she absolutely hates math and finds it too complicated with all its annoying formulas and the exacting, rigid nature of its questions - and never mind that she's studying on a Friday night, when she ought to be living her schoolgirl life out to the fullest by going to karaoke with friends or something!

It's funny, because Nino still finds math to be as annoying as ever. Even if she's become more willing to study, her willingness alone can't alleviate her annoyance with math as a subject of study. While the questions and material themselves may have changed over the years, Nino's sentiments towards math as a subject have not changed one bit, and she still finds herself overcome with dreariness and irritation every time she sets her eyes upon a new math problem. No matter how much she's changed in these last two months, that alone can't adequately explain why, despite her annoyance with studying math or any of the other subjects she hates (which is everything except English), she still wills herself to trudge through her responsibility as a student to study.

Nino watches with her calm blue eyes her right hand etch numbers onto her notebook. By this point, the fierce resistance that she had once put up against Uesugi Fuutarou in his responsibility to tutor the Nakano quintuplets has all but sputtered out. For all the bravado that she mustered against Fuutarou, claiming that she had only joined everyone for studying with him for the sake of their midterms and things would go back to the way they were, Nino finds herself attending Fuutarou's lessons anyway - even studying with him when sometimes the others like Ichika or Yotsuba, the ones who traditionally studied with him, may be absent, all because of the fact that she's the sole reason why Fuutarou has even managed to keep his job as their tutor in the first place. And she'd feel bad if she said all _those _things and gone to such an extent to help him keep his job and didn't end up going to his lessons afterwards.

But of course things aren't that simple; while she no longer publicly opposes Fuutarou's work as their tutor, Nino still harbors the embers of her original feelings of resentment against him. After all, even if he's become a daily fixture of their lives, in Nino's mind, Fuutarou is still most definitely an outsider, an outsider whose only reason to be so involved with her and her family is because their father hired him to do so. By now, Nino has come to accept that these lingering feelings of resentment are irrational if directed at Fuutarou himself; if there's anyone she ought to vent these feelings at, it would have to be her father. But the fact of the matter is that she sees Fuutarou every day, not her father, so it is exceedingly easy to place her resentment on Fuutarou rather than her father.

She's still got a promise to uphold, after all.

And yet, for all the so-called resentment that she still harbors towards him, for however much she's known for being a hothead and speaking whatever's on her mind without a care for what others perceive of her, she has successfully kept it bottled up inside. Nino, the same girl who has just about as much patience as a hungry Itsuki at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, is refraining from doing the one thing she does best.

Nino is changing, and she knows it. But this isn't how she wanted it to happen...it feels humiliating, changing like this. Letting an outsider become part of their daily lives like this, studying subjects she normally never bothers studying for...she's not even trying to stop her sisters from interacting with their tutor anymore like she used to. Is she growing complacent? But then again, was she ever in a position to choose? Maybe it needed to happen this way...how else is a girl who's fixated on keeping her family as rooted in their past as possible going to force herself to change?

Change is scary, that's all Nino knows. Right now, just like how she's drifting through her math problems, the second quintuplet finds herself drifting through the days, going through the usual motions and routine of school, friends, tutoring, and studying. Maybe it's just cathartic; Nino has oftentimes reacted to things she doesn't like by plunging headfirst into them to do them out of spite, which was one of the only ways to get her to study when she was younger.

That's right; that's where her resentment lies. Perhaps she doesn't hate Fuutarou anymore for butting into her family like he has. But what she does fault him for is instigating change in her that she did not want, at least not so soon. She wanted grow up her way, not his.

But again, does she have any right to choose?

Having done a section of math problems, Nino flips the textbook to the rear pages where the answer key lies, grading her own work and grimacing at the number of questions she's gotten wrong as she marks them with red pen. It certainly doesn't help that she's still absolutely trash at this subject...though, she is much better off than how she was at it two months ago.

Closing her textbook and making a mental note to herself to ask Fuutarou to help her with these questions either tomorrow at school during lunch or as part of tomorrow's tutoring session, Nino stretches out her arms and decides to take a break from studying, setting down her pen and getting up from her seat to head downstairs for a snack. Because Nino is now consistently studying with the rest of the quintuplets and their tutor but is not as used to studying for long stretches of time like perhaps the rest of her sisters are, Itsuki recently taught her that having a snack would help her brain better handle these long studying periods because of the sugar that snacks would provide. While Nino's first impression of this advice was one of incredulity, seeing that it's Itsuki saying this, the second quintuplet decides to make use of this advice for once and reaches the living room to gain access to the kitchen and its snack cupboards.

"Heya. Coming down for a snack or something?" Ichika, studying on her own at the dinner table downstairs, asks her younger sister as Nino passes her.

"Yeah. Do you want anything?"

"Hmm...see if there's any of those cola gummies left. The Haribo ones."

Opening the cupboards, Nino frowns at what she sees, which is nothing.

"...we don't have any more snacks left? What the hell happened to all them?" Nino wonders aloud, closing the cupboard doors and turning to Ichika behind her. "Didn't we have snacks just a few days ago?"

"Well, you do realize that we've been going through them pretty regularly this whole week whenever Fuutarou-kun was over to tutor us," Ichika shrugs. "And no, before you say it, it wasn't Itsuki's fault this time. Though she did eat quite a bit of them while we were getting tutored."

Rolling her eyes a little bit, Nino sighs lightly and considers her next course of action.

"Think I might head down to the Family Mart to pick up some snacks then. Is there anything else you want besides those Haribo gummies?"

"Uhh...well, a frappuccino sounds real nice right about now, but the nearest Starbucks is pretty far away..."

"Yeah, I'm not going there this late at night. Don't they deliver nowadays or something?"

"Oh yeah, that's right, they do! Thanks for reminding me ~ "

"Just don't stay up all night because of the caffeine and then crash so hard we can't wake you up in time for school tomorrow."

"Ahaha, don't worry, don't worry ~ "

"That just makes me even _more _worried."

Leaving her older sister to order a frappuccino via a food delivery app, Nino heads back upstairs to change her clothes and returns to the first floor, ready to leave.

"You didn't have your part-time to go to today?" Nino asks, checking her light layer of makeup in her phone screen that uses its front camera to capture her face in real time like a mirror.

"No, not today. I'll be going tomorrow, though."

"Hm. I don't think you've ever told us about what your part-time was, have you?"

Ichika smiles bashfully. "No, you're right, I haven't. It's nothing big, though, so there's nothing to worry about it."

"Guess not. Not even Uesugi-kun's worried about it too much these days either."

"Yeah, that too."

"Where's Yotsuba, by the way? I know Miku and Itsuki are studying in their rooms right now."

"Oh, she had to go help the sewing club with something; she said she'd be coming back late at night, like at around eleven or so."

"That late? Geez, that girl, she's not even worried about city curfew for minors?"

"Well, she runs super fast, so it's not like she'll be causing trouble for anyone, right?"

"That's a dangerous way of thinking, isn't it..." Nino passes the couch to head to the front door, but just before she rounds the corner into the short lobby hallway, Nino stops and turns to face Ichika again. "By the way, I've been meaning to ask, but...didn't you tell us that you had some kind of...'secret plan' that you told us about after we took our midterms to get Uesugi-kun to stay as our tutor? What was that all about?"

Ichika looks up in surprise. "Huh? W-What's with that, all of a sudden?"

"I don't know, it just...I just remembered it suddenly after talking with you. It's been two weeks since then, so...I'm just wondering if anyone became of that, you know?"

Smiling a little, Ichika sets down her own pen. "It wasn't anything big, and besides, as you can already tell by now, I don't need to use it anymore."

"Well, yeah, I guess not, but...I'm still a bit curious about it, you know? Since you sounded so serious back then."

"Hm, I suppose I can tell you now, now that I don't need to do it. Basically, I've been working at my part-time for long enough now that I've got a bit of money saved up. My plan was to hire him myself if Dad really did end up firing him for us failing our midterms, or most of them, anyway. But since you were able to give Dad the slip, I ended up not having to execute Order 55."

"What the hell is Order 55...? But anyways, _that _was your plan? I don't know how much you've saved up, but are you sure Uesugi-kun would be happy with what you're offering? And besides, despite being a broke-ass motherfucker, he's still a goody-two-shoes at heart, so is he even going to let you do that?"

"Well, I was prepared to use some of my Big Sister charm on him if need be ~ " Ichika giggles a little.

"...that sounds shady. I thought I was supposed to be the drug user of the family."

Ichika's giggle escalates sharply to a burst of laughter, which causes Nino to frown deeply over at her older sister.

"I mean, you're not wrong. Though I guess that doesn't really count anymore, now that Fuutarou-kun's confiscated the rest of your drugs from you, right?"

"Yeah, I don't have any of it anymore." Nino shrugs widely. "I've learned my lesson, I'm not going back to any of those shady-ass drug dealers anymore."

"You certainly don't need to, yeah, not when we've got Fuutarou-kun around now."

Nino folds her arms at Ichika as the former leans against the corner of the room. "Don't act as if we can rely on him all the time. Just because he's bailed us out here and there doesn't mean he'll always be able to do that."

Ichika's smile fades a little. "You're not just saying that because you still have something against him, now, are you?" she asks.

"I do, but that's besides the point. You've seen how busted up he gets sometimes; there might even come a day when something happens to him, and...he dies or gets so badly injured he can't teach us or protect us anymore."

"Yikes, that's a bit...extreme, don't you think? I know you don't like him a lot, but still..."

"I'm just being real here, Ichika."

"And I get that, but, like...what's the point of that, exactly?"

"...what do you mean?"

"Like, as in..." Ichika takes a deep breath to collect her thoughts. "...what's the point of being real about something like that when there's nothing we can do about it? We can't fight, we don't know magecraft; all we are are a bunch of high school girls just trying to live our lives. Let Fuutarou-kun worry about what happens to him; I'm sure he wouldn't want us worrying about him either, and I'll bet you my next paycheck that he'd get pissed at us for wasting our time doing that when he wants us to be using that time to study some more instead."

"So what if something _does _happen to Uesugi-kun, huh? What if he has to stop being our tutor because he's gotten too hurt or, worse, he gets killed out there? Then what?"

"Then Dad will just hire someone else, I guess." Ichika's smile is long gone by now as her icy blue eyes reach out to Nino's across the living room. "That's what you want, isn't it? Someone other than Fuutarou-kun who doesn't do his job as well so that you can sit pretty here in this house knowing that our little family's gonna stay the same as it has been? Don't you think I've forgotten about that promise you made to us when we were kids, after Mom died, Nino."

Starting to clench her teeth together, Nino pushes off the corner of the room to stand properly on her own two feet.

"That's _not _what I'm saying, I never said I _wanted _Uesugi-kun to die or have something happen to him. What I said was, is it really wise for us to rely on someone like him when realistically, we should be looking after ourselves?"

"The thing is, we already _were_, Nino. You don't see that? We already _were _taking care of ourselves."

"Then why can't you answer my question of what we're going to do if Uesugi-kun's gone?"

"Because that's something I can't answer, and I bet _you _can't answer that, either!" Ichika's voice starts to rise. "Don't you see? This whole magecraft stuff is all crap we don't have any idea about! You _say _that we should be able to look after ourselves, and ideally, yes, I agree! But if another incident like what happened at that warehouse happens, are we going to be the ones who fight off bad guys and protect ourselves? Obviously not, not when Dad already hired someone like Fuutarou-kun to handle that responsibility for us! What, were _you _planning on becoming a mage too, Nino? Is _that _why you don't like him, because he won't teach you that?"

"W-Wha - No! That's - that's _bullshit_, I don't even _wanna _know more about that magecraft nonsense!" Nino blurts out with a kneejerk reaction. When was the last time that she and Ichika got into an argument like this?

"Then there's even _less _merit behind all this stuff you're telling me right now! What was the point of telling me that useless crap? Just to be a Debbie Downer? Moreover, why do you have such little faith in him, Nino? Is he not doing his job properly or something? You get into an argument with him at some point lately? I get that you don't like him and you never have, but lately you've been cooperating with him, studying with us and all that jazz, right? And now you're talking about what's going to happen if he dies or something? Talk about a mood whiplash much! If that's the kind of thing you think about when it comes to Fuutarou-kun, I think I much prefer how you were _before _you started studying with us, because at least _then _you were genuine to yourself!"

Nino doesn't even last until the end of Ichika's miniature tirade. Turning heel swiftly, the second quintuplet stomps away to the shoe lobby, pulls on her plain sneakers that she wears for short trips, and slams the front door behind her as she escapes to the elevator lobby.

Listening to the front door slam shut, Ichika slowly drops her gaze back down to her own textbooks and notebooks that she's been using to study. At first, she reaches for her own pen, but her hand freezes, then turns and raises up to her face so that Ichika can bury her face into her hands.

She didn't mean to yell at Nino. There was no reason for her to. Even if Nino had some questionable thoughts regarding their tutor, there was no reason for her to antagonize Nino like this. So why did she react like that? That's not like her. The Ichika her sisters know and love is a gentle, neutral big sister whose word holds logic and reasoning as its high regards - it's no wonder mathematics is her best subject. But that was not that. That wasn't the Ichika her sisters know - that wasn't the Ichika she herself knows. But how exactly is she going to explain that to Nino when she comes back?

Hearing one of the doors upstairs open slowly, Ichika pulls her hands down from her face as Itsuki peers over the second floor railing.

"...Ichika? Is everything alright...?" the youngest quintuplet asks cautiously, eyeing the first floor warily in case there have been things thrown or spilled. "It sounded like you and Nino were having an argument, which is, um...a bit rare...?"

"Yeah, we were, sorry about that. We must've disturbed your studying, huh?" Ichika apologizes, looking up at her youngest sister above her as Miku also joins them, wondering what the commotion just now was all about.

"When's the last time the two of you yelled at each other like that? Usually the two of us're the ones who grind gears with Nino..." Miku notes, her Audio-Technicas hanging around her neck like usual.

"I don't even remember myself, frankly. Sheesh, it must've been years..." Ichika clears her throat quickly. "Anyways, again, sorry for bothering you two, I'll make sure to apologize properly to Nino when she gets back home."

"She ran away again? That must explain the front door slamming..." Itsuki sighs. "The lack of soundproofing in this house really is biting us."

"You can borrow my headphones again if you want, Itsuki," Miku offers, but her sister shakes her head.

"It looks like I will not need it. Just text Nino to come back home on time, Ichika."

"Yeah, I will, don't worry."

Ichika listens to the pair of doors close as her two younger sisters return to their own studies in their rooms as she prepares to do the same. But now that her eyes are back on her Language Arts textbook and her right hand holding her pen is resting back on her notebook, Ichika can no longer focus on studying.

Even with most of the lights on the first floor turned on that make it as bright as day, Ichika can still spy the faint golden light reflected down on her notebook paper underneath her hand.

* * *

Having escaped the Pentagon high-rise, Nakano Nino looks up to find herself in front of a supermarket called Izumi. She must've walked much further than her intended destination of the Family Mart convenience store in her anger, but Nino doesn't mind. Now that she's at the supermarket, she might as well take advantage of this and head in to pick up some groceries that she was intending on grabbing at some point in the near future.

She enters the supermarket and takes a shopping cart with her to begin performing her usual rounds of the market, starting with the produce section. She's done this so many times, buying groceries for her sisters to cook dinner for them almost every day for the past three or four years ever since she became proficient at cooking, that she can practically put herself on autopilot and let her muscles do the thinking as they stock the shopping cart.

This leaves her mind with enough freedom to dwell on her argument with Ichika, as much as it goes against her better judgment to do so, but she can't help herself, with the bitterness still lingering in her chest.

Everyone's been changing, and it's not just her. All four of her sisters around her, they've been changing. Miku has been noticeably growing out of the shell that she'd built around herself since middle school; Yotsuba has gotten herself involved in sports and probably is in contact with more people than Nino herself, who's supposed to be the resident socialite of the quints; and Itsuki is not the same Itsuki that she knew six years ago, with her speaking with that polite keigo tone since who knows when and trying her best to act grown-up when she's supposed to be the crybaby of the bunch. While these changes all come at varying degrees, with some of them having occurred long ago, Nino still can't shake the sense that her family is changing, or dare she say, "growing up".

Ichika is by far the worst offender in Nino's eyes. After their mother died, Ichika was the first to cut her hair, perhaps the quintuplets' most signature physical feature, when they entered middle school, and she did so without even telling any of her siblings, which naturally came as a great shock to the rest of them. She was the one who began to drift away from the quintuplet nucleus first, making friends with their classmates at school and starting to hang out more and more with them rather than her own sisters, even before Nino started doing the same. Honestly, had it not been for Ichika drifting away from the quintuplet nucleus like this, Nino herself may have never established the popular girl archetype for herself either, but that's a story for another time.

There's also that part-time job that Ichika's been going to ever since their last year of middle school. It wasn't even until a month before they transferred to Asahiyama High that the rest of the quintuplets found out, and only because Ichika had returned home late one night, much later than she had any business doing, and she had to explain to her sisters why she was out so late. She also seems quite keen on keeping the nature of her part-time job a secret, so they have no idea what she's even working as or where she works. Does she think that just because she's the oldest quintuplet, she gets to do whatever she wants? Their father is providing for everything they could possibly want, so it's not as if money is a factor. And even if Ichika was planning on re-hiring Uesugi-kun as their tutor in the event that he did get fired by their dad, it's not as if Ichika was saving money specifically for an occasion she could have never predicted a year ahead of time.

Nino kept these sentiments she had against Ichika to herself, because at the end of the day, Ichika still prioritized her sisters over the new friends she made at school. It was bound to happen, with the five of them being split up into different homerooms when they entered middle school and all, so it wasn't realistic to hope that they would still continue being able to live like back when they were in elementary. But all she's been doing is keeping them locked away; the embers of resentment still glow, stoked by years of neglect and ready to reignite with just the right spark.

And tonight, that spark came in the form of the attitude she had when they were arguing briefly back at home, and not to mention the things she said to her. Even if Ichika didn't intentionally do this, Nino can't spit out the bad taste in her mind that Ichika was talking down to her, as though she were using her superior position as oldest quintuplet to denounce Nino. She already hates it enough whenever their dad does this; now she has to deal with Ichika acting this way too? And it doesn't help that this isn't how Ichika usually acts; yes, she's had arguments with the rest of the quintuplets before, but such fights are rare; Nino recognizes that it's perhaps due to the shock of Ichika throwing out some fighting words of her own that she's feeling especially resentful of her tonight, but that doesn't really do anything to help alleviate the resentment.

The cold air being vented down onto the refrigerated produce, however, does eventually begin to calm her heated thoughts and feelings as she continues to stock her shopping cart, and Nino slowly becomes able to think through their argument with more clarity. Through her bitter resentment, Nino recognizes that what Ichika was saying to her isn't wrong; for all the talk she gave about the quints being self-sufficient and not having to rely on him, wouldn't that imply that the girls are strong enough to handle themselves in a time like this, when she and her sisters all have magical targets on their backs? Clearly that's not the case. No, it's just Nino's own pride at fault here, the promise that she made to her sisters that she'd be the one to protect them all, to keep them all together as a family after their mother died.

Nino wants to be strong enough and competent enough to be the glue that keeps the family together. She thought that by learning how to cook and taking up the responsibilities that a mother would traditionally have in their household, she would be able to do just that. But not only does she feel like she hasn't really been able to do so, with her sisters all slowly drifting away from their little bird's nest to lead their own lives, but now, the situation has changed: no longer are her enemies just some punks at school who've bullied or harassed her sisters, and no longer does her strength as a cook remain so relevant when the kind of strength that is needed these days to protect her family is actual physical strength and combat prowess.

Could Miku be right? Back when the two of them had their latest argument after their midterms, down in the living room early in the morning after one of Miku's panic attacks? The two of them are mages, just like their tutor, and they've seen what he's able to do. Would Nino have to take that leap of faith and become a fully-fledged mage like Uesugi-kun in order to continue upholding her promise to her sisters? But that would be contradictory, because that would mean that she herself will change past the point of no return and abandon Nino's original vision of them sisters always being together. She herself isn't even interested in magecraft at all; she's perfectly happy with how her life is without it. How would the rest of her sisters, barring Miku of course, react to her and Nino possibly learning magecraft on their own?

_"Don't you think I've forgotten about that promise you made to us when we were kids, after Mom died, Nino."_

Ichika's words bite into her memory with impunity. If Nino does decide to learn magecraft, Ichika will most certainly call her out on this, right? Citing how Nino herself has changed enough to forsake her own promise that she made to the quintuplets when they were nine years old.

If Nino wants to keep her sisters together and safe, then she'll need to do more than just cook and go grocery shopping for them, and the natural outlet available is magecraft, which is exactly what she does _not _want, because it would threaten to destroy the premise of her words to her sisters six years ago. But she doesn't want to feel like she and her sisters must rely on Uesugi-kun so much either, due to the lingering resentment that she has towards him and the fact that something may happen to him during his line of work. This is a goddamn Catch-22 if Nino's ever seen one.

Tossing an extra plastic bag that she accidentally pulls off the bag roller near the apples into her shopping cart with irritation, Nino feels her resentment towards Uesugi-kun burning stronger and stronger. Ichika, she can forgive; they're quintuplets, after all, and no matter how bad their fights get, they always make up and move on, though of course some fights they have have been harder to move on from than others. At the end of the day, Uesugi-kun is the outsider; as much as she might not like it, if her sisters change on their own accord, then she will just have to accept it, no matter how difficult it is for her to do so. But change instigated by someone they didn't even know until two months ago? That she can't accept; she refuses to accept it.

...is what she'd like to say, but her behavior towards him lately would suggest anything but.

Why has she become so indecisive? Since when has she developed all these contradictory feelings? It's like she can't make up her mind about the problems she has, and she's just letting herself be swept away by the currents that everyone else is creating around her. This isn't like her; this is not the Nakano Nino who's the popular girl at school, charismatic and outgoing. As a matter of fact, the longer Nino dwells on this, she feels like she's been _regressing, _which makes her feel even worse when comparing herself to the rest of her family.

In any case, it's Uesugi-kun's fault. Why is she even playing along with him and his tutoring? Why did she get complacent? Nino changes her mind now; just because she saved his job doesn't mean she should feel obligated to attend them herself. As a matter of fact, it's _because _she saved his job as their tutor that she should be able to choose whether or not she wants to attend his lessons. She doesn't owe him anything; it ought to be the _other _way around.

"Niiiiiiiii..._NO!"_

Startled into jumping a little when she feels a pair of hands suddenly press down on her shoulders, the second quintuplet twirls around with wide eyes to find her younger sister Yotsuba grinning from ear to ear at her.

"Ahaha ~ did I surprise you?" she asks cheerfully, pleased to see Nino's reaction, but to her surprise, Nino doesn't immediately start telling her off for acting like a kid; instead, she just frowns irritably back at her as she ties the bag of apples and places it in her shopping cart.

"Oh, it's just you. Ichika told me where you went; didn't you say you were coming back home late? At like, eleven or something?"

"Ah, yeah, um, we finished early, so I figured I'd stop by here to pick up some snacks for everyone on my way back home. I noticed before leaving earlier that we didn't have any snacks left, since we ate them all this week while studying."

"That so. Coincidentally, I noticed the same thing...it's part of the reason why I'm here."

"Huh. But..." Yotsuba ponders the situation for a moment. "Isn't there a supermarket closer to home than this one, though? The Tokyu one? Why'd you come all the way here?"

"I heard from my friends that they were having a few sales here that Tokyu doesn't have, so there."

So Yotsuba looks around the produce aisle, since sales in produce would be what Nino would probably look for the most. Aside from one or two pertaining to watermelons and apricots, neither of which the quintuplets eat much of, there aren't really any major sales going on at the moment.

"Nino," Yotsuba says slowly, "is...something wrong? You can...talk to me about it if you want, since it's just the two of us here."

Starting to stoop down to grab a heavy bag of rice, Nino gets up again to look at her younger sister funnily.

"...you, of all people, asking me about what's on my mind?" she snaps lightly back to her. "Where'd this come from?"

"Er, what...do you mean?" Yotsuba begins to feel uneasy.

"That's either Ichika's or Itsuki's job, isn't it? Asking the rest of us what we're feeling, telling us to talk about the problems we're having." Nino turns back to the bags of rice before her, stooping down a second time to pull one up to the shopping cart. "Not to mention, you're the one who - never - bothers - talking about what's on _your _mind."

With a heave, Nino sets a bag of rice down in the shopping cart bay.

"You could've left that to me," Yotsuba mutters, watching Nino rub her arms.

"No need, I was planning to get all this done by myself anyway."

"Then how were you going to carry all this back home?"

Nino freezes. She hadn't thought that far ahead.

"...I would've just, like, called a taxi or something, I dunno..." she grumbles, letting the thought trail off.

Following Nino as she pushes the cart out of the produce section, Yotsuba trots forward a little to walk side by side with her older sister.

"My own behavior aside, if you don't want to talk about whatever's on your mind, that's fine. I felt like something was off about you just now and figured I'd ask you about it, since I don't remember the last time just the two of us hung out like this," Yotsuba says earnestly but quietly.

Nino doesn't answer right away, opting instead to take a look at the seafood section to see if she ought to bring home some fish.

"...I got into an argument with Ichika just before I left home to do some grocery shopping," Nino says with a calm voice, still scanning the seafood aisle for anything she feels like buying.

"Argument with Ichika? That's...that's pretty rare."

"Yeah. I'll admit that it took me by surprise. You already know how I usually argue way more with Miku or Itsuki."

"That you do...though lately you haven't really had fights."

"Not like we won't have them in the future, though."

"Ahaha..."

Deciding against buying seafood, Nino puts her hands back on the shopping cart handlebar and proceeds forward down the rear of the supermarket, stopping by the meats to pick out a few entrees.

"What did you argue with Ichika about, if you don't mind me asking?" Yotsuba inquires once Nino has given her orders for meat entrees to the uniformed and masked employee behind the counter.

Watching Nino's expression when she asks this, Yotsuba observes her older sister's gaze dropping down to the windowed counter, down at the section of spicy marinated pork.

"Uesugi-kun," Nino finally answers. "We argued about him. Specifically about what we'd do if he isn't able to tutor us anymore."

"Huh? But...he's still tutoring us now, right? Did he mention something about quitting anyway?" Yotsuba asks, confused at the implications that Nino is giving.

"No, no...let me explain, it started when I asked Ichika about what her whole 'super secret plan' was that she talked to us about briefly during the weekend after midterms, remember that?"

"Oh yeah, that, right. I totally forgot about that, whatever happened to it? Ichika hasn't really done anything out of the ordinary since then, I don't think...?"

"Yeah, because she was planning to rehire Uesugi-kun as our tutor if Papa really did end up terminating his tutoring side of his contract."

"Oh, okay, I get it. Since you pulled a fast one on Dad, Uesugi-san kept his tutoring job, and so Ichika didn't need to pull out her secret plan that she talked about to us."

"Right." Nino slowly folds her arms across her bountiful chest, her blue eyes also rising to stare at the numbers on the price chart across from her on the wall shortly beyond the counter. "Then, I started talking about what we'd do in the event that something happens to Uesugi-kun that causes him to not tutor us anymore. Say...he gets really badly hurt while he's out doing his _other _work...or maybe he even dies."

"Die - " Yotsuba's breath briefly freezes up.

"Don't you start acting like Ichika on my ass too, Yotsuba," Nino snaps at her, turning her neck sharply at her younger sister. "I'm not trying to imply anything, I don't actually _want _him to get hurt or anything, I'm just saying this hypothetically speaking. In any case...Ichika took that badly, and so she chewed me out for it, and I'm still a bit triggered about that."

Sighing, Nino puts on a fake smile for the supermarket employee who weighs her orders to price them and wraps the plastic containers in their own bags before handing them to the second quintuplet.

"Don't worry about me, I'll get over it soon enough," she tells Yotsuba, placing the meat entrees on the shopping cart's upper shelf, where infants can be placed to ride. "Oh, and this might seem like it's a whole 'nother subject, but..."

Stopping in the middle of the aisle on their way to the snack rows, Nino turns to face Yotsuba seriously, and the latter also reciprocates, sensing her seriousness.

"Have I been changing over the past two months?" Nino asks quietly, her intense blue eyes meeting Yotsuba's apprehensive ones after she tussles her long peachy-red hair once. "And if so, how? Be honest with me."

Her eyebrows furrowing, the fourth quintuplet slowly presses her lips together in hesitant thought.

"...I'm not sure if...I'm the best one to ask for something like that, but..." Yotsuba swallows some of her saliva back, "...lately, I've been noticing that you haven't really been hanging out with your other friends at school as often. And whenever Uesugi-san is over at our house, you aren't as loud or obnoxious towards him as you once were."

Nino's eye twitches when Yotsuba says "loud or obnoxious". As self-conscious as she is about her own behavior towards their tutor, it still irks her hearing someone else say it to her face.

"Nino, is it safe for me to assume here that...there's something about Uesugi-san that's bothering you? You did say you were arguing with Ichika over him, right?" Yotsuba asks tentatively.

"For the dumbest quintuplet out of us five, you sure are perceptive sometimes," Nino darkly smirks. "Yes, it's about him. As you can see, I've got a serious fucking bone to pick with him."

"But you've been studying together with us, right? Even after you said you were only studying with us up until midterms," Yotsuba says. "So I assumed you had a change heart or something, especially when you saved Uesugi-san's job for him. What's going on, Nino? Please tell me."

Nino clenches her teeth.

"It's all his fault," she hisses under her breath. "It's all his fucking fault. Coming over out of the blue to tutor us, spending God knows how many hours with us - face it, Yotsuba, you look forward to Uesugi-kun coming over to our place now these days, right?"

"Er, well, that's - "

"Don't lie to me, I know you do! You fucking camp the front door sometimes like a goddamn dog, waiting for him to show up!"

Blushing at this, Yotsuba forces herself to avert her eyes. "Y-Yeah, I do that sometimes, but...but what's it to you, Nino? He's our friend, isn't he? And someone who obviously cares about us a lot if he's willing to do everything that he's done so far for us. Is that so weird?"

"To _me _it is! And it's not just you; Miku and Ichika are both like that too, and now Itsuki's been getting along with him just fine, like she's always been with the three of you from the beginning studying with him."

Nino takes an aggressive step towards her younger sister.

"All of you are changing. And Uesugi-kun's to blame," Nino declares. "If he'd never entered our lives, we wouldn't even be having any of the problems we - "

"That's not true!"

Steeling her own resolve, Yotsuba stands up to her older sister, both figuratively and literally.

"If he didn't become part of our lives, we probably wouldn't even _have _our lives right now," she answers firmly. "You're acting weird, Nino, I don't like it. This is, how should I say...this is different from how you were acting from before. Because in the beginning, you didn't like him suddenly becoming our tutor, and I get that, we all didn't. But now, there's something more to it, isn't there - "

"Excuse me, ladies," a passing employee approaches them after hearing the quintuplets' argument, "if you're going to argue, I'd like to ask that you do it outside, please."

Rendered self-conscious of their own noise levels, the two sisters apologize quickly and hurry over to the snack aisle, where they load their shopping cart with a large assortment of snacks that each of the quintuplets like. For the rest of the supermarket trip, the two siblings stay silent, only talking to each other when necessary, and they emerge from Izumi carrying a total of six plastic shopping bags, though Yotsuba is carrying four of them due to her superior strength, and with just one hand, too, since she's carrying the big rice bag on her left shoulder.

"Do you want to call a cab for this? I can handle carrying these back home, but I don't know about you..." Yotsuba asks her sister out of concern, but Nino shakes her head.

"This'll be a good way to cool myself off before we get home. That, and maybe Ichika'll be asleep by the time we get back. Besides, _you're _the one who needs the cab more."

"I'll be fine, don't worry about me. But I do hope you and Ichika will make up, though. For you to act like this after an argument, it must've been really serious; you're never quite this angry after you have a fight with Miku or Itsuki."

"I know." Nino keeps her eyes down at the ground as they walk along the lonely sidewalk of the late evening. "You don't need to tell me."

Yotsuba shifts her grips on her shopping bags uneasily. "...I also...hope you can make up with Uesugi-san, too. And now that I think about it...you're feeling this way because of the promise you made to us back then, right?"

Nino snorts under her breath. "At least everyone seems to remember that," she remarks dully.

"So it _is _about your promise." Yotsuba, in contrast, gazes up at the empty black sky, devoid of stars underneath the filter of light pollution coming from the city. "Nino, please understand...Uesugi-san doesn't know about that. He doesn't know about the effects he's having on us by becoming part of our lives, much less how he's affecting you and a promise you made to us six years ago that he has no idea about. So...no matter how unreasonable it is for me to say this, please try not to be so harsh towards him. This isn't his fault. He's just trying to do his job."

"But did it _have _to be us? Did he _have _to tutor us?" Nino gripes back.

"I mean, compared to what he must normally do as a mage, tutoring sounds like a much safer and consistent avenue of income for him, right?"

"But that turned out to be only half the story; he's _also _doing his usual mage bullshit and going around making sure that we're safe and stuff like that. So as far as his usual mage stuff goes, whatever it is, it doesn't seem like he's doing anything different! So if that's the case, what I'm asking is, did he _really _need to agree to _tutoring _us on top of that? He couldn't just protect us from the shadows like he does anyway and never have to be a direct part of our lives? We couldn't just get a _normal _tutor to help us out with our grades? Why hasn't anyone _else _thought of that, huh? Even Uesugi-kun said it himself once we were done with midterms and we were heading back home! How, because he's been splitting his time and effort between both tutoring us _and _protecting us, he hasn't been able to tutor us to the best of his ability!"

Unsure of what to say to this, Yotsuba mulls quietly over her possible responses and decides to go with this one as the two quintuplets pass a few young men chatting noisily while heading in the opposite direction.

"Well...since Dad hired him, I'm sure...I'm sure Dad had a good reason...he's not the type of person who'd hire just _anybody_..."

"Then I think Papa made a huge mistake, and he shouldn't have hired Uesugi-kun to tutor us at all. Protecting us, sure, fine, I get it, let him do his mage thing or whatever for all I care. But as a tutor on _top _of that?" Nino shakes her head vigorously. "Nuh-uh, no way. Even people like Papa can make mistakes from time to time, you know? He's only human after all."

"Hey, excuse me, miss? Hey!"

Hearing someone call out to them from behind, Nino and Yotsuba stop and turn to see who it is, and one of the young men that they just passed is hurrying back over to them and stops before them.

"Uh, by any chance, could you two be the Nakano girls?" he asks quickly, catching his breath a little.

Rolling her eyes at yet another guy trying to hit on them, Nino grumbles sideways to Yotsuba, "Yeah, maybe we should've called a cab."

"Yes, we are, but...we're kind of in a hurry, so if you could make it quick..." Yotsuba says with an awkward smile.

"Oh yeah, it'll be quick, alright."

Nino and Yotsuba both briefly stare into the man before them pointing directly at Yotsuba's face, his hand in the form of a finger gun.

A blur of motion distorts his fingertip, and Nino hears Yotsuba shriek with shock when a loud _THUD _smashes into her face. Turning on reflex to see what's just happened, Nino finds Yotsuba knocked down onto the ground on her back, holding her face like someone's just punched her there, with her bags scattered in front of her on the ground.

_**"YOU FUCKING LITTLE BITCH!"**_

The embers of resentment finally ignite properly, fueling Nino's body as she drops her own shopping bags and lurches forward, disregarding the danger that the two quintuplets now find themselves and throwing the hardest punch she can at their attacker. Thinking that Nino's punch won't be all that strong, their assailer merely raises a hand to block it, but Nino's fist pushes straight into it and punches him in the face through his hand anyway, jamming his own knuckles into his eyes.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

The man's friends catch back up to him by this point; there are three of them in total, with one catching Yotsuba's attacker from the force of Nino's savage punch and the other hurrying up to Nino and brandishing a switchblade knife at her.

"You girls better play nice and come with us. You don't want none 'a this, now, do ya?" the young man with the knife snarls at Nino, whose burning anger allows her to disregard the fear of a knife being pointed at her.

**"Go fuck yourself, asshole," **Nino growls back with such intensity that the man with the knife instinctively takes a step back, but he steadies himself and scoffs at her.

"You deaf, bitch? I said come with us, or you're gonna get it," he repeats himself as Yotsuba manages to get back up on her feet, though she's still rubbing her nose that's beginning to bleed. "Or does my buddy here need to shoot you a few more times for you to get it instead?"

The other two thugs return, with Yotsuba's attacker pointing his hand at them in the same finger gun gesture. Nino eyes this gesture again.

"...you're a fucking mage, aren't you?" she hisses at him.

"Well, shit, she knows," the man with the finger gun clicks his tongue in annoyance. "Even more of a reason to bring them in. No need to hesitate, boys, just grab 'em. Shank her a few times if you have to, just don't kill her or stab her too deep."

Nino immediately yells, **"Yotsuba, RUN!"**

"W-What do you - ?!"

To the fourth quintuplet's abject horror, Nino dives straight for the enemy mage, as he takes priority with his ranged attack that could stop Yotsuba from escaping. Her fist once more sails straight for him, this time pounding him in the gut before he can defend himself with the kind of movement Nino employs, which is definitely not the kind of movement one would expect out of a freshman in high school. Knowing that she does not have the luxury of time on her side, Nino then rams her shoulder into the enemy mage, knocking him backwards and then mounting him to try to punch him in the face, but the mage's friends both pull her off their buddy, and the one without the knife plants the tip of his shoe into Nino's side, causing her to retch painfully in reaction.

"Wait, stop, please, don't - !"

Instead of running away as instructed, Yotsuba dives into the fray herself, grabbing the guy who's just kicked her sister in the side and trying to pull him away to protect Nino, but the thug jams his elbow hard against her chest, knocking the wind out of her and sending her collapsing on her rear on the ground, wheezing and coughing violently.

Hearing Yotsuba's cries again, Nino redoubles her efforts through the pain in her side; reaching out with her hands, she grabs the weaponless young man by his left ankle and tugs, knocking him off balance and forcing him to break his fall with his hands, but the numerical advantage is just too much, for the mage simply stands over her and fires a magic bullet at her point-blank at her own face. The impact of the shot not only slams against her forehead, but the resultant force also smacks the back of her head against the hard sidewalk ground beneath it, dealing a double dose of pain and severe disorientation that almost completely incapacitates the quintuplet.

"STOP! STOP IT, PLEASE! DON'T HURT HER ANYMORE!" Nino can hear Yotsuba shrieking at the top of her lungs. It shouldn't be _that _late at night, and they're making a ton of noise, so why isn't anyone coming to help?

_"Yotsuba, for fuck's sake, I told you to ru - "_

Nino's voice is cut off as she feels a slicing pain she's never felt burrow into the top of her right shoulder.

The man with the knife sharply pulls out his knife from where he's stabbed Nino, scowling down at her as the second quintuplet, rendered silent by the throbbing pain now spitting blood from her right shoulder, grasps it with her left hand.

"You thought we were just screwin' around when we said you'd get some 'a this? You're lucky you didn't get it in someplace worse!" The thug waves his bloody knife around a little. "Oh? You're not talking all of a sudden now, are ya? You had such a potty mouth just before this, now you get shanked a little and it's gone?"

Nino's left hand tightens over her open stab wound on her shoulder. She can feel the warm, moist sensation on her palm that also seeps into her blouse and in between her fingers.

Blood.

Blood.

Blood.

Blood.

Blood.

Is blood supposed to feel this hot?

Nino suddenly feels someone hug her tightly from behind, and Yotsuba, fully in tears now, cradles her in her arms as she looks up at their attackers.

"Please, stop, stop it! Don't hurt her anymore!" Yotsuba sobs. "What do you want from us? Did you really need to attack us like this?!"

"Hey, don't make this sound like your sis gettin' hurt was _our _fault, my dude here fuckin' _told _you two to come along nicely, and then this bitch right here decided to go after my fuckin' throat," the enemy mage spits down at Nino, and she feels the spit spray hit her on her right knee. "We gave you a choice, and you decided to slap it away, so how the fuck else do you expect us to react to that?"

"Hey, Boss said we only needed to bring people back alive; he never said we couldn't do whatever we wanted with 'em first," the thug with the knife points out. "And we found the fuckin' jackpot since he's been looking for them. How 'bout we have some fun with 'em first?"

The mage inhales sharply with irritation. "Bro, we've already made so much noise here, and my Presence Concealment ain't that good either; I'd rather just get the fuck out with these bitches, you know? You can have your fun with someone else later."

"Ah c'mon, bro, it'll be fuckin' quick."

"Yeah, probably 'cause you're a damn quick shot, hahaha!"

"Shut the fuck up, ya pencil-dick motherfucker!"

Lunging at his ally, the man with the knife sinks his blade into the mage's chest with an awkward backhanded grip, ripping it out and watching with satisfaction as the mage stumbles backwards with his own hand over his wound.

"Dude, what the fuck, bro!" the third thug now steps in, confronting his ally with the knife. "That was a joke, motherfucker, and you know he's right, we can't stay here long!"

"Fuck that little shit, I've just about had it with all the dumb jokes he cracks all the time, I'm fuckin' sick of 'em! Let's just kill him right here so that we can split our bounty two ways instead of three, dude. I know you got shit goin' on, you need the cash. How about it?"

"Hey! Don't you fuckin' fall for that shit, I'm the only one here who's a mage; without me, you can't even report back to Shirazumi-san! And you know damn well he's gonna try to off you too so that only _he _gets the bounty!"

As their attackers descend into a civil war of sorts and argue heatedly among themselves, Yotsuba looks down at Nino, who's still looking shell-shocked as ever with her left hand tightly pressed over her bleeding wound.

"Nino...Nino, are you alright?" she whispers.

Nino manages to angle her face up to her younger sister so that her hair isn't in the way, and Yotsuba finds herself staring down into a pair of burning purple eyes.

"...do you _think _I'm alright, you bitch?" she croaks. "Why the **fuck** didn't you run, Yotsuba?"

"Because there's no need for her to now."

The two quintuplets look up at the same time, just in time to see a boy clad in black step past them. In his left hand are two cards, the queen of hearts and the two of spades.

The injured mage, who's facing in the direction of the girls, also notices a newcomer approaching them and points at him.

"Shit, someone just got into my - "

The two of spades forever silences him as it plunges into the middle of his throat with a soft but sharp thud; as a result, his knees wobble and give way, forcing him to collapse slowly as he clutches at his throat, unable to breathe as the card is jammed too deeply into his trachea.

The weaponless delinquent also reels over suddenly, finding a plastic playing card now lodged firmly in his gut. As he stumbles backwards and lets his back hit the nearby window of a fine arts and crafts shop, the man with the bloody switchblade turns to defend himself, but Fuutarou is already on him. Grabbing the wrist of his opponent's knife hand with his own two hands, Fuutarou swiftly pulls the young man's hand all the way backwards, letting the chilling cracks of breaking bones, snapping tendons, and bursting blood vessels pierce through the warm night air.

The young mage doesn't let the gangster scream in pain for long. Snatching the switchblade that's fallen out of his hand as a result of his broken wrist before it can even hit the ground, Fuutarou tosses the bloody switchblade to his right hand, steps behind his opponent, and subsequently buries the full length of the switchblade into the back of its own owner's head. Both Nino and Yotsuba can clearly see the shock of the man's eyes when the blade enters his skull and almost the exact moment of death when his eyes go slack in their sockets.

Pushing the standing corpse away, Fuutarou tosses the used switchblade aside to face the last gangster, who's managed to pull the bloody plastic playing card that the former has plunged into his gut at range, pulls out of his pocket a short collapsible baton that he extends and charges at the young mage with to attack him. Fuutarou merely raises his hand to meet it in midair before it can strike him on the head, and once it's in his grasp, Fuutarou magically amplifies his strength to snap the baton in half. Even before the gangster can realize what Fuutarou just did to his weapon, the young mage twirls the broken half of the baton that he has around to smack his next opponent upside the head with its blunt tip, and while he reels from this too, Fuutarou swoops down and uses both hands to sweep the guy completely off his feet by pulling the back of his lower right leg up. In the split second that he's rendered airborne, Fuutarou presses his right hand against the thug's face and drives it home, smashing the back of his head into the sidewalk cement with such force that a small quantity of blood immediately smears against the cement where the skin and bone beneath his hair have shattered.

With two of the quintuplets' attackers taken care of, Fuutarou turns to the enemy mage, who is still feebly struggling to breathe. Having managed to pull the card out from his throat in a desperate attempt to get some air, he's now groveling on the ground, hacking and coughing feebly as he's inhaling more blood than air, essentially drowning in his own fluids.

The young mage stoops down a second time and pulls the dying mage up into the air, his hands holding the gangster by the head. The gargling and choking slowly ceases, and like the first man Fuutarou killed, his eyes soon go slack and slowly begin to go fish-eyed as his life is extinguished.

The quintuplets watch in stunned silence as Fuutarou simply drops the corpse where he stands and pulls out his smartphone to make a call, eyeing carefully the scattered groceries that have escaped from their bags as the call connects.

"Uesugi here. Send cleanup on this marker, I've got some clients to evacuate."

Having issued his order, Fuutarou pockets his phone quickly and walks over to Nino and Yotsuba, picking Nino up and pulling her back onto her feet without a word.

"Do you have any other injuries that prevent you from walking or running?" Fuutarou asks in a low voice that demands swift response, and Nino shakes her head. Her eyes are averted, but this does absolutely nothing to hide her active Mystic Eyes that are still burning through their Mystic Eye Killers.

"And you?" Fuutarou's own sharp black eyes turn to Yotsuba, who shakes her head as well. "Good, let's the hell outta here. Leave the groceries behind, your lives are more important."

So the three high school classmates hurry away from the scene, leaving their spilled groceries behind among the bodies of the dead gangsters. For a good five minutes they walk briskly, with Nino still clutching her bleeding right shoulder firmly with her left hand and trying her best not to look at all the blood that must have leaked out by now.

"...Uesugi-san, where are we going right now?" Yotsuba asks urgently but in a hushed tone when he ushers them into an old building that's up for lease.

"I've got a teleporter in here that can take you girls straight back home, now hurry," the young mage answers.

Once they locate the teleporter rune inside this old building that Fuutarou guides them through, the mage activates it, and on his countdown, all three of them port out of the building into the familiar rooftop of the Pentagon high-rise.

Now safely within the grounds of the high-rise, Uesugi Fuutarou turns to Nino first, who's still grasping her open wound on her injured right shoulder.

"Sit down, Nino, I need to look at this," the mage orders, but to his silent surprise, Nino shakes her head.

"...d-don't worry about it," she mutters under her breath. Thankfully tonight's a rare night with very little wind even up here, so Fuutarou can clearly hear everything she says even with such a low voice. "I'll...I'll...handle this on my own."

"Nino...please let him treat you. Something like that...we can't treat it with just a band-aid. We don't have anything at home that can - "

_**"Shut the fuck up, Yotsuba!"**_

Nino's vehement outburst explodes onto the high-rise rooftop. Yotsuba, having never gotten yelled at quite like this before, can't help but wince and squeeze her eyes shut, only to open them up again to find her older sister glaring at her with those weird purple eyes that she's never seen before until about ten minutes ago.

"...Ni...no...?" is all Yotsuba can utter before Nino tears her eyes away and glares back up at her tutor and classmate.

"It's all because of you," she hisses with all the venom she can muster, created from the pain, frustration, and anger that she's been storing up and using the events of today as her catalyst. "It's all because of you that things are turning out the way they are."

Fuutarou narrows his eyes back down at Nino. "Mind explaining to me what exactly you're talking about?"

"Oh, you fucking said it."

Finally tearing her left hand off her wounded shoulder, the second quintuplet clenches her fists with such force that her hands and arms begin to tremble, although her right arm cannot tremble quite as much as her left.

"It's all _your _fault, Uesugi! Fucking coming in here just because Papa hired you to be our tutor, and now all of a sudden after two months, you're acting like you're part of the family now? I know what you're trying to do - you're trying to get all my sisters all wrapped up around your fucking fingers, aren't you?! Ichika, Miku, Yotsuba, and now Itsuki - they're all fucking head over heels for you, and they will be if things keep going on like this! _You _planned all this out because you're poor as fuck and you want access to our money!"

"Your dad's money," Fuutarou dryly corrects her.

"Which is as good as ours, so fuck you! You might be able to make the others fall for you, but not me, not in a million years! I've seen through your fucking tricks, your fucking agenda! Besides, you can't even do _either _of your jobs related to us properly! You can't even teach us well, seeing how we all failed most of our midterms except one apiece, and you can't even keep us safe with how you let me get stabbed in the shoulder like this! You fucking suck as a tutor _and _a mage, goddamn it! I can't believe I helped you keep your stupid post as our tutor by lying to Papa about our test scores!"

Pointing with her bloodied left hand directly at Fuutarou, who stands still, unflinching, Nakano Nino bellows with tears beginning to form in her eyes,

**"It's all your fault that things turned out like this! _I wish you'd never come into our lives, you worthless piece of shit!"_**

Hearing Nino fling these obscenities at their tutor, Yotsuba tightens up her own fists as her heart beats with a sharp pang of pain.

"Nino, don't say things like that to him!" she shouts at her sister angrily for the first time in a very long time.

Yotsuba's voice prompts Nino to again swing towards her younger sister.

**"I SAID, _SHUT - UP!"  
_**

A loud _SMACK _also joins the chorus of yells occurring here on the roof of the Pentagon. Nino, unable to use her right hand properly due to her injured shoulder, uses the momentum of her turn to savagely backhand Yotsuba across her left cheek with her left hand instead, and she glares at Yotsuba stumbling a little, holding her cheek where she's been struck by her sister.

Before Nino can confront her younger sister, however, she finds herself being grabbed by the scuff of her blouse with a single hand and lifted up off the roof and into the air by a foot or two.

"What the - _let go of me, Uesugi - !" _Nino growls ferociously, realizing what's going on, but Fuutarou disregards her threat and pulls her in closer so that there is nothing blocking the line of sight between their two pairs of eyes, one a dull black and the other a burning purple. "Don't get in my way, I was talking to - "

"Yotsuba? I believe you were speaking to me mostly just now," Fuutarou says with a small voice. For a boy who usually speaks loudly or at least clearly for the sake of his tutoring, listening to him speak like this, especially with this kind of context, is terribly jarring. "Finish what you were telling me."

"I was done, okay!? That's why I turned to Yotsuba!"

"And slapped her like that? What for?"

"What the fuck's that got anything to do with you, you fucking simp?!"

Fuutarou pulls Nino even closer, uncomfortably close to the point where most of Nino's vision is made up of Fuutarou's face.

"Apparently, according to you just now, I'm the reason why things are the way they are, even though I have no idea what's even going on with you and the others. And the next minute you're gonna have the guts to ask me what this has got to do with me? Because by your own fucking words, Nino, this has _everything _to do with me. Hell, we even talked about something like this a while ago, didn't we? The night when I walked in on you after you came out of the bath? So you'll excuse me for butting in like I always have and ask you again while I still have the patience for your bullshit: _why did you hit her?"_

Nino tries her best to gnash her teeth at Fuutarou while still being held up in the air, her feet dangling a few dozen centimeters from the ground now. "Because she was being annoying, damn it!"

"Oh? You used to be hella fucking annoying to deal with before midterms, and you didn't see _me _slapping the shit outta you."

"Of course not, you idiot, otherwise I would've had Papa fire your dumb ass instantly!"

"And that still wouldn't change the fact that you're acting like a little bitch right now. And while I don't give a fuck if you act like that towards me, since I've put up with it for the better part of the last two months, I'm nowhere near as big a fan of when you act like that towards your own fucking sisters."

"You don't even know what's going on, do you?! What makes you think you deserve to know?! This is between the two of us, damn it! This is a fucking _family _matter! Stay the hell out!"

"Please, you two!" Having finally recovered from the shock of getting slapped, Yotsuba rejoins them and pleads with her tutor. "Uesugi-san, please...just...just put her back down. I'll talk this out with her - "

"I'll put her down, sure, but neither of you are leaving until you explain to me exactly what the fuck's gotten into the two of you tonight," the young mage declares, complying partway with Yotsuba's request and setting Nino back down on the roof. "And Nino, call me a simp all you want, but the fact of the matter is that it's my _responsibility_ to keep you all safe from shit like what happened tonight. While I can do that against people like those guys from earlier, I can't do it anywhere near as easily if you girls are fighting each other like this, do you understand? You're not exactly helping me do my job of making sure the five of you are healthy if you're the ones hurting each other."

"Like I said, you can't even do your job properly even against bastards like those fucking shitstains from earlier tonight! You let Itsuki get hurt last time, and now me!" Nino cries.

"Yes, well, things like this can happen; I was paying a visit to the hospital and checking in with your dad when I sensed the two of you getting hurt and ported my over to you as fast as I could. I don't _literally _stalk the five of you all day because you'd fucking yell at me for that too. And if you'd prefer this, Nino, what I can suggest to your dad is to have him tell the five of you that you're all barred from leaving this high-rise without permission and by my escort to near-guarantee your safety. Does the idea of house arrest sound good to you, Nino? Is that what you want? Because honestly, that's what we _should've _been doing from the very beginning so that none of you gets hurt; the reason why we _haven't _been doing that is because I don't like the idea of boarding you girls up inside your own house and be unable to lead the lives you normally have otherwise!"

Nino and Fuutarou glare at each other, each of them unwilling to back down from one another's intense gaze, with an uncomfortable and miserable Yotsuba standing beside them.

"I'm not here to be your fucking parent; that's your dad's job, and we all know how good he is at doing that," Fuutarou snarls wickedly down at Nino. "So whatever business you have with Yotsuba that made you hit her like that, fine, I'll be a good little _outsider _and leave it to the two of you to work out; I'll trust that you two can be mature enough to talk it out while I'm not here and resolve it. But if I get wind of you getting into another argument like this with any one of your other sisters, Nino, I _will _intervene. Now let me treat your shoulder so that you don't have to deal with me any longer than you have to."

Clenching her teeth tightly one last time for tonight, Nino finally tears her gaze away, turning to point her right shoulder in his direction.

"...then hurry up and get it fucking over it," she orders harshly. "How long's it gonna take?"

"I'll have a better idea in a second here, but for now, probably about fifteen minutes or so. The cut itself doesn't look too deep; that switchblade you got stabbed with didn't seem to have that long of a blade, so we're pretty lucky in that sense," the young mage says carefully while examining the second quintuplet's wound. "Yeah, it should be about fifteen minutes; I just need to repair some muscle, cartilage, and a tendon here..."

As Fuutarou gets to work repairing Nino's wound with magic, Yotsuba continues to shift uncomfortably where she stands. Nino has her eyes closed again to bear with the uncomfortable sensations she feels from the anesthetizing rune over her shoulder that Fuutarou's applied to numb the wound, and their tutor and classmate is hard at work healing Nino's stab injury.

"Because of whatever's happened tonight, let's see, what day's today, Friday? As I'd mentioned earlier this week, I was planning to have some extra lessons this weekend, since I promised to take you all out for parfaits at that one family cafe that Itsuki told me about earlier and I figured we'd come back to your place to study some more, but I'm gonna go ahead and cancel those. Take this weekend to calm yourselves down so that when I come back next week, we don't need to deal with this shit and we can focus on your studies."

Uesugi talks as he operates on Nino's wound, on the verge of completing. He just needs to repair the epidermis layer of skin and make sure that there are no scab cells left behind.

"If you want to cancel the parfait thing later tonight, just tell Ichika to text me what you girls want to do so that I know. If I don't get a text from her, I'll assume I'm still meeting you girls there, just without the studying afterwards since we're obviously not going to make any progress. Alright, I'm done."

As soon as Fuutarou pulls up and away from Nino's shoulder, the second quintuplet immediately pivots and storms off towards the doors leading downstairs to the elevator lobby, and he and Yotsuba watch the door slam shut after Nino as she disappears from view.

With a heavy sigh, Fuutarou rubs the bridge of his nose tiredly, while Yotsuba gazes back up at him.

"A while back, Miku told me that Nino's a good person, and it's just that I need to come to her in good faith or whatever..." Fuutarou grumbles, though his voice lacks the intensity from before when he was arguing with Nino. "I guess I still don't know what that really entails."

"Uesugi-san...none of this is your fault, despite everything Nino's been saying," Yotsuba says quietly. "She's...she's just..."

"Just what?"

Yotsuba bites her lower lip.

"Nino's been acting weird lately. I'm sure...you've noticed it too. Studying with us after midterms, even though she'd talked so much about how things would go back to how they were normally...not hanging out with her friends from school as much lately...and she's even been studying on her own in her room too, which is something she'd only ever do to last-minute cram for exams or something."

"Seems like progress to me," Fuutarou remarks bluntly. "Can't say that _isn't _what I want as a tutor."

"Maybe not, but...I don't know how the others feel about it, but I've just been feeling like there's something off about her lately. And before we had that trouble happen earlier, I ran into her at the Izumi supermarket, and we had a bit of an argument there, too."

"About what, me being an outsider and all that?"

Yotsuba nods a little. "She blames you for how we've been changing recently. Ichika, Miku, myself, and even Itsuki...after what we talked about before we ran into those bad guys, it's pretty clear now that she resents you for everything you've been doing for us."

"Hmm. You heard me briefly mention this to Nino just now, but a while back, I think this was right after we came back from our Golden Week vacation, but we had a night when Nino ran out of the house and got herself locked out of the high-rise, remember that?"

"Oh yeah, that, uh-huh."

"I took the time to sit down and talk with her for a bit that night, and it was then that I first came to know how she views me, an outsider. Because she helped me keep my post as your tutor and she's been cooperating with me in studying and whatnot, I figured maybe she'd gotten over those initial feelings, but clearly I'm wrong, and it's way worse than I thought."

"Like I said, Uesugi-san, please don't feel like this is your fault! How can it be?"

"I never said it was _my _fault, Yotsuba. And _whose fault _it is is irrelevant; what matters is that one of my students has a serious problem with me, and I want to take it upon myself to learn more about it so that I can continue to tutor her like my responsibility entails."

"Then in that case, I can tell you whatever I know on my end - "

But Fuutarou shakes his head, holding up his hand to stop Yotsuba in her tracks.

"As much as I would like that, I feel like that'd just be taking the easy way out. I want to have Nino tell me her gripes with me herself. It might take a while for us to get to that point, but...out of respect for her, I feel like this is the most appropriate route to take. You'll have to excuse me for my selfishness here, Yotsuba."

"S-Selfish...?" Yotsuba scoffs lightly, but she means no offense by this. "...that's hardly what I'd call selfishness, Uesugi-san."

"I dunno, denying someone else's offer to help because I want to do things my own way sounds pretty damn selfish to me, don't you think?"

Yotsuba blankly stares at Fuutarou.

"...yes...you're right..." she mumbles, lowering her gaze slowly.

"In any case, it's already pretty late, you should also get going," Fuutarou advises. "Before I go, though, I would like to ask you one thing: do you think Nino was saying those things about me just because she's pissed off at me, or do you think there's actual merit behind what she's saying? Because I obviously can't tell what exactly it is that I'm doing that Nino takes so much fault with. Don't give me a detailed answer; I just want you to tell me if you agree or disagree with Nino, or she's only halfway right."

Yotsuba blinks at her tutor at first, then lowers her gaze for God knows how many times it's been now. What should she say? Things just happened so fast today that she hasn't even had a chance to organize her thoughts. Shaking her head, Yotsuba feels tears welling back up in her eyes.

"...I don't know, Uesugi-san. I honestly...don't know," she mumbles, quickly wiping her tears away. "I won't deny that we as sisters have definitely changed ever since you began teaching us. But at the same time, I personally really enjoy having you around and teaching us, because it's fun and we've made so many memories that I never thought we'd be able to make just from studying and tutoring like this. And I know that Ichika and Miku would be inclined to agree, and maybe even Itsuki once she's studied with us for long enough. But now that I see how Nino really feels about all this, now I just don't know what to think. I'm sorry, Uesugi-san. I'm just...I'm just too dumb to give you a straight answer."

Bowing her head a little so that her eyes disappear from Fuutarou's view, Yotsuba lets her green hair ribbon droop down with the rest of her upper body.

"It's fine; I was prepared to have to find that answer myself either way, like I mentioned earlier with how I want Nino to talk to me directly. As much of a bitch, frankly, that she was tonight towards us, I trust in her that she has a good reason why she's acting the way she is tonight, and in so doing..."

Yotsuba hears two footsteps approach her, and she looks up just in time to see her tutor put his hand on her head reassuringly.

"...I'll take her word that I really am at fault here. So by extension, I'm sorry for making her act like that towards you. She should've acted that way towards me, not you."

Staring through her own bangs like Miku up at her tutor as he pulls his hand back, Yotsuba sniffles loudly.

"...even though I said you shouldn't be the one taking the blame for something you couldn't have known you did?" she mumbles, wiping some more tears away.

"Don't worry about it, I'm used to taking the blame for a lot of things. We'll just chalk it up as yet another thing that I just don't get because I'm a dense motherfucker. But anyways, you should really be getting home; your sisters'll get suspicious that you're still up here with me or something."

Nodding, the fourth quintuplet begins to head for the doors leading down to the elevators below, but she stops after a few paces.

"...something wrong?" Fuutarou calls out, having turned around to check if the teleporter rune beneath their feet on the helipad has reset so that he can establish another teleportation link on it. Yotsuba turns around slowly, fidgeting a little with averted blue eyes.

"Um...this is...a bit embarrassing to ask, but..." Yotsuba swallows nervously, "...do you remember that one morning when we met really early at school...? And you slept in my arms...?"

"Oh yeah, that. I never thanked you for that, did I? If you and your sisters decide to come by, I'll make sure to buy you an extra big parfait or something, whatever you want."

But Yotsuba shakes her head. "You don't have to do that; my sisters'll get suspicious and think you're showing favoritism towards me if you do. But..."

"But?"

Yotsuba hesitates again. Should she really ask him for this? When she'd resolved to prioritize the happinesses of her sisters rather than her own?

No. This isn't for herself. It's for Uesugi-san, to make sure that he knows none of anything that's happened today is his fault.

Spurred by these contradictive thoughts, Yotsuba turns, backtracks, and practically walks straight into her friend with the world's most awkward hug.

Fuutarou himself gives no reaction at first, simply letting Yotsuba do as she wills. But before long, he, too, puts his own arms slowly around Yotsuba, lifting his head up to the empty, lifeless sky hanging over them and bearing witness.

"Let me guess, you're trying to tell me to stop thinking this is my fault?" he mutters aloud, and he feels Yotsuba's head nod up and down slightly against the front of his right shoulder. "Hm. Thanks for the encouragement, then. It means a lot...but does this mean that I'll have to buy you _two _parfaits tomorrow or something?"

Unable to stop herself from breaking into a smirk, Yotsuba is glad that Fuutarou can't see her giggling silently at his remark as she shakes her head. Why should he, when he's already in the middle of paying the debt he owes her from their morning at school together.

* * *

"Nino!? Nino, what happened!? Nino, _Nino!"_

The quintuplet in question slams the door to her bedroom behind her and swiftly locks it so that her sisters can't follow her in. As Ichika knocks on her door urgently, calling out her name to get her to open the door, the enraged Nino tears off her blouse and angrily changes out of her clothes into her clean pajamas. Once her outfit is changed, she stomps over to her bed and, clenching her fists tightly again, begins to drive her knuckles into her blanketed mattress. Without a word escaping her clenched teeth, Nino makes full use of her freshly healed shoulder and punches the crap out of her own bed for ten straight minutes, cathartically ridding herself of all the anger and emotions she's been flooded with tonight.

By the time she's done, Nino, sweating bullets from her scalp from the sheer amount of effort she's put herself through, can no longer hear her sisters outside her room asking her to open up like the American FBI; they must've gotten scared away once they started hearing Nino start pounding her own bed inside. In the meantime, Nino's side where she's been kicked throbs pretty painfully, because Fuutarou healed her shoulder but didn't treat the bruise that she's gotten where she got kicked, and her elevated heartrate causes the bruise to throb rather painfully.

Was it always so hot in her room? Or is it just because of all the body heat she's produced from going into a tantrum like this?

Either way, after turning off the main light in her room, Nino climbs up onto the same bed that she's been hitting for the past ten minutes, ignoring the stuffed animals and plushie dolls that've spilled off the edge due to her mattress abuse, and sits on her bed in the dark, hunched over her knees against the parallel wall behind her with her very long hair draped down on either side of her, with only the glowing purple lights gleaming from her narrowed eyes to keep her company.


	46. Parfait Time

The big clock on the wall down on the first floor of the Nakano penthouse softly strikes eleven o'clock in the late morning. As today is the Saturday that their tutor has designated as their day to head out and grab lunch and parfaits together on his dime for all the hard work that the quintuplets put in for their midterms, the girls have all woken up by this point in time, gotten dressed, and are waiting for Fuutarou to arrive at around noon. Because of the incident that Nino and Yotsuba ran into yesterday evening, Fuutarou texted Ichika, telling her that just to be on the safe side of things, he'll personally head to the family cafe with them to ensure their safety, so Ichika scheduled a small limousine to come pick up the five of them to take them there, as it is a bit of a ways away from the high-rise.

The five of them total, because, naturally, Nino will not be joining them.

Setting down their glasses of water on the glass table, which they carry one in each of their hands, Miku and Yotsuba join Ichika and Itsuki at the couches in their living room. Miku takes a seat on the carpet, while Yotsuba remains standing, silently sipping her water while they wait for their tutor to join them.

"...now that you've had some time to calm down, Yotsuba, would you mind explaining what happened yesterday?" Ichika asks quietly, finally looking up at the third of her younger sisters. "Because Nino sure as hell won't talk to us no matter how hard we try, and Fuutarou said he'll explain things once he meets up with us and once we're done eating lunch."

"I still think that...we ought to let Uesugi-kun explain what happened. He will be here shortly, and we can ask him to tell us while we are eating," Itsuki suggests. "Whatever happened clearly affected Yotsuba quite badly. We should not put pressure on her to tell us if she feels she is not ready."

But Yotsuba shakes her head while Itsuki is talking, though she waits for her younger sister to finish her thought before speaking up herself.

"It's fine, Itsuki, I was going to explain my side of the story by today anyway. Like Ichika said, I just needed...last night to calm down, that's all."

Lowering her glass of water and patting herself on the cheek, Yotsuba inhales sharply to begin talking.

"You guys know that yesterday I headed out to give the sewing club a hand with something. Well, we finished early, so I had an extra two hours on my hands before I was supposed to get back home, so I decided to go to Izumi to buy some snacks because I noticed we'd run out before leaving home yesterday. And I ended up running into Nino there."

"You met Nino _there? _Izumi's not exactly close to home..." Ichika slowly raises a hand up to her forehead in thought, mentally picturing the location of the Izumi supermarket relative to their home.

"Yeah...from here, you'd have to specifically go out of your way to go to Izumi since there's the Tokyu supermarket that's a lot closer to us," Miku notes quietly. "Izumi is...in the direction of where Fuutarou lives, I think."

"Sounds about right. So yeah, I met Nino there, and I helped her pick out groceries and stuff..." Yotsuba takes another sip of water. "But while we were at it, I asked her if something was wrong, because something about her felt a bit off at the time, and since it was just me and her, I figured she'd maybe answer me honestly when no one else was with us."

"Was something wrong with her?" Itsuki asks.

"Well, um..." Yotsuba uncomfortably shifts where she stands. "...long story short, she...Nino has a serious problem with Uesugi-san. Something about him is really...really bothering her."

"...and you're sure this isn't just Nino being Nino, right, Yotsuba?" Miku asks from the floor, looking up, though she finds that having to arch her neck up at Yotsuba like this is pretty discomforting, so Miku opts to get up and sit on the short couch instead.

"Yeah, this is definitely different. This isn't what Nino was like at the beginning when Uesugi-san was first starting to tutor us, because back then, we knew it was just because Nino didn't like someone like Uesugi-san whom we barely knew coming into our house all the time to tutor us."

"By the way, should we really be talking about Nino like this?" Miku turns to her other sisters sitting together on the long couch. "She can probably hear us from up there if we talk loud enough."

"Yes, that is another good reason why we ought to leave this discussion for later," Itsuki nods, but Ichika shakes her head.

"If Nino hears us talking about her, then that's all the better. We've tried our best to get her to come out of her room to talk to us, but she hasn't listened at all so far, so if this can somehow convince her to come out, then it's doing our job for us." Ichika leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees slowly. "In any case, keep going, Yotsuba. It'll probably be a bit before Fuutarou-kun gets here anyway...what did Nino say that tipped you off that this time is different from before? How did she act?"

"She sounded legit _pissed _with him," Yotsuba answers right away. "We've all heard how Nino sounds whenever she's just annoyed or a little angry at something, right? Not this time. She said that she hated how Uesugi-san just came into our lives so suddenly, how he's been spending a ton of time with us, and how we've been changing because of him."

The rest of the quintuplets respond with a little silence as they digest Yotsuba's testimony.

"...it's got to be because of that promise she made to us when we were younger, after Mama died," Miku mutters softly, looking down at the edge of the glass table in front of her.

Ichika nods. "Yeah, it has to be. I figured that there was a chance it was because of that. I even mentioned it to her directly when Nino and I had that little argument before she ran off to the supermarket." The eldest quintuplet looks up at Yotsuba again. "Did Nino tell you about the argument she and I had when you met her?"

"Uh, yeah. She told me the gist of what you two talked about."

"Good, then it saves me the time of telling you myself since I already told these two about it." Ichika sits back up on the couch again. "Go on?"

"So um...Nino and I argued for a little bit ourselves about it. Actually, before that, she asked me if I thought there was anything changing about her, so I told her that, y'know, lately she's been studying with us and she hasn't been as antagonistic towards Uesugi-san like she's been in the past, and then I started asking her what it was about Uesugi-san that bothered her, and then it...it just spiraled out of control from there, and then we started arguing for a bit before one of the supermarket employees had to come over to tell us to be quiet."

Yotsuba pauses for a moment to take another deep breath.

"We didn't talk much after that until we'd bought everything and started heading home. I started to talk to her again, to try to, uh...convey to her, I guess, that what she was doing, blaming Uesugi-san like she was, wasn't right. I tried telling her that there's no way Uesugi-san knows how we're changing around him, and even if he does, there's not really much _he _can do about it since this's his job and all. But Nino argued back, asking why Uesugi-san had to be both our tutor and our...our, uh, protector? Bodyguard? I don't know what word to use there, sorry...at the same time. She was asking why Uesugi-san couldn't just stick to being our bodyguard so that we won't really need to see him very much, and why he couldn't leave the tutoring part to someone else."

"Uesugi-kun _did_ talk about that after midterms, remember?" Itsuki reminds everyone, not that Yotsuba needs it. "So Nino must have kept what he said in mind."

"She even mentioned that too," Yotsuba nods in agreement. "But that was when we got attacked by three bad guys we passed by earlier while walking home. I'm...I'm pretty sure one of them was a mage like Uesugi-san, too, and...and he shot me with something, and it hit me in the face, on my nose..."

"So that's why you had a bit of a bloody nose when you came back home?" Ichika asks as Miku blankly stares off at the large sliding glass window that leads out to the veranda, and Yotsuba nods.

"Uesugi-san treated it a little before I came down from the roof, so I'm all better now. But Nino attacked the guy who hit me and yelled at me to run away; I'm pretty sure she wanted to hold off those guys to buy me time so that I could escape. But I didn't want to leave her there, so I didn't...I didn't know what to do. And since it was just Nino against those three guys, eventually they were ganging up on her, and one of them even stabbed her in the right shoulder, right at the top, so I couldn't just ditch her like she told me to."

"That also explains why her shoulder was all bloody when she came back..." Miku grimaces.

"Luckily for us, though, the bad guys started arguing with each other about their bounties or whatever, and while they were distracted, Uesugi-san arrived just in time to deal with them and get us out by teleporting us back up to the roof. He asked Nino to show him her injury, but Nino started going off on him..." Yotsuba hesitates for a few seconds before continuing to finish her anecdote. "Eventually, she let him heal her wound, and she left right after that. I stayed behind to apologize to him for all the stuff Nino told him, just in case he took anything that Nino said the wrong way..."

"Knowing Nino, it's not really easy to take what she says a different way, she's usually pretty clear about the point she's trying to get across, especially when she's pissed off," Ichika sighs. "But at least we can rely on Fuutarou-kun coming at this reasonably."

"Well, I don't...I don't know..." Yotsuba interrupts. "He took it pretty poorly, getting yelled at by Nino like that. Usually he doesn't let Nino get under his skin, but this time..."

"Fuutarou probably knew that like you said, there's something off with Nino right now, so he probably reacted accordingly," Miku guesses. "Honestly, the rest of us should've seen this coming. We all knew Nino wasn't really being her usual self like before midterms..."

"We just wrote it off as her finally accepting Fuutarou-kun as her tutor, especially because she was the one who helped him keep his whole tutoring job," Ichika nods as well. "I also want to make it clear that I'm partly responsible for how things turned out last night. That argument I had with her just before she was going to leave to pick up snacks, I didn't need to start yelling at her or start talking to her so harshly, yet for some reason I did. That wasn't supposed to happen. And now it's turned into this big giant mess..."

The quintuplets on the first floor fall into another uneasy silence.

"...we need to convince Nino somehow that she needs to let go of that promise from six years ago," Miku speaks up. "We know how important it is to her, but the fact of the matter is that it's an impossible promise to keep. At some point, we're all going to go our separate ways; we already see it a bit in Ichika, who's been focusing on her part-time job more and more lately. So for Nino to get angry at Fuutarou is pointless, because we were all going to have to change at some point anyway."

"And just how are we going to do that? Never mind the fact that Nino isn't in a talking mood right now, which on its own is super rare since she loves yapping about whatever's bugging her, how are we going to make her let go of a promise that she's held onto for six years? You know what they say, old habits die hard," Ichika shrugs helplessly.

"Um...logically, we would need to have her understand that change is inevitable. She needs to understand that it is simply unreasonable to expect all five of us to stay the same as we were when we were in elementary school. Even physically, we are much different now, with our different hairstyles and tastes," Itsuki adds.

"Yeah, and so like I was saying, how're we gonna convince Nino to see that?"

As Itsuki pauses, unable to find an adequate answer, Yotsuba continues to gaze down at the glass of water in her hands, down at the water's trembling surface. But then she hears her younger sister reply with,

"Perhaps...we can have Uesugi-kun talk to Nino directly? Because he is the one who is causing her this trouble, correct?"

"No, we can't do that!" Yotsuba raises her head quickly to jump back into the quintuplet meeting. "We can't have Uesugi-san handle our problems for us! He's already got his hands full dealing with his own business, we need to resolve this on our own, shouldn't we?"

"I agree with Yotsuba; Fuutarou didn't even do anything wrong from what we're aware of," Miku nods at Ichika and Itsuki. "It's just Nino who's spontaneously gone back to hating him like before and then some. This is something we as her sisters need to come together to take care of. We're quintuplets, right?"

"Yeah, yeah! And don't forget what Mom said," Yotsuba adds. "_The important thing isn't where we are, it's that the five of us are together."_

"Careful now, you'll start sounding like Nino too if you keep that up," Ichika says rather sarcastically with her dark humor, and her sisters chuckle awkwardly at it. "But...I actually disagree with you two. I think that Fuutarou-kun does need to be the one to talk to Nino. I do agree that there's nothing that he's done wrong, at least from what we can tell, unless he's been secretly having run-ins with Nino that we just don't know about, which still might be a possibility. Barring those, let's give him the benefit of the doubt, right? But the fact still remains that Nino's problem lies with him, not us. Us talking to her probably won't get us anywhere in this case because we're going to keep seeing Fuutarou-kun because he's going to keep coming here to tutor us since that's his job. So even though he probably didn't do anything wrong, he still needs to be the one to talk some sense into her."

"That is right. We can help out by talking to Uesugi-kun today while we are at lunch and tell him everything we know about the situation so far; Yotsuba needs to be the key witness like with us since she was with Nino yesterday when everything happened. Unless you already explained everything to him?" Itsuki looks up at her older sister, who shakes her head.

"I still need to tell him what happened; he said that it could wait until today, if we did decide to go eat lunch with him."

Nodding, Itsuki sighs softly as she leans back against the back of the couch next to her oldest sister.

"...I know we are talking about how to get Nino to calm down, but...in all fairness, talking about this _does _make me realize just how much of an impact Uesugi-kun has had on us even in these two months," the youngest quintuplet murmurs, gazing up at the clock on the wall over their large flatscreen TV.

"A lot's happened, that's for sure," Miku begins to smile warmly as she, too, reminisces on their past two months. "I know in the beginning none of us were really thrilled to have to deal with a year-long tutor, but...I guess it really worked out for us."

"Well, in hindsight, we probably would've come to know Fuutarou-kun either way, right? Like what Nino was complaining about to Yotsuba, even if Dad had gone with hiring another person to handle our tutoring, he probably still would have hired Fuutarou-kun to be our bodyguard of sorts. Obviously we don't really know how much of a direct impact he would've had on our lives if things turned out that way, but..." Ichika trails off from there.

"So he would have probably still been able to instigate some kind of change among us," Itsuki finishes Ichika's thought for her. "A change Nino would have taken fault with either way."

"Yeah, exactly."

"But in Nino's defense, if we only knew Uesugi-san as our bodyguard, just as someone who protects us behind the scenes or whatever from these bad guys, wouldn't we, uh...not care about him as much? I don't know how else to put that, sorry," Yotsuba apologizes quickly.

"I'll admit that maybe I wouldn't have been affected as much," Ichika raises her hand a little. "Since I'm the type 'a gal who likes getting to know people and all, so Fuutarou-kun coming over every day and tutoring us for hours on end gave me lots of opportunities to get to know him and have a better opinion of him, now that we have a better understanding of what he does for us. Nino would probably be annoyed with him but not royally pissed off like she is now, since she doesn't need to worry about him being such a big part of our lives."

"But what if we had gotten another tutor instead of Fuutarou from the very start, and that tutor ended up being like Fuutarou? What then?" Miku points out.

"I'm not sure, but no one knows since that never happened. And I think it's better for us to think about what we _do _know rather than the hypotheticals. And speaking of what we do know..."

While Ichika is talking, the electronic doorbell rings, and Miku jumps up to her feet from the short couch to join Yotsuba as the two of them hurry to the front door to welcome the guest that they're expecting. The oldest and youngest quintuplets both watch their middle sisters slip out of sight briefly to the front lobby.

"I'm sure those two don't mind having met Fuutarou-kun like this at all," Ichika smiles shortly. "You were like Nino in the beginning, remember, Itsuki? How you didn't like him tutoring us at first."

"Y-Yes, I remember that...no need to remind me," Itsuki stammers a little and turns away in embarrassment, remembering the olden ages. "But...I have managed to overcome that initial resistance for the betterment of my grades, and ever since midterms, I have been studying along with everyone else."

"That you have. Do you like Fuutarou-kun as much as Miku and Yotsuba do, though?"

Itsuki blinks blankly at her oldest sister. "...come again?"

But Ichika isn't paying attention, because their sisters return holding some shopping bags while Uesugi Fuutarou, still carrying the good majority of bags, follows them into the kitchen.

"You really didn't need to buy all this for us, Fuutarou..." Miku says worriedly as she sets down the bag that she's taken off her tutor to help him as Yotsuba does the same, with Fuutarou following suit last. Seeing what is going on, Ichika and Itsuki both get up from the couch to see if they can help with anything, but it turns out that they've already brought all the groceries in.

"...wait, did Fuutarou-kun really buy groceries for us or something? What brought this on?" Ichika asks, uanble to hide the amazement from bleeding into her voice.

"Well, yesterday Nino and Yotsuba were coming back home with groceries, but since they got attacked on their way back, I had them just leave it all behind so that I could take them home right away," Fuutarou explains, but Yotsuba, turns to Ichika and says,

"Uesugi-san actually went _back _to the place where we got attacked, and he looked at all the groceries he bought for us and bought them all _again!"_

"It's not that big of a deal, Yotsuba, calm down," the young tutor tries to say, but Miku objects hotly.

"It _is _a big deal, Fuutarou! These groceries aren't cheap, especially with all the snacks here, and you know how many snacks we can go through with the five of us. And you were already going to treat us to lunch today anyway, along with parfaits!"

Shaking his head exasperatedly, Fuutarou just gives Miku a casual hand wave to dismiss her concerns.

"How many times do I have to repeat myself? It's not a big deal, I can do this once or twice - "

"Hey, hey, everyone, just - let's just calm down, alright? Fuutarou-kun's already bought us back our groceries, so it'll be a shame if we just send them all back," Ichika intervenes to get everyone on the same page. Fuutarou, meanwhile, sets down the bag of rice he's been carrying on his shoulder and opens the cupboard where the quintuplets keep their rice to store it appropriately. "Sorry that you have to deal with this today, Fuutarou-kun."

"I kinda figured everyone would be on edge; that's why I asked you earlier this morning with that text if you were sure you'd all still want to go," the young tutor replies, turning around to the rest of the quintuplets once the rice is secure in its cupboard.

"Well...given what's happened, it's probably for the best if we go, if only to give Nino some time to herself to calm down," Ichika shrugs. "I think you'd agree, no? And we can talk about it while we're eating or something."

"Yeah, that sounds good." Fuutarou looks up at the ceiling, in the direction of the quintuplets' bedrooms. "As much as I prefer that you girls at least try to stick together, since Nino's gonna be at home, she _should _be fine on her own...and if anything does happen here, I can port right over, so...yeah, let's get going. You all good to go?"

"Um, l-let me go use the bathroom first..." Yotsuba mutters with a bit of embarrassment, since she's been constantly sipping water for the past ten or so minutes while waiting for Fuutarou to arrive, so she excuses herself to go answer nature's call while the others slowly shift over to the shoe lobby to wait for Yotsuba there. Now that their tutor is here, though, the girls stand about awkwardly, not really knowing what to do or say while they wait on Yotsuba to finish her business, and Fuutarou, sensing that the source of the awkwardness may be due to his presence, takes his shoes back off for the time being.

"While we're waiting, let me try talking to Nino. I take it that none of you were able to get through to her if she's still holed up in her room like this?" he asks the girls, who all shake their heads.

"Just try not to set her off again," Itsuki requests.

"...I'm not sure if I can pull that one off, but I'll try not to."

So Fuutarou hurries up the stairs to walk up to Nino's bedroom, which is right in front of the top of the stairs. He's keenly aware of the fact that Nino most likely will refuse to talk to him too, judging from her extreme behavior from last night, so he's not really here to try to get her to talk to him. The real reason is because he noticed that Nino's Mystic Eyes were, alarmingly, active even through her Mystic Eye Killer contact lenses - and while he himself is not very well versed in the knowledge of Mystic Eyes, it doesn't take a magical genius or a top-level instructor at the Clock Tower to know that Mystic Eyes that cannot be adequately suppressed by Mystic Eye Killers but nothing but bad news.

And sure enough, even as Fuutarou climbs the stairs quickly to reach Nino's bedroom, he senses a marked change in temperature. It's not actually physical temperature that he's feeling; this is undoubtedly a sign of magical energy sprawling into the area, and a mage's magical senses will physically interpret this as an increase in temperature. He can tell, though, that this magical energy is not quite mana; it's not mature or developed enough to qualify as true mana. Rather, it's magical energy that hasn't been processed enough that's leaking out into its surroundings, which is a clear sign of a novice mage. As it is now, normal people shouldn't be able to sense this kind of magical energy because it's not strong enough to begin affecting people without active Magic Circuits that can sense it, but like an oil spill in the ocean that is slowly growing, it is dangerous to leave this situation alone for too long, and worse, Fuutarou doesn't know how much time he's got to work with before this spilled oil is ignited.

As he stands silently in front of Nino's bedroom, carefully considering his choice of words since the wrong words or the wrong tone can easily be the detonator for the ticking time bomb that is Nakano Nino on the other side of the door in front of him, Fuutarou senses a shift in attention from the magical signature he feels inside, meaning that Nino has, by now, sensed that he's here. If there's anything to take away from the past fourteen hours or so, it's that Nino's progress as a developing mage, initiated by the awakening of her Mystic Eyes, has taken a big leap forward, though Fuutarou isn't sure if this is what Nino wants, if she's even aware of what's happening to her to begin with.

"...I'll bring home the parfait I promised you. And some lunch, too," Fuutarou finally says, sighing quietly to himself that he can't think of anything better to say.

"Don't bother."

Nino's raspy voice awkwardly tumbles through the locked door that separates him and Nino.

"Forget about it," she adds. "I don't want it. Just leave me alone."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, now shut up and go away!"

Fuutarou stays still for a few seconds, wondering if there's anything else that can come to mind for him to tell Nino before he leaves, but it's situations like these where his lack of social skills comes to bite him in the ass. Frowning in disappointment at his inability to communicate effectively with Nino, Fuutarou casts a small sensor rune over Nino's door before he turns silently and climbs the stairs back down to regroup with the rest of the quintuplets downstairs, where Yotsuba is now present.

"So what did she say? Did she even say anything?" Miku asks upon their tutor's return.

"Not really, she just told me go away when I told her I'd bring her a parfait and some lunch," Fuutarou shakes his head. "I didn't really ask her much. I'll be honest, I have no idea what to say to her in a time like this. Guess we don't have a choice but to leave her be for now."

"Hmmmm, so even the perfect and almighty Fuutarou-kun has something he's not very good at, huh?" Ichika smiles lightly, teasing her tutor in an effort to lighten the mood a little.

"Of course I do, and that's talking to people," the young mage sighs as the five of them leave the house, leaving Nino behind to head for the elevator lobby. "I mentioned this before, didn't I? For someone like me who usually goes around beating the answers I want out of people if I need it or negotiating for it if I can't do that, having to figure out how to talk to people, especially girls, isn't what I'd call a skill of mine."

"But you've been able to talk to us just fine, even back when you first met us," Yotsuba points out.

"Yeah, but obviously I mean in a situation like this. I can't say I've ever been in a situation like this, you know?" Fuutarou gazes darkly at the elevator button that Itsuki has pushed for them to call the elevator up to the thirtieth floor. "...makes me a little frustrated, honestly."

Yotsuba hangs her head at this. "...again, Uesugi-san, I apologize for what Nino said to y - "

Suddenly, the fourth quintuplet feels her lips pinched together lightly, and she looks up at Fuutarou, who's reached over to pinch her mouth shut.

"Again, I don't want your apology," Fuutarou says quietly as the quintuplets look on uncertainly. "There was nothing here that you did wrong in my opinion. I said I'm frustrated because this is a problem I've never had to deal with before, and I'm a little annoyed with myself because of it."

"Because it's a problem that's going to be hard for you to solve?" Ichika asks while Fuutarou lets go of Yotsuba's lips.

"Not even that. I don't mind problems that are hard to solve, because in my experience, the only real difference between easy and hard problems is the amount of effort you need to put in to solve them. What makes _this _problem different is that I just don't know how to go about solving it to begin with because, like I said, I don't have any experience in handling stuff like this."

"You shouldn't feel bad about this, Fuutarou," Miku says softly, looking down at the floor between her and her tutor. "If anyone should, it should be us. We're Nino's sisters, so we should know how to resolve this on our own. Nino even told me that a while back, or something along those lines. We've had fights before, so this shouldn't be anything new to us, yet we're just as stumped as you are."

"Well, even if we _did _have fights in the past, we can't deny that this one is a lot different from before," Ichika notes. "So I don't think our experience from handling the fights we had from before really applies here."

The elevator arrives, opening up to invite the four quintuplets and their tutor in to take them down to the ground floor.

"We'll talk more about this at lunch. Might be a lot to ask, but let's try to enjoy ourselves for now," Fuutarou advises the girls just as his stomach rumbles deeply as it's prone to do often.

"Ah. You didn't eat breakfast today either, did you?" Miku pouts up at her classmate.

"Obviously not, since I knew we'd be eating together today."

"Eat some breakfast for once, Fuutarou!"

The quintuplets all chuckle at Miku's admonishment towards their tutor as the elevator doors slide shut.

* * *

"And now, for the one we've all been waiting for ~ "

Ichika, Miku, Yotsuba, Itsuki, and Fuutarou, sitting at their table at a Saizeriya family restaurant, are all armed with spoons with tall parfaits standing on the table before them. Ichika's is a lemon sherbet gelato parfait, topped with chocolate wafers and sprinkled with chocolate chips; Miku's is a matcha parfait with vanilla gelato, a scoop of red beans, and three pieces of green tea rice cake; Yotsuba's is a fruit parfait stacked predominantly with orange and tangerine slices but also with strawberries, kiwis, cherries, cantaloupe, watermelon, and whipped cream; Itsuki's is a strawberry parfait with custom Neopolitan ice cream made from Strawberry, Vanilla, and Chocolate Häagen-Dazs ice cream and strawberry-dipped Pocky sticks buried into the tall column of silky peach ice cream on the top.

Fuutarou's is a plain vanilla and chocolate parfait with chocolate syrup and two chocolate chip cookies. It also happens to be about a quarter of the size of the girls' desserts.

"Let's dig iiiiinnn ~ !"

The girls all excitedly plunge their spoons into their delicious parfait desserts, making good on Fuutarou's midterm promise to them while Fuutarou calmly munches on one of the chocolate chip cookies, since the cookies are in the way of him using his spoon to eat the ice cream beneath. He has to wonder if what he's eating is really a parfait when it's literally just ice cream with cookies on top.

"Haaauuuuu, this is sooooooooo gooooooood!" Yotsuba squeals, unable to contain her joy as the natural sweetness of her parfait due to its sheer fruit makeup seeps into her taste buds. "This might be even better than some actual ice cream places around here!"

"Yeah, it's really surprising how good this is. You wouldn't expect a place like this to have these, huh?" Ichika remarks as she, too, takes another big bite out of her lemon sherbet parfait.

"They even have matcha parfaits...I might come back on my own just for this," Miku smiles warmly after savoring the delicate but unmistakeable taste of her beloved matcha.

Itsuki, already about to take her fourth bite of her colossal strawberry parfait, notices Fuutarou, who's sitting in between her and Miku on one side of their table, take a spoonful of chocolate and vanilla swirl ice cream out of his comparatively tiny dessert.

"...are you _sure _you do not want us to get you a bigger parfait, Uesugi-kun?" she asks, eyeing her tutor's portion and finding it difficult to imagine having to settle for such a tiny amount when hers is four times as big.

"Again, I'm fine. I'm not one to typically eat desserts much," Fuutarou sighs tiredly. "Do you girls _really _need to keep asking me the same questions over and over even when we're _not _studying? It's bad enough just with that."

"Now, now, let's just all enjoy what we've got. If Fuutarou-kun wanted to have a bigger portion, he would've gotten it for himself," Ichika intervenes, in case another argument can potentially begin to develop.

"Are we sure it's not just because Uesugi-san is a cheapskate and he's intentionally getting a small parfait for himself so he doesn't have to pay as much?" Yotsuba asks aloud to everyone.

"If I wanted a bigger one, like Ichika said, I would've gone ahead and done so. I'm already paying for everything today, one more extra-large parfait isn't going to tip me over the edge."

"Yeah, says the guy who brought in all those coupons for a place like this!"

"Hey, listen, I've had them sitting around for a while and it'd be a waste to just let them expire, so that's why we came here, a'ight?" Fuutarou snaps at the fourth quintuplet as her sisters all laugh at the absurdity of having to bring coupons for a family restaurant that's already got a magnanimous reputation for having cheap, hearty meals. "You all make it sound like I'm a cheapskate, but none of you know the _real _hustle. It's a tough world out there, I'm just sayin'."

"Yeah, it must be _real _tough having to tutor five cute quintuplets all at once, huh?" Ichika teases her tutor some more, pointing her spoon in his direction.

"Like you wouldn't believe. Sometimes I wonder if your dad's paying me enough for this shit."

"Ohoho? So what you're saying is...you want some _more _compensation, huh...? Weeeeell, we _may _be able to negotiate something...a bit _extra_..."

Ichika takes her spoon while she's talking and slips the bottom tip of her utensil into her collar before tugging it outwards a little bit.

"I-Ichika, please refrain from doing anything i-inappropriate!" Itsuki cries lightly, reaching over to tuck Ichika's collar in.

"Ahaha, juuuuust kidding, I'm just playing with him ~ "

"Just pay me back in good grades. That should be cheap enough, right?" Fuutarou shrugs simply before taking a big bite out of his chocolate-vanilla ice cream.

"Ah, now you're just asking for the impossible."

"With that kind of attitude, it will be."

"How did you even know about this place, Fuutarou? As in, did you know that the parfaits here were really good?" Miku asks curiously. "I know Itsuki was the one who first mentioned it to us before, but usually you wouldn't think of a family restaurant like this, especially one like Saizeriya that's based on Italian cuisine, to have such good parfaits. Did you come here before?"

"Yeah, a couple times. This place is really cheap and you get a lot of food, so it's pretty ideal for families like mine who're on a tight budget, to say the least. But besides that, a friend of mine who runs a bakery that opened recently in the city knows the person who makes parfaits here - apparently they attended culinary school together, and he told me to come here in case for whatever reason I wanted some good parfaits."

Yotsuba nods thoughtfully at her tutor. "You don't seem like it, but you actually know a ton of people, probably, huh?"

"Part of the job, I guess. There's only so much I can do on my own, as much as I'd like to do everything by myself, so knowing the right people and what they do is important, even if it's for stuff that's not as important like taking everyone out to lunch at a good spot or something."

"I hear that," Ichika nods deeply, taking another bite out of her lemon sherbet parfait. "Knowing the right people will get you places for sure. They certainly don't teach you that in school."

"Well, at least you get it. And hopefully you'll be able to teach the rest about it too."

"Even though _you're _the one tutoring us?"

"My job's to teach you school stuff, not life lessons."

"But aren't life lessons more important than school lessons?"

"Yes, but that's not under my jurisdiction."

Ichika pouts a little over at Fuutarou. "Oh, you and your silly 'jurisdiction' and stuff again..."

"You have a part-time job, right, Ichika? Then you should know how important contracts are and such."

"I do, but, like, we're friends here, right? So we don't need to be so rigid around each other, especially now when we're just chilling and eating lunch together."

"That's true, but even still, the life lessons I have to tell aren't ones that would be useful to the rest of you." Fuutarou scoops up his last spoonful of ice cream to finish his dessert well before any of the other quintuplets. "The fact of the matter is that my life is very different from all of yours, almost _too _different to really compare, in fact."

"You are not trying to privilege-check us right now, are you?" Itsuki scowls a little over at her classmate sitting next to her.

"No, I'm not, where'd that come from. And besides, isn't that something Nino would say? When'd you learn how to say stuff like that?"

"I-I have been hanging out with Nino quite a bit these days, so I suppose I must have picked it up from her, is that so wrong?"

Sighing again, Fuutarou puts his spoon down.

"Just to be clear, I'm not trying to sound bitter that our lives are so different, and I'm not trying to suggest that one lifestyle is somehow better than the other. We all have our problems and struggles; I'm sure you girls need to deal with problems that I never have to or never need to worry about dealing with."

"I don't know...we used to be poor when we were kids, but we were lucky enough to have Papa take care of us after Mama died," Miku mumbles, staring deeply into her matcha parfait that she's eating slowly, bit by bit. "Did any one of us tell you about that yet, Fuutarou?"

"Itsuki did, actually, yeah."

"Oh? This is new to me, when'd she tell you about our mom?" Ichika asks curiously.

Fuutarou glances for a moment over to Itsuki, silently asking for her permission to divulge this information. Judging by the uncertain, uncomfortable look on her face, though, Fuutarou decides to give a partial answer and says,

"We ran into each other after school, and I decided to walk her home since it was getting late at the time. We just talked about a few things along the way, I guess."

"Hmm, that so..." Ichika eyes Itsuki for a moment before her eyes return to her tutor so that Miku can continue.

"So...we also know what it's like being poor, Fuutarou, but we were lucky enough to get out of that situation. You, on the other hand...you're still poor, and on top of that, you work so much harder than all five of us ever have combined. Even if you say that our problems are different, how can we look at each other and _not _see that, clearly, you've got it a lot tougher than we do?"

"By trying to not worry about it so much. It might be easy for me to say this, but...try not to dwell on it, because if you do that, you'll start finding yourself worrying about me more and more and more, to the point where you'll want to get involved with me and the shit I do, and that's the last thing I want you to do."

Miku's heart sinks terribly hearing these words.

"Kind of ironic, isn't it? That you're the one telling us that," Ichika points out.

"I'm aware. Still, I maintain that this is how things should be. If you want to feel bad for me or the position that I or my family's in, I'd rather you feel that way towards the rest of the city with all the problems it's got going on right now. The drug problem, the other poor families who live in the less fortunate districts that oftentimes get displaced because the city's demolishing infrastructure and housing in those areas for future development and whatnot...the point is, I'm not the only one having a hard time, and I think it's unfair for me to ask anything more for myself."

The girls remain silent for a bit, eating their parfaits without a word after Fuutarou speaks his piece. Surprisingly, it's Yotsuba who speaks up first.

"While you're not wrong, the fact of the matter is that you're someone very important to us now, Uesugi-san," she says quietly, gazing at a tangerine slice nestled in the remainder of the whipped cream in her parfait glass. "And...we want to care about you, just like how you care about us...even if you only care about us because it's contractual."

"That's right. Yotsuba knows better than any of us how that must feel, having to care about a lot of people's problems at once because she's the one who goes around trying to help as many people at school as she can," Miku testifies on her younger sister's behalf. "And besides, it's unfair of you to ask us to do something like that, worrying about the rest of the city. That's not our job, there's no way a bunch of high school girls like us can do something like that when we're not as strong or hardworking as someone like you. But we _can _at least try to help someone who's become a big part of our lives by now, right?"

"And it's got nothing to do with being fair or unfair. You even said it yourself, Fuutarou-kun, when you were talking to us about how we shouldn't worry about your situation because it's just different. If you're going to say something like that, then why won't you let us worry about you just because we want to? Or are you trying to imply that you were lying to us when you called us your friends from earlier, after we were done with midterms?"

Fuutarou slowly but sharply locks eye contact with Ichika, who subconsciously sits upright, growing rapt at attention, but Fuutarou doesn't hold the ominous stare for long.

"...no, you're right. I was being contradictory," he sighs quickly. "I guess it's not right for me to say those things. I'm just used to not expecting much out of other people that I'd rather people leave me alone than try to give me a hand at all. But it looks like I'll have to make an exception for the bunch of you."

"I mean, Father wants you to have us raise our grades and reach high school graduation safely; by default, you _must _have high expectations from us, no?" Itsuki chuckles amicably.

"That's...also true. Though I can't say that I'm not having second thoughts."

"Oh _come on, _Uesugi-kun, what is _that _supposed to mean?!"

"You know _exactly _what I mean, Miss I-Forgot-The-Formula-For-Density-Even-Though-My-Best-Subject-Is-Science!"

_"But that's MATH!" _Itsuki blurts out indignantly.

The quintuplets all chime into a chorus of soft laughter as their tutor throws his hands up and rolls his eyes.

"For once, it's not me Uesugi-san's telling off for getting a question wrong!" Yotsuba grins from ear to ear.

"Oh, don't tempt me with a good time, Yotsuba," Fuutarou raises the ante on Yotsuba's relieved grin with a particularly malicious one of his own.

"Aaaaaaaaaah, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, I'm fine!"

Miku, watching Fuutarou leer over at the cowering Yotsuba with the threat of exposing her academic mistakes from the past week, glances down at the small, empty parfait glass that her tutor has long since cleared, though Itsuki, being the big eater that she is, is about two-thirds through hers, while everyone else has only eaten about a third of their own. So she digs in a spoonful of her own matcha parfait and calls out to their classmate.

"Fuutarou, do you want a bite of mine?" she asks once she's gotten his attention. "It's going to take us a while to go through these, and I know you still have room for more."

Fuutarou grimaces down at Miku. "Do I have a choice in the matter?" he asks.

"Well, if you don't want there to be, I can arrange for that too," she replies simply. "Now say 'aaaah'."

"Oooh, wow, Miku's getting bold," Ichika whistles, eagerly watching the sight of Miku spoonfeeding a bite of her matcha parfait.

"M-Miku, that is not - this is not appropriate behavior that should be demonstrated between a tutor and his student," Itsuki calls over to her older sister in a low voice behind Fuutarou's back.

"We're here as friends, not as tutor and student," Miku replies swiftly in self-defense. "Besides, you should give Fuutarou a bite of yours, too, Itsuki. You're going to keep putting on weight if you eat huge desserts like that all by yourself."

"I-I do _not _need to be reminded of my weight, thank you very much!" Itsuki yowls as Ichika and Yotsuba both erupt into stifled giggles of their own. "And you two, please be quiet!"

"I mean, all that food's gotta go _somewhere_..." Fuutarou shrugs as he savors the matcha flavor of Miku's parfait.

"Do you actually like Miku's parfait? Isn't matcha a weird flavor?" Ichika asks, watching her tutor's reaction to the taste.

"I've actually had matcha ice cream a few times as a kid. It tastes a little weird in the beginning, yeah, since it's not a flavor you'd expect on ice cream, but I got used to it pretty quickly and it's nice. It's been a while since I last had something matcha-flavored, too."

Miku's eyes widen at hearing Fuutarou's praise of matcha.

"Well, would you look at that, someone else who actually likes matcha in stuff that's not tea. Congratulations, Miku, you've found yourself a new comrade," Ichika laughs.

"I think I like it better now since I'm older, just for the record. As a kid I liked the usual sweet stuff, but now that I don't usually have sweet stuff as much, I think I'm losing my sweet tooth..."

"Would you like another bite, Fuutarou?" Miku offers again, much more eagerly than before, even offering a small smile with this second spoonful of matcha gelato.

"Sure, it's good," Fuutarou nods as he accepts her offer.

"Mhmmmmm ~ maybe next time, it should just be the two of you," Ichika giggles. "Maybe find somewhere nicer than this, though. Isn't there that one high-class restaurant Itsuki likes going to? Miku can take him there at some point for a date."

"D-Date..." Mumbling to herself shyly, Miku sinks her eyes figuratively back into her dessert as her cheeks begin to flush.

"I mean, c'mon, isn't that what you're already doing right now? Just pretend we're not here, go on, go on ~ "

Thinking quickly to stop what she perceives to be inappropriate behavior, Itsuki jabs her spoon into her own parfait and turns to her tutor.

"U-Uesugi-kun, that is quite enough, do you not also want to try a bite of my parfait?" she stammers somewhat. She has to wonder why she thought this would somehow be the solution to the problem that she saw between Miku and Fuutarou.

"Oh ho ho, what's this now, Itsuki-chan? Is this..._jealousy _I'm seeing?" the eldest quintuplet, never one to pass up an opportunity to tease, leans in a little towards her youngest sister.

"You are mistaken! I am - I am merely trying to put distance between Miku and Uesugi-kun, as there should be between teacher and student!" Itsuki blurts out.

"Yes, because doing the same thing that Miku is doing is going to solve that, huh?"

_"F-Forget that detail, Ichika!"_

"Ah, if that's the case - " Yotsuba joins in too, taking a spoonful of her own fruit parfait and offering it to her tutor as well. "Here you go, Uesugi-san! Please help yourself!"

"Then me too ~ " Ichika chimes in, doing the same with her own lemon sherbet dessert.

"Me three," Miku also joins in, even though she was the one who started this all.

"Gee, Miku, how come Fuutarou gets to eat _three times _from _your _dessert?" Ichika laughs sarcastically as Miku pouts back at her oldest sister. In the meantime, Fuutarou grimaces again, this time down at the four spoons stretched out to him whose contents are intended for him to consume.

"...I knew I shouldn't have let you girls start this," he grumbles miserably before diving in, eating the quintuplets' bites of their desserts one by one.

"So? Whose did you like the best?" Ichika asks coyly, eating off whatever gelato's left over on her spoon after Fuutarou takes her bite last.

"You're asking me? Food is food, it's all good to me," he replies dryly. "I don't really have a preference for desserts or just sweet stuff in general. Not that Miku's was sweet, necessarily, but still. And I'm full now, that's enough dessert for me for about a month."

As the young tutor takes a drink of water, he glances over at Itsuki, who's suddenly become awfully quiet and is looking straight down at her lap, not even at her dessert that she's almost done finishing. She's still holding her clean spoon in her hand, though.

"Brain freeze, Itsuki? Take it easy then," he tells her, and Itsuki just nods really quickly. Miku, also noticing Itsuki's strange reaction, blinks down at her spoon that was about to feed her another bite of matcha parfait, and she, too, realizes what she's about to do to herself.

"Now that it looks like we're about done with these," Fuutarou sighs one more time after taking a look at everyone's progress, "I believe you all wanted to talk to me about what we're gonna do about Nino. I've explained my side of the story on our way here and while we were waiting to be seated, so we can hopefully keep this short and simple."

"Though, it's still going to be far from simple," Ichika answers crisply. Having noticed the strange reactions from Miku and Itsuki, Ichika smiles at the two of them while Yotsuba blissfully continues chowing her way through the rest of her parfait. "We think that it'll be for the best if you talk to Nino directly, Fuutarou-kun, since you're the one she has a serious problem with. But obviously that's easier said than done, since you tried talking to her earlier before we left the house and she didn't really talk to you other than tell you to get out."

"So...simple for you, not so simple for me. Got it," Fuutarou nods profoundly. "Just like most of my other contracts where my clients expect me to figure out everything on my own. I'm really glad to see that no matter who the client is, the nature of my job never changes."

"Ah, Uesugi-san, Uesugi-san, your eyes! Your eyes are going blank! Come back, come baaaaack!" Yotsuba cries, reacting swiftly by jamming another spoonful of her fruit parfait into Fuutarou's mouth to put some energy into him like she's clumsily switching out batteries.

"We'll talk to Nino as well whenever you're not here; it's not like we're just going to sit back doing nothing," Ichika frowns. "But at least for right now, doesn't it just make sense that you try to get through to her first?"

Fuutarou swallows his last mouthful of fruit parfait and locks eyes with the eldest quintuplet. "Then help me out by telling me what you think I should know going into this. So far, I know that Nino's been acting unusual in hindsight after midterms, which I misinterpreted as her finally cooperating with us to improve her grades and be a good student. Is there anything else you guys want to tell me that's been going on with her? Things that I don't know about that she's been doing or...?"

"Should _you _not know, Mr. Mage?" Itsuki snaps lightly to him; it would appear that she's recovered from whatever slight bout of meekness she was showing earlier. "May I kindly remind you that _you _are the one who has us all under constant surveillance for our protection."

"Careful now, like Ichika said, you're starting to sound like Nino there," Fuutarou scowls a little. "But again, for your information, I said that I don't know literally _everything _that you five are up to, that's just way beyond my own capabilities as a mage. I just know your locations and whether or not you all seem to be in danger, which was how I knew Nino and Yotsuba were getting attacked yesterday and went over as quickly as I could. So obviously I don't know any of the details of your interactions with her while I'm not actually there."

The quintuplets all glance among themselves, visually searching each other for answers they don't have.

"...I don't think any of us really saw anything out of the ordinary with her, other than what Yotsuba already told you," Miku shakes her head slowly.

"Yeah...I probably wouldn't have even thought this was a problem if Nino hadn't made a big deal out of it," Yotsuba adds.

"Could Nino also be mad at me too? Considering how we were the two who would be against Uesugi-kun tutoring us. Perhaps she feels like she is left alone?" Itsuki suggests.

"But if that were the case, then she wouldn't have been studying with us for the past two weeks after midterms. There's gotta be something more to it - I'm starting to think it's something that she's keeping to herself, because otherwise one of us would've noticed it by now. We're not quintuplets for no reason, right?" Ichika says firmly.

"Something that she's been keeping to herself, huh. Well, shit, then that just makes talking to her even harder. Or rather, it'd be more appropriate to say that there's more riding on the line when I _do _go talk to her later," Fuutarou groans somewhat before pulling out his phone. "For now, let me get everyone's phone numbers. It's been getting trickier keeping everyone on the same page when I only have Ichika's number, so I hope none of you mind this."

"I was going to force you to go around getting everyone's numbers anyway," Ichika remarks as the girls all take out their own phones so that they can exchange their contact info. "By the way, I'll give you Nino's number too for what should be obvious reasons..."

"Yeah. Though I'll bet you Nino's gonna get pissed at me for somehow having her number..."

"Aha, yeah, that sounds like her, alright..."

Once Fuutarou has logged everyone's phone numbers, he puts his phone away and pulls out his wallet to pay for everyone's food and dessert at the standing payment tablet that has patiently stood on the far side of the table next to the condiments for this moment.

"By the way, did any of you feel like it was a bit warmer back at your place on the second floor? At the top of the stairs or something?" Fuutarou asks carefully, eyeing the quintuplets to gauge their reactions.

As expected, Yotsuba and Itsuki give him blank or puzzled looks, while Ichika and Miku gaze back at him with concerned focus.

"...no, not...not really? That seems like an awfully random question, are you sure this is not some kind of pop quiz question that you are giving us?" Itsuki replies.

"Er, well...I...I thought I felt the air being a bit warmer there, but...it could've just been my imagination..." Miku says quickly. Ichika says nothing, opting to keep her peace.

"I see. Sorry, I thought maybe one of the runes I put there might be malfunctioning or something, I'll take another look at it when we get back, I guess. Also..."

Setting the mobile payment kiosk aside, Fuutarou takes a look around at the quintuplets to get their attention one last time before they leave while Yotsuba arranges their empty parfait glasses on the side of the table so that their waiter can more easily collect them to put away.

"I might need a few days to think about how to approach Nino. In the meantime, do what you can to calm her down, but don't try to force it on her. In my experience, people who're really pissed off don't just chill out just because other people tell them to; they typically have to let themselves burn out, and only then will they start calming down on their own. So let her do her thing for now while I try to get some things ready."

"Looks like that's our only choice, knowing Nino. If it were anyone else, this wouldn't be so much of an issue..." Ichika sighs. "Nino's always been the hothead out of the five of us, and she's always been proud of doing her own thing to the point where she sometimes rubs it in your face if she feels like it."

"My concern for us is now how we will be able to cook for ourselves," Itsuki wonders aloud, looking around the table herself. "With Nino refusing to come out of her room like that and she being the only one of us five who knows how to cook properly, what shall we do about food?"

"Miku and I made some onigiri for breakfast, remember? That wasn't too bad, even you said so, Itsuki," Yotsuba points out.

"Yes, but the fact of the matter is that we will not be eating onigiri for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I believe Miku has not quite learned enough from Nino yet to know how to cook a variety of meals in the same vein as Nino."

"Well, excuse me, Itsuki, I've been concentrating on studying lately so I haven't had time to keep having Nino teach me like she used to..." Miku rolls her eyes slowly.

"We can just order delivery until Nino starts to calm down, can't we?" Ichika just shrugs.

"But that is unhealthy! We cannot eat fast food for days on end, keeping a healthy diet and a balanced nutritional intake is important, Ichika!"

"Says the one who ate two large pasta plates all by herself when most of us could barely finish one and still somehow had room for that extra-large strawberry parfait that Fuutarou-kun bought you."

Silenced by Ichika's brutal reality check, Itsuki turns away quickly to hide her face in shame.

"Besides, delivery these days is great, you know? I know the delivery apps I have on my phone deliver entire Japanese-style home-cooked meals right to your doorstep."

"If food's going to be an issue, I can stop by to cook for you all," Fuutarou volunteers. "I'm nowhere near as good of a cook as Nino is, but I know enough, and helping her out with dinner the past two weeks whenever I've stayed over long enough to eat with you all's helped me get back into the groove of cooking."

"Come to think of it, Uesugi-san, when _did _you learn how to cook?" Yotsuba asks curiously.

"Didn't I tell you already? No, wait, I think I told Nino but not anyone else...basically when I was growing up, since, y'know, my family's poor and all, I started taking whatever odd jobs I could to help support my family, and I tried working all the food-related jobs I could so that I could maybe take home some free food or meals. Most of those jobs were just mundane stuff like cleaning or washing the dishes or something, but I could watch the chefs cook and observe what they were doing, or if they were nice enough, some of them even let me practice cooking with them even though they shouldn't have."

"Sheesh...you learned how to cook just by watching other people? And you're already good enough to cook with Nino? Just what kind of a super-tutor _are _you?" Ichika shakes her head in slight disbelief. "And this was when you were younger, too..."

"You can learn how to cook too, you know. Instead of ordering delivery all the damn time."

"Baaah, I'm too busy."

"You mean lazy."

"Wait...Fuutarou, does that mean...you can teach me how to cook instead?" Miku's eyes widen brightly at him as sparkles begin to appear at their sides.

"Um, again, I...probably can't teach you as well as Nino can, but I can certainly help you with basic stuff."

"That's good enough for me. Oh, I just got an idea!" Miku claps her hands together, a lightbulb going off in her head. "How about we have Fuutarou come over to cook breakfast and dinner for us until Nino's finally calmed down enough? That way, we can make sure that he eats breakfast and dinner every day."

"While that certainly would help him keep a consistent diet, would that be alright? Seeing how he is very busy and all," Itsuki points out in concern over his own personal schedule.

"I don't mind that at a time like this, actually," Fuutarou nods in approval of Miku's idea. "In light of recent developments, I'll have to focus on your girls' security again. So cooking for you girls'll give me an alibi, I guess I could call it, to be around you all more often."

"It's not an alibi when we like having you around," Yotsuba smiles warmly.

"That's right, at this point we don't mind at all. Of course, Nino's a different story at the moment..." Ichika sighs shortly, with her blue eyes rolling to the side, away from her sisters and tutor.

"Then that's settled; sorry for the increased intrusion ahead of time, in case anyone else starts having a problem with me coming over all the time," Fuutarou dryly jokes. "Just don't expect me to buy groceries _all _the time, though."

"You shouldn't have even bought them for us _today!" _Yotsuba pouts back up at him.

"Actually, wait a minute..." Miku urgently looks up at her tutor, the bright look on her face now suddenly gone and replaced by one of apprehensive epiphany. "You said earlier that you'd 'get a few things ready' to help calm Nino down. W-What do you mean by that, exactly...?"

"Hm? Nothing much, I've just been brainstorming a few ways in which I wanna go about approaching Nino, and it's gonna take me maybe a few days? Depends on the people I need to meet and if they're available, but that's about it, why?"

"Well...just...just hearing you say that, it...it sounded like..." Miku gulps a little, "...it sounded like...you were going to like, I don't know..._do _something to Nino, like, as in like an interrogation or something..."

"What on this part of the Earth's hemisphere made you think _that? _An _interrogation?_ Like, tie Nino to a chair and start tickling her with a feather duster or something? Man, I guess what they say about quiet girls always being the freakiest _is _accurate..."

"N-No, Fuutarou, wait, that's not what I - "

But it's too late; his dry remark has already set the rest of her sisters to begin giggling heartily and teasing her for her hidden thoughts and possible fantasies.

* * *

"Again, just leave Nino alone unless she somehow feels like talking first. I'll be in the kitchen with Miku organizing the rest of the groceries I bought earlier this morning and check up on what she can do as far as cooking's concerned. And again, today's lesson is cancelled, so study on your own or do whatever."

"Okayyyy ~ "

Upon returning to the Nakano penthouse, the quintuplets disperse to carry on their own individual businesses, with Itsuki returning to her room for some more self-study while Ichika and Yotsuba flop comfortably onto the long couch to begin watching some TV together, though Ichika pulls out her phone shortly after and begins texting.

Miku and Fuutarou, meanwhile, head to the kitchen as planned, but as soon as they enter, Fuutarou immediately raises his hand to cast another spell that covers the whole kitchen. He also keenly watches Miku's reaction, if she shows any, as he casts this spell, but Miku, who's entered the kitchen first, simply tends to the groceries brought in by her tutor that still need to be sorted and stocked properly. This means that Miku's development as a mage is still going slowly, because otherwise she would have been able to sense Fuutarou casting a spell right behind her.

"Miku, there's something I need to talk to you about," Fuutarou says in a low voice, grabbing Miku's attention immediately, and she turns around urgently.

"Of course, what's going on?"

"Just so you know, I've put a spell here in the kitchen so that the others can't hear us talking - or more specifically, they'll just think we're talking about normal stuff as long as they don't physically enter the kitchen itself, which they shouldn't since we just came back from eating a huge lunch."

The third quintuplet's blue eyes widen again at her classmate.

"...this is something you can only talk to me about?" she asks hesitantly, unsure of what's going to happen.

"Yeah, because it's about Nino."

At this, Miku swiftly sheds her hesitation and stands up straight with a worried look on her face.

"Is it about her being a mage and whatnot?" she asks, and Fuutarou nods.

"When I went up to her room to try to talk to her before we left for lunch, I sensed a definite presence of magical energy coming from Nino's room. Since you guys told me that she's been holed up in her room for all this time since last night, my guess is that she's been subconsciously leaking magical energy all throughout her room all this time, to the point where I can sense it even outside her room, though it seems to have contained itself within the confines of her room only rather than continuing to spread throughout the house, which is good. That's why I asked you guys earlier before we left Saizeriya if any of you felt like it was hotter around Nino's room, and the fact that you said it felt a bit hotter there means that you can sense it too; it's just that you didn't realize exactly what you were feeling."

Miku listens to her tutor with keen attention.

"So...that was actually magical energy..." she murmurs thoughtfully but worriedly.

"Yeah. It's not quite full-blown mana; you and Nino don't know how to control your Magic Circuits yet because you've never practiced magecraft, so your bodies don't know how to process your magical energy into mana using your Circuits. "

"And...the fact that everyone else couldn't...means that they aren't mages?"

Fuutarou raises a finger. "We'll get to that in a second, because I want to fully update you on Nino's condition. I put a sensor rune on her room before we left, and I've been monitoring her status as best I could the entire time while we were away at lunch. Thankfully, she seems to have calmed down, at least as far as her magical physiology's concerned; she's still probably emotionally fried but we'll deal with that later. But if you sense the temperature near her room get alarmingly hot, text me right away, now that you have my number. Got it?"

Miku nods firmly.

"...but why is that happening? Is it because of what happened last night when she and Yotsuba got attacked?"

"I don't know for sure; there're a lot of things that happened that could be the reason why Nino's behaving the way she is, magically speaking. I know she got stabbed in the right shoulder, so maybe the shock of getting hurt like that probably disturbed her pretty badly? Maybe it was the stress and trauma of being attacked like that in general? The obvious possibility is that she's pissed the hell off at me for whatever reason, but I still want to take everything into account. Hell, it could be the combination of all those things that's set her over the edge like this."

"But we know for sure it's because of what happened yesterday. Because that's the first time I've ever felt something like that passing by her room...now that I know what it really was, of course."

"Right."

"Could it be related to her Mystic Eyes? That's...that's really the only form of magecraft we have access to, right? Since, like you said, we don't know how to do anything else."

"I can only assume so, yeah. And that's not good, because like I told you two a while back, not only am I not very well trained in dealing with people with active Mystic Eyes, but literally _anything _can happen if Nino's Eyes continue to develop. And with how they seem to be developing now, I'm starting to get legitimately concerned that the rest of you will be affected too somehow, and naturally you'll be one of the first ones to notice."

Miku nods. "So...when you said earlier at the restaurant how you needed to prepare some things, that's what you meant? To deal with Nino's Mystic Eyes?"

Sighing heavily, Fuutarou scratches the back of his head uncertainly. "Not _with _them directly. But what I do plan to do is help her magical physiology stabilize so that she doesn't keep leaking magical energy all over the place like she's doing now, because it's kind of like she's pouring gasoline everywhere and it's just waiting to get set on fire. If you girls didn't live all the way up here on the thirtieth floor, I'd be _racing _to resolve this issue because Nino would _instantly_ give away the place where you live to any mage who walks by this high-rise."

Fuutarou watches Miku look away briefly in discomfort; the look in her eyes tells him that while she's not fully aware of what this means, she _does _know that this could have been a much more dangerous situation than it is right now.

"So what I plan to do is something called Tuning; it's a form of magecraft that allows one mage to 'tune' the magical physiology of other mages, which is where it gets its name. A Tuner, then, can do things like stabilize a mage's mana flow if it's behaving erratically for some reason and improve a mage's Magic Circuit efficiency so that they can more easily employ magecraft by producing more mana more quickly and more easily to fuel said magecraft. I've already done it I think twice before; once with you back at Hawaii during Golden Week and twice with everyone before midterms I think it was, when I sang that one song in English for everyone and embarrassed myself."

"You didn't embarrass yourself, really! It was really good," Miku insists. "But...so that was why, when I heard you playing the guitar back then..."

"Oh, so you felt it even back then?"

"Well, obviously, I...I didn't know what it was that I was feeling. I just felt...at ease, I think. Like I could sit there and...and listen you play the guitar forever, almost." Miku blushes a bit, forcing herself to turn away shyly. "...sorry if...that sounded a bit...weird."

"No, not at all, that's what Tuning does sometimes. Different mages have different reactions to it, especially if they're experiencing Tuning for the first time, but you get used it as time goes on."

"I see. And you want to do that for Nino because it might help with her condition?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Since she's a mage, she should be affected by it. The only problem is, I need to get her to listen to whatever it is that I decide to play...and her being holed up in her own room like that isn't exactly ideal because all that magical energy that's lingering in her room could block the Tuning."

"So it comes back to the question of how we can get Nino to come out of her room again, huh."

"Yep. Eventually she'll have to come out, she's still gotta use the bathroom and eat, after all. Not that it guarantees that she'll start talking to us..."

Clearing his throat, Fuutarou then glances to his left at the two quintuplets sitting on the long couch watching TV.

"Coming back to what we mentioned earlier," he says, "you know how you said that everyone else couldn't sense the higher temperature around Nino's room because they aren't mages?"

Miku can't stop herself from letting out a tiny gasp.

"...I knew it. Our sisters - we're _all _mages, aren't we?"

"Hold on, hold on, I didn't go _that _far yet. Because Yotsuba and Itsuki said they didn't feel anything, it's safe to say that they either haven't started developing as mages yet or they might not even be mages at all, so we don't need to worry about those two for now. But..._Ichika, _on the other hand..."

"...let me guess, she's got her own Mystic Eyes just like me and Nino, right?"

"She does have her own Mystic Eye, yeah. Just one, though, curiously enough, it's only in her right eye. I don't think her left eye has it."

"Huh...I guess that makes sense. Though it's not like _I _have _three_ Mystic Eyes."

"What, you don't wanna be Tien? Or maybe Hiei? Third Eye and all that?"

"I-I don't really...like how they look," Miku mumbles, quickly putting her hands over her forehead to hide it, even though her bangs are doing a plenty good job of that for her already. "They look...creepy."

"Yeah, maybe so. Anyway...I first found out Ichika had a Mystic Eye on midterms week, I think, at the beginning of the week when I ran into her at Starbucks."

"Oh yeah, she did tell us that she met you there. I remember her saying that she had a fight with you or something? An argument?"

"So she told you about it, cool."

"Well...not that she had a Mystic Eye."

"Clearly. But not only did she have a Mystic Eye, but she even used it on me."

At this, Miku's face contorts with horror, and she snaps her gaze over at her oldest sister sitting at the couch.

"She...she did _what?" _Miku hisses quietly, and Fuutarou is a bit taken back to hear her voice filled with anger.

"Let me explain, so calm down, I don't need to deal with another Nino right now. Like she said, we got into a bit of an argument at Starbucks, and towards the end, when she had enough of arguing with me, she used her Mystic Eye on me and left, I guess to head back home."

"What did it do?"

"It paralyzed me, as in I couldn't get myself to move. It wasn't a complete paralysis because I could still keep myself sitting up on my chair, but all I could really do was just sit there for a few minutes before its effects wore off. I think her Eye's also supposed to do something extra, but I don't know what it was supposed to be since my defensive spells managed to ward against it, I think."

Miku lowers her gaze down at the kitchen floor. "So...that's why, back at the restaurant, when you asked us if we felt any weird change in temperature outside Nino's room...Ichika just stayed silent..."

Fuutarou also glances over at Ichika briefly before focusing back onto Miku again.

"She's been keeping it a secret from everyone," Fuutarou reveals, as if Miku couldn't come to that conclusion on her own. "And the fact that she not only knows how to use her Mystic Eye but also use it _well_ means that she's had it for some time now; exactly how long I can't say since I've only known you all for a little over two months by now. Out of the three of you, Ichika is definitely the most qualified to be a legit mage."

Miku remains quiet, clearly mulling over her own thoughts that must be flooding her mind.

"You can think about it later on your own while I'm not here, but the reason why I'm telling you this is because I'm a bit suspicious of Ichika and the fact that she's been keeping something like that a secret from everyone. From my own experience, mages in the same family aren't immune from doing horrible things to each other in the name seeking power or other bullshit things, and while I want to trust that you girls aren't like that, I'd rather let you know about this so that you're informed. Not to mention, she's also aware of the fact that you and Nino are also mages and also have Mystic Eyes like she does."

Still not offering a reply, Miku slowly leans against the edge of the kitchen counter behind her waist.

"The only thing I ask is that you don't tell Ichika about the fact that I told you all this, otherwise she might pull a Nino on me herself. I'm running a big risk exposing this kind of info to you, so I'd appreciate it if you could stay quiet around Ichika in regards to this," Fuutarou asks, and finally, Miku nods firmly. "Good. For now, let's take things one at a time. Do you know how to make miso soup?"

Miku pouts back up at Fuutarou, mentally switching gears to start practicing her cooking with him. "Of course I do, who do you think I am?"

"Alright, then let's make some to make sure you can."

As the third quintuplet begins to prepare the ingredients for miso soup, she wonders to herself if she should take this time to ask her tutor about the possibility of teaching her magecraft, but what Nino told her floats back into her mind. Yeah...Nino's most likely right, there's no way Fuutarou would want to teach her magecraft, and he's already stated as such a couple times before. There's no point in even trying to ask...


	47. Late Night Notes

Nakano Nino opens her eyes slowly, finding herself lying on her back on her bed in her dark bedroom.

It's Sunday morning; even without having to look at the clock or her phone, Nino knows. Not because she's some kind of psychic or savant, but because she's been on her phone for much of the time that she's holed herself up in her room. Being alone like this and not interacting with anyone for extended periods of time is a lot tougher than she thought - Nino is fully aware of the fact that her initial anger from Friday night is probably responsible for convincing her to isolate herself like this from the rest of her family, but she didn't expect her time in her room to be so...boring.

But her phone could only occupy her so long; she can only watch so many videos of cute rabbits and chat so much with her friends over LINE before she finds herself slowly sinking back into the quicksand that is her smoldering, hazy feelings.

Nino slowly turns to lie on her left side, gazing quietly at the wall next to her bed; against the wall and on the side of her bed sits a particular plushie doll of a white rabbit with silvery-blue human hair arranged in long braided twintails, a detached fluffy white collar, and a white dress, and the doll gazes emptily back.

But it's not the doll that her eyes concentrate on; it's the purple hue that rebounds off the doll and the wall behind it, and Nino knows without a doubt the source of these lights.

It was sometime yesterday that Nino noticed that despite wearing her contact lenses, her mysterious purple Mystic Eyes now simply activate straight through them. If she does this, her eyes do begin to sting a little with discomfort, but it's nothing unmanageable, especially after the piercing pain she had to deal with when she got her shoulder stabbed by that one asshole on Friday night. It also means that she can have her Mystic Eyes active even while wearing contacts, so now she can use her Mystic Eyes and still maintain full vision, not that she knows what she's even going to use her Eyes for and how. She figures this started happening on Friday night since she doesn't remember this phenomenon happening before this week.

Despite her newfound ability to use Mystic Eyes even through her contact lenses, Nino can't help but feel perturbed. Her dad gave her those contact lenses back in middle school, and they were able to return her eye colors back to blue to match the rest of her sisters'. So if she thinks about it, in hindsight, Nino can see that these contact lenses were probably given to her for the intended purpose of stifling her Mystic Eyes, or their development, more accurately. So now that her Eyes are activating even with the contacts, that either means that her contacts are growing weaker over time or her Mystic Eyes have gotten much, much stronger. Given how she's been behaving the past two days, though, Nino is forced to acknowledge that it's probably not the former.

At least one good thing that the self-quarantine has managed to accomplish is get Nino to calm down. Like an isolated brush fire with no fuel to burn with, going into this quarantine, Nino knew even on Friday night that the only way she'd realistically manage to calm herself down is to spend the weekend on her own to let her anger and frustration burn out, and so she purposefully refused to let herself talk to anyone in the house. At least, that's what she likes to think - Nino isn't quite sure if she entered this silent approach to interacting with her sisters, what little she's done of it the past two days, more for their sake or more for her own.

She didn't mean to hit Yotsuba. Now that she's had the time to let her extreme anger slowly but surely die down, accelerated by the fact that it is utterly boring being her own room all day with nothing but her phone for entertainment, Nino has found her good senses slowly but surely coming back to her like a snail hurrying across a sidewalk in the wake of a rainy day. So even though her stubbornness stubbornly insists her to continue feeling irritated at Yotsuba's fondness towards their tutor, Nino does recognize that she was acting totally out of line on Friday night, and that hitting her own sister over it was not the right thing to do, especially when she made no effort to properly convey what she was feeling that night to her and Uesugi-kun.

Speaking of which, the source of why all of this happened clearly lies with her conflicted feelings, and since right now is two o'clock on Sunday morning, as indicated by the home screen on her new phone, this means that Nino spent all of Saturday picking through her own sentiments and organizing her thoughts. It's not like she had anything better to do, after all. And now, finally, she thinks she's got most of her thoughts sorted out - and if not, at the very least her mind doesn't feel like one hell of a hazy mess anymore. Or maybe that could just be because she's not pissed off as fuck now.

Nino, however begrudgingly, has forced herself to acknowledge the fact that she does, in fact, harbor feelings towards Uesugi Fuutarou. The secret double-life he leads as a high school student and their tutor by day and a vigilante mage by night, working and fighting to protect the quints from harm, the silent-but-savage, no-bullshit attitude and fighting style he employs against bad guys, and the willingness and decisiveness with which he dives into conflict - she has to admit that these things about him appeal to her quite a bit, even if he's only doing this for them because of his contract with the quintuplets' father. Specifically, that last bit about his decisiveness and willingness to dive straight into danger for the sake of others, most exemplified when he kept Itsuki safe on that one night during or before midterms week, is exactly what she's done for her own sisters when they're in trouble, and his fighting skill and experience that is very conspicuously evident just from watching him in action is the kind of thing Nino secretly wishes she had. After all, if she were just as skilled as Uesugi-kun, she would've beat up those three gangsters on Friday night without having to get injured or put both herself and her sister in danger because of her confrontational behavior. And while he doesn't quite match the white-knight-in-shining-armor archetype that she's grown up fantasizing about at times, given what she usually sees out of guys her age or older and how spineless or idiotic they can be, Uesugi-kun is honestly one of the best, if not _the _best, candidate to fit that white-knight dream of hers, albeit in sour armor rather than shining.

At the same time, though, Nino still resents him deeply for how invasively he's entered her life and the lives of her sisters and family, excluding their father, of course. With the promise she made to her sisters six years ago at the time of their mother's death and holds very dear to her heart acting as burner fuel for this resentment, the second quintuplet doesn't feel like these embers will burn out anytime soon and will reignite easily with whatever chance they get, and if it isn't more bad guys providing the spark, it'll most certainly be Uesugi-kun. In addition, she still stands by her argument that she made to Yotsuba just before the two of them got attacked that Uesugi-kun didn't _need _to be their tutor _and _their bodyguard or whatever his official position is at the same time; he could just be their bodyguard while someone else handled their tutoring, someone else who wouldn't be as invasive or involved with their lives like Uesugi-kun is currently. It also ticks her off that her father, for as smart and accomplished as he is, being head physician of the city's hospital and all, apparently didn't think of this too, unless, of course, Uesugi-kun himself was the one who convinced their father to set their contract this way. But given Uesugi-kun's personality, he doesn't seem like the type of person who'd _willingly _take on more work like this, right? Even he's admitted himself after they got done with midterms that he underestimated the workload that's involved with both tutoring the quintuplets _and _making sure that they're safe in the city. And given that he's the super-optimal, super-efficient type of guy, which he'd perhaps need to be in the first place to do what he does, Uesugi-kun probably wasn't the one who set the terms of his contract this way, and thus Nino has to assume that her father was the one who made things this way. So what was her dad thinking when he began to employ Uesugi-kun like this?

But then this would mean that Nino would be doubting her own papa and trusting Uesugi-kun, which would be contradictory to what she's feeling towards him, at least the resentful parts of them. Is she willing to do that? Who does she trust here? It's not like she or her sisters have had _that _much of a relationship with their father, admittedly, because of how much he focuses on his own work at the hospital; it's probably not a stretch by this point that the quintuplets have a deeper relationship with the tutor that their father has hired to work with them than their own father himself. Even still, though, he _is _still their father at the end of the day, the one who pledged to take care of them after their mother died. Nino can't just ignore the fact that he's the reason why she and her sisters need not suffer through poverty anymore and have been able to live their lives out in luxury and comfort. So for the sake of her current situation, Nino goes with her father's judgment, though how much of it is just because it's convenient for her to do so is still a matter of internal debate.

At the very least, though, she's able to clarify to herself that this isn't full-blown hate that she feels towards Uesugi-kun. Although her resentment could very easily be incited to intensify into full-on hatred, the one fire retardant that's keeping it from doing so is the fact that her tutor is, to her knowledge, unaware of the promise to her sisters, the ultimate source of all this trouble. And it's not like her sisters have told him that, given how he had no idea why she was acting the way she was on Friday night, probably because they understand that it's a very important family matter to her and have the decency to not divulge it to someone outside the family, even if they're someone as close to them like Uesugi-kun. And however unreasonably angry she can get towards him, Nino just can't get herself to completely detest him for something he's never known. Now, if he knew about her promise and proceeded to belittle it or disrespect it in some way, then all bets are off, but that's not the case right now.

Besides, he doesn't seem like the type of person who'd do something like that.

The inclusion of magic further complicates things. Nino still doesn't feel comfortable with the knowledge that she is, apparently, a mage, but the past few weeks of living with this knowledge and seeing that, for the most part, her daily life didn't really change that much has helped her come more to terms with it. This makes sense, since Nino prioritizes the daily life that she can have with her sisters, and so long as that doesn't change, even something like being a mage or whatever is something she can get over.

But as mentioned earlier, her inability to protect herself and her sister on Friday night is a huge sore spot for her to consider now. Up until this point, all the confrontations she's had to deal with were against spineless assholes who backed down so long as Nino put up a strong enough front; after all, the most those kinds of guys were looking for were a date with her sisters or, at worst, a chance to be up to no good with them. While she and her sisters were technically in a worse situation at the warehouse two months ago, Friday night was the first time where Nino personally was faced with a situation where her lack of proper fighting ability directly led to her and Yotsuba's predicament before Uesugi-kun showed up. That was the first time where the boys she was confronting approached them with the intent to injure and possibly even kill, not to just flirt around and hit on them. Well, maybe literally.

The fact that one of those bad guys was also a mage himself throws yet another wrench into her already complicated thoughts. Even she could tell that his magecraft wasn't quite on par with what little they've seen out of their tutor, but still, his ability to hit Yotsuba somehow without even making contact with her directly was very strong, and Nino only has herself to compare when she remembers diving on him to try to hit him and consequently got surrounded immediately by his friends in the process.

All this to say, was Miku right after all? Should the two of them ask Uesugi-kun to also teach them magecraft on top of tutoring them? Would he even teach them? Probably not, but as Friday night proved, Uesugi-kun can only respond so quickly to crises like that. If those guys wanted to, they could have easily killed her and Yotsuba or, if they were better at their job, dragged them away before Uesugi-kun could get there and successfully kidnap them; in that sense, they were lucky those guys wanted to kidnap them first and started fighting among themselves so that their tutor could show up. So the natural solution to this is to learn how to defend herself because she herself is a mage, evidently. Nino knows that if she does begin learning magecraft seriously, it'll obviously be some time before she'd be able to adequately defend herself; she only needs to look at herself being a bad student with terrible grades to know that. But still, if she points this out to Uesugi-kun, surely he'd at least see the merit of this, since the quints being able to defend themselves will make his job easier and less taxing.

But again, asking him to do that would mean that she's letting him take an even tighter hold on the lives of the Nakano family, on her and her sisters. Asking him to teach her magecraft would be self-defeating and, as mentioned before, invalidate the whole argument of why she's angry or resentful towards him in the first place.

Finally, when her sisters and Uesugi-kun came back from lunch, Nino could hear people working in the kitchen; normally her sisters don't have a reason to be hanging out in the kitchen for so long since none of them know how to cook; the sole exception is Miku, so Nino assumed yesterday that Miku was trying to practice cooking on her own, but then, thanks to the lack of soundproofing in their home, Nino was able to hear their tutor's voice along with Miku's downstairs; the fact that Nino's room is situated literally right over the kitchen means that she can hear their voices all that much more, even if they still end up sounding muffled and incomprehensible most of the time if they aren't outright shouting or yelling.

In her boiling anger over the past two days, Nino somehow managed to forget that Uesugi-kun knows how to cook as well, just not as well as herself, but Nino realizes that he's good enough where he could actually take her place in teaching Miku how to cook instead of her. And given Miku's relationship with him, it's safe to say that Miku would rather have him teach her rather than her own sister.

Nino's hands have been tightening into fists again subconsciously, and it's only when her fingernails whose nail polish have been going neglected start to dig a little too deep into the skin on the base of her palms that she realizes what's going on and forces her hands to loosen up. She hates this feeling most of all; she hates this extreme dichotomy that she finds herself in, like she's found herself on a tiny strip of land in the middle of a bottomless chasm opening up on either side of her, with the tiny patch of ground that she's on crumbling away slowly, bit by bit, until she's forced to make a decision and plunge herself towards one direction or the other. For someone who's prided herself on being swift and decisive about important decisions and problems in her life, her inability to do so here, now that she's taken the time to organize her thoughts like this, is now the most frustrating thing of all.

Coughing a little, the second quintuplet realizes that her throat is extremely dry; she doesn't quite remember the last time that she's had something to drink; the weekend's just been a blur, no thanks to her own self-quarantine that's beginning to take its toll on her mental health, as if her own turbulent feelings haven't already. So she convinces her sluggish and lethargic body to pull itself out of bed, off the covers, grab her contacts case so that she can put them on down in the bathroom, and slowly emerge from her room to head downstairs.

* * *

Opening her eyes suddenly, Nakano Miku purses her lips instinctively, thinking that it's another panic attack she's about to have. She checks the clock on her desk, which reads 2:05 AM, a bit earlier than when her panic attacks usually start, but she braces herself for it anyway, the familiar feeling of dread creeping up her spine and up her neck.

...strangely, it never comes. Miku spends the next fifteen minutes lying in her bed, awaiting the panic attack that she's been through many times before and so fully expects tonight, but...it just doesn't happen. Her heart doesn't randomly start accelerating in its beat, sweat doesn't begin sprouting from her scalp and from the pores all over her body, and her eyes don't start to drill her skull with phantom pain.

Staring in mute wonder up at the ceiling, the third quintuplet slowly sits up with furrowed eyebrows, unsure of what to make of this situation. Her initial reaction is one of cautious suspicion, of course - just because she's not getting her panic attack now doesn't mean it can't happen later. Heck, maybe it's something totally new that's going to happen...and knowing her luck, it's probably something that'll be even worse.

But this cautious suspicion doesn't seem to yield anything either. She just continues to lie in bed, waiting for something that isn't coming for a full half an hour after she's woken up.

Maybe her real panic attack has yet to happen, since it's usually around three in the morning that she suffers from them, but for now, it appears that she'll have some peace to herself during this time of the night. But she can't seem to fall back asleep either, probably because of her frightful anticipation of her panic attack, so Miku continues to lie in bed, gazing quietly up at her dark ceiling.

Fuutarou ended up staying with them for a few hours after they arrived back home from Saizeriya, working with her and teaching her how to cook; even Yotsuba, after she got bored watching TV, joined them towards the end when Fuutarou was showing Miku the basics of how to make onigiri in case they wanted to make a quick snack for themselves while he wasn't there to make them proper meals, so she and Yotsuba learned how to make onigiri together. Miku smiles gently; the fresh memory of learning how to cook from Fuutarou is already one of the fondest memories she's had with him, because just like the solo lessons they've had before, back when Nino and Itsuki refused to join them for tutoring and on days when both Ichika and Yotsuba were out doing their own thing, Fuutarou focused solely on Miku and paid so much attention to her in his efforts to teach her properly, and Miku can't help but feel warm and bubbly on the inside thinking about it.

His way of teaching, especially when Miku can compare it to Nino's teaching, couldn't be more polar opposite from her older sister's; Nino's method of teaching was to point out mistakes that Miku makes and assuming a mindset of "you're supposed to know this, how do you not know this". While Nino is regardless a good teacher because her cooking experience still far outstrips both her own and Fuutarou's, Miku has admittedly grown rather tired of Nino's way of teaching, indicated by their recent lack of cooking lessons together. Fuutarou, on the other hand, just like with his regular tutoring for the most part, closely worked with her for almost the entire time. He showed her things step by step, showed her examples of how to prepare certain foods and apply certain seasonings, and showed her how to cut vegetables and meat quickly and efficiently. And because Fuutarou himself said that he needed more cooking experience and needed to warm up the skills he already had but hadn't practiced lately, he frequently worked alongside her, and so it definitely felt like the two of them were learning together, rather than Fuutarou fully teaching Miku. As such, the experience felt much more organic and cozy than anything she'd felt with learning from Nino before. Of course, she's still got a very long way to go to actually become proficient at cooking and making meals for her family, but the path to get there seems much less daunting now that Fuutarou has spent Saturday afternoon teaching her. In fact, together with Yotsuba, the three of them were even able to make dinner together for everyone, even if it ended up being something as simple as seasoned onigiri.

Eating lunch and parfaits together, practicing cooking together, making and eating their homemade onigiri together, talking together, joking and memeing and laughing with everyone together...yesterday was bar none one of the best days that Miku has had in recent memory.

The parfaits in particular...Miku slowly raises her right hand up to her lips as her cheeks begin to warm up in the darkness of her room. Fuutarou himself didn't realize it when everyone started offering him bites out of their own parfaits at the family restaurant yesterday, being the sometimes-dense workaholic that he is, but Miku did end up finishing the rest of her matcha parfait with that same spoon that she used to let her tutor taste her parfait with. The legendary indirect kiss, as foretold by the girls in her old school back at Black Rose. Miku herself never thought much of it, convinced that she'd never come across a situation where that would be a thing, and yet here she is, with an undeniable claim to an indirect kiss with her own tutor and classmate.

It even embarrasses her now at a time like this, dwelling on her indirect kiss with Fuutarou like this, so Miku forces herself to move on. That, and the fact that she derived so much enjoyment out of her Saturday that she spent with her sisters and Fuutarou makes her feel sad that Nino was not there to join them. Of course, how much she would've enjoyed it if she were actually there is a rather contentious matter, since Nino would have probably argued with Fuutarou at some point and would have especially disliked Fuutarou teaching Miku how to cook, given that such a responsibility is supposed to be hers first and foremost. As awkward as it feels to think this, Miku believes that it may have been for the best that Nino stayed home; while she doesn't want to say that Nino would have ruined their lunch together at Saizeriya, Miku can't deny that the added dynamic of having Nino with them would have changed how the day went, and Miku certainly wouldn't have had an opportunity to cook with Fuutarou the same way.

Even still, if Miku could have her way, she would have brought Nino with them. Their mother told them to always stick together, after all. Honestly, if Fuutarou wasn't the one inviting them to lunch because of the promise he made to them for their midterms, or to Itsuki, specifically, then the sisters would have never went at all; it's just that since they didn't want to waste Fuutarou's goodwill, they made an exception this time, along with Fuutarou's assurance that he'd make it up to Nino at the very least.

Speaking of Nino, she was quiet the whole day in her room. She came out a few times to go use the bathroom and such, but for the most part she was the same as on Friday. However, upon nearing Nino's room, Miku did feel a considerable drop in the "temperature" around her room as their Saturday progressed, though she can still feel the magical residue that Fuutarou warned her about through the wall that separates their two rooms. Miku hopes that Nino has calmed down; on the rare times that they did see Nino whenever she went to the restroom, she noticed that her older sister didn't look angry so much as she just looked tired and miserable, so there's evidence to believe that she's starting to burn her anger out. Hopefully she can recover enough to go back to school with them on Monday; having to miss school days because of what happened on Friday night wouldn't be good, and certainly both Fuutarou and their father would be displeased with it.

And speaking of her sisters, what about the stuff Fuutarou told her about Ichika? The news that he leaked to her about Ichika also being a mage and even having her own Mystic Eye came as a complete shock; she had no idea about Ichika's situation, and the fact that she's never told them about being a mage or having a Mystic Eye is doubly as surprising. In hindsight, perhaps this shouldn't have been too surprising, given that Ichika was the first one among them after their mother died to start seriously branching away from the rest of her sisters in securing an identity for herself; yes, Yotsuba was the first one to differentiate herself physically by beginning to wear a hair ribbon similar to the one that she wears today during the weeks leading up to their mother's death, but it was Ichika who cut her hair, once the pride and joy of their quintuplet connection, began hanging out with other girls at school, and took part-time jobs on her own accord. So it's plausible, with what she knows about her and Nino's Mystic Eyes, that Ichika may have had hers awaken first, as perhaps is appropriate.

But none of this explains the most pressing question of all regarding her oldest sister, which is why Ichika has apparently decided to keep her identity as a Mystic Eye-wielding mage a secret. Why has she not divulged this to them? The most reasonable answer Miku can think of goes something like this: assuming that Ichika was in fact the first quintuplet among them to awaken her magical eye, perhaps she was scared of telling her sisters about it. Ichika was never like Miku or Yotsuba who love watching anime and never entered the whole chuunibyou stage during junior high, as some boys and girls during that age may be prone to doing, so maybe Ichika didn't want to let the rest of her sisters know because she would have faced ridicule by the rest of them for being a closet chuunibyou? Or maybe it was a lot more serious than that, in that Ichika was scared of what she'd discovered and kept it to herself in fear that her sisters would begin shunning her for having some kind of weird power?

Whichever the origin story, though, it's evident now, judging by Fuutarou's testimony that Ichika used her Mystic Eye on him, that Ichika has not only been magically self-conscious but also practicing her magecraft, at least when it comes to her Mystic Eye, whatever it is. This is an irrefutable conclusion, given that neither she nor Nino know what their own Mystic Eyes do and can hardly control them outside of having them surface and become visible to others, while Ichika apparently managed to stun their own tutor, a fully-fledged mage, just by _looking _at him, even if it was only for a few seconds. Now Miku can see why Fuutarou told her and Nino that Mystic Eyes are extremely powerful, if it can let even amateur mages like Ichika do something like that.

Even more confusingly, if Ichika knew of her own power and Mystic Eye, why didn't she use it against those gangsters at the warehouse when they went to hopefully release Nino from their clutches? Was it because there were just too many of them there? Because her Mystic Eye just doesn't work against that many people? It would make sense if it were a numbers problem; she clearly decided that it was worth using her Eye on Fuutarou, probably because he was the only person she'd have to deal with, while there were like five or six bad guys at the warehouse, and so maybe she felt that she couldn't possibly use her eye against so many people at once at risk of receiving severe retaliation on her part. Even still, when that guy who got on top of Nino started trying to rip her clothes off to do horrible things to her, shouldn't that have been as good of a time as any to pull out her trump card and try to stop him? As far as Miku recalls, Ichika didn't do anything to try to save Nino other than yell at those thugs with her sisters.

Why did Ichika keep her Mystic Eye a secret from them? And does her part-time job that she's rarely talked about with her sisters have something to do with it?

As the third quintuplet mulls silently over these thoughts, she senses a shift in the magical signature she's felt in the other room all this time; soft footsteps on the other side of the wall separating her and Nino's rooms can be heard to correspond with this movement of magical presence, however slight, and the door to Nino's room opens quietly. After a few moments that she spends listening to Nino slowly climb down the stairs, presumably in the dark and without her contacts, Miku also quietly gets out of bed and grabs a dark blue cardigan from her closet before opening her own door to follow after her sister.

* * *

Nakano Itsuki spent all of Saturday after they returned from the family restaurant that Uesugi-kun took them out to studying. As today was supposed to be an auxiliary lesson day that got cancelled in the wake of what happened on Friday night, Itsuki decided to study on her own to make the most out of the cancelled lesson; and because Uesugi-kun decided to stay until dinner teaching Miku how to cook in Nino's absence, the youngest quintuplet figured that she could ask her tutor whatever questions she had from her studying while they were eating.

That was the plan at first. Itsuki swears by her family's name that this was her intention.

Instead, she's managed to accomplish absolutely nothing but discover a way to waste five hours sitting at her desk in her room doing absolutely nothing. If staring down at her open Language Arts textbook and her notebook were a subject, she would've aced it immediately, because that's all she's managed to get done yesterday. She's only been able to finally focus on studying a few hours after dinner, and so she's been up late into the early Sunday morning studying to make up for what she didn't get done earlier on Saturday.

She didn't expect to learn what it feels like sharing an indirect kiss with a boy yesterday.

Even as Itsuki lies in bed, trying to go to sleep now that she's done what studying she can, the youngest quintuplet can't get her suppressed embarrassment out of her head, and it keeps taunting her, like a troll underneath a bridge somewhere. Why did she even think that offering Uesugi-kun a spoonful of her own dessert was somehow going to stop Miku from doing it too? Clearly in hindsight Itsuki meant it as a distraction since she didn't manage to think her own actions through enough, but maybe she just wanted Uesugi-kun to eat up some more; compared to the dishes the rest of quintuplets got, Fuutarou's servings were consistently smaller, with the parfait he treated himself to providing the most stark contrast between their meals at lunch, and he wolfed all those down in mere moments - and Itsuki thought _she _ate fast. So Itsuki conveniently bases her reasoning on her own goodwill, that she just wanted Uesugi-kun to have a bit more food, given that he was the one paying for everything and all.

This does _not_, however, explain the fact that after Uesugi-kun ate the bite of her parfait, Itsuki immediately went back to eating her own parfait without a second thought, using the exact same spoon.

Itsuki is surprised that she even managed to realize that she'd shared an indirect kiss with her own tutor. The youngest quintuplet has traditionally never really cared much for things like this, things that girls her age would gossip and yap about. Dates, romance, boyfriends - she never really had the time or desire to care about those things, as she favored studying and being a good student above all else. Whatever she learned about such talk, she learned from Nino, naturally. And of course, Itsuki never had a boyfriend of her own and didn't plan on getting one any time soon.

And yet, somehow, Itsuki of all people remembered the whole indirect kiss thing and is being embarrassed over it.

Honestly, this whole situation feels so contrived, but Itsuki figures that since Miku, Yotsuba, and Ichika all fed their tutor a bite out of their own desserts yesterday, she would've had to do the same just because she'd be the only one left out, and her sisters would peer-pressure her into doing the same anyway. So maybe this situation would've happened one way or another. It's just that she can't get over the hypocrisy that she's demonstrated to herself, having all these thoughts of student-tutor fidelity and trying to enforce proper behavior between Uesugi-kun and her sisters when here she is, lying in bed, guilty of committing a sin that she's been trying this whole time to prevent.

Most surprising of all, however, is that she hasn't been beating herself up mentally over it. She would think that for all the talk and behavior that she's shown trying to maintain "proper relationships" between the quintuplets and their classmate and tutor, Itsuki would be much harsher on herself than she is now for breaching the terms of her own preaching, but she's just not. Perhaps she herself is the one who's been growing lax and complacent recently; heck, she's the one responsible for their lunch excursion with their tutor yesterday for Saturday lunch, having Uesugi-kun to promise buying them parfaits at Saizeriya on the rooftop of their high-rise the night he protected her against that Shirazumi Rio person.

Now that she thinks about it, Itsuki silently realizes as she turns in her bed while tucking herself more tightly underneath her covers that ever since that night, Itsuki herself has slowly become more and more receiving of Uesugi-kun's tutorship. While this might sound rather redundant since after midterms she permanently joined the others as part of Uesugi-kun's study group, to clarify, Itsuki notices that she's been paying more attention to the lessons Uesugi-kun conducts for her and her sisters than her own teachers at school. Normally this would be absolutely sacrilegious to the old Itsuki; had this been two months ago, she would freak out over the fact that a mere tutor is somehow teaching the school material better than her own teachers were, but that isn't happening either. And it's not just because Uesugi-kun has redoubled his own efforts in teaching the quints more thoroughly, as he said he'd do after Nino helped him keep his tutoring job. Essentially, over the past two weeks, Itsuki is aware that she's developed in the opposite way of Nino; while Nino grew quieter and more reserved, Itsuki grew more vibrant and interactive, absorbing everything Uesugi-kun was teaching them like a sunflower drinking up the sun's rays as it travels across the sky, but Uesugi-kun being a good tutor isn't enough of a reason to explain why Itsuki has been willing to overlook some of the transgressions that her sisters or she herself have been committing.

Itsuki sighs quietly, brushing some of her peachy-red hair away from her face. She can't believe it - does she really have feelings for him? Itsuki, who's the Shut-In Quintuplet #2 after Miku? Itsuki, who's never tried going for any kind of serious relationship with a boy? While Itsuki would like to get married one day, she figured it would not be until well after she graduated university; if she had her way, Itsuki wouldn't even allow dating for high schoolers until they graduated high school and entered university, so basically once they turned eighteen. And yet here she is, unable to determine whether or not she harbors feelings for the boy who's been hired to tutor them that extends beyond the threshold of what she considers to be the proper relationship between them.

But she can't deny that there are many things about Uesugi-kun that she admires, perhaps almost _too _many: despite his delinquent-like behavior and appearance and his propensity to sleep in class almost all the time, he still manages perfect grades, perfect test scores, and, technically, near-perfect attendance excluding the odd day or two when he's stayed home to recuperate from injuries and such, all while juggling the responsibilities of the dual-sided nature of his contract with the Nakano family of both tutoring and safeguarding the quintuplets. And Itsuki has already gone over the small inferiority complex she feels in regards to her tutor, how he's talented enough to do all that in his situation while she, on the other hand, can't even get good grades on her own while living a life of wealth and comfort.

The biggest thing that she's come to admire about him, though, now that she's spent the last two weeks diligently attending his tutoring sessions, is his tutorship. When Itsuki mentioned earlier that she felt like Uesugi-kun was doing a better job of teaching than their actual teachers at school, that wasn't meant to be an exaggeration: he's been able to teach them school material in ways that even she and her sisters can grasp, though their retention of such knowledge is another matter that they still need to work on. Perhaps this should be expected out of a private tutor; the whole point of tutoring is to personalize teaching a particular subject and have it catered to the student in question, right? So Uesugi-kun is just doing his job; there shouldn't be anything particularly impressive about that.

But that would be ignoring the fact that he's been able to pull this off for her and her sisters, the quintuplets who became notorious at Black Rose for consistently getting among the lowest scores in tests in their grade. While as of the last two weeks Miku has returned to consistently beating Itsuki in terms of their mock test scores that Uesugi-kun gives them every other day or so to help them review the material that they've studied with him, the most valuable thing that Itsuki has gotten out of the past two weeks' worth of lessons is confidence, confidence that she's properly learning the material and can translate it directly into better scores. That, short of actual test results, is something Itsuki values greatly, as it was a very rare feeling to have studying on her own, and yet in these first two weeks of properly studying with her tutor alone, she's had that confidence much of the time.

Wouldn't this simply be gratefulness and appreciation instead? Maybe Itsuki's lack of relationship knowledge and emotional experience is getting the better of her here and making her jump way ahead of herself. Yeah, that sounds about right; these can't be genuine feelings that she has for Uesugi-kun, like what she'd feel if she wants to enter a relationship with him or something. She's just getting them confused with sentiments of appreciation for a job he's doing well. There's no need to overthink this, none at all. Itsuki is fine with allowing herself and her sisters to treat Uesugi-kun with more familiarity, and that's all he is. A private tutor who's also become their friend.

As if right on cue, Itsuki's mind flashes back to the night on the roof of the Pentagon, where she and Uesugi-kun stood together for a little while, and the moment where he put his hand on her head...and the sight of him smiling and laughing when they shared their bits of banter. That opens the floodgates of her recent memories of the last two weeks, all the moments that they've shared just in these two weeks alone of Uesugi-kun talking, joking, and bantering with the quintuplets.

If Uesugi-kun is just a friend to her, then why does seeing him laugh and smile make her feel content? It's not the same feeling that she gets when she sees her sisters laugh and smile. If he's just a friend, then why did she feel okay with telling him what happened when their mother died when she ran into him at the cemetery? That isn't something she just tells anyone she knows, given how sensitive it is.

Itsuki quietly wonders if this is something Nino is feeling too. After all, they're the two who made up the Anti-Uesugi Fuutarou Coalition at the start, though they each had their own reasons.

Speaking of Nino, actually, when Itsuki returned to her room after they came back from lunch, she carefully stepped by Nino's room because she remembered what Uesugi-kun mentioned about the temperature being higher around her room or something. Sure enough, now that she knows what she's looking for, the ambient temperature in front of Nino's door seemed like it was a bit higher than the rest of the house. It could just be her imagination, of course, a sort of placebo effect that's occurring simply because she's working with prior knowledge of something that's supposed to be there, but Itsuki trusts her own judgment and has determined that Uesugi-kun was right. Now why could that be? Normally Itsuki would have never given it a second thought, but if Uesugi-kun was the one who brought it up, surely it must mean something? He's not the type to bring up idle chatter like that unless someone else does it first, and nobody prompted him to mention something like that yesterday as far as she can recall.

The youngest quintuplet spends a few more minutes lying in bed, pondering to herself this curious development when she remembers the conversation that her two older sisters Nino and Miku had in the middle of the night some time ago that she accidentally eavesdropped on. Actually, Itsuki forgot all about this strange conversation that those two were having - though she's not sure if she remembers everything, she does recall that Nino was in fact changing, according to Miku, and it seemed like Nino was having complicated feelings in regards to Uesugi-kun. So perhaps this was when it started? And that conversation was sometime after the end of midterms, probably the weekend right after, so the contents of that conversation between them are probably still valid.

There's also that weird talk about Mystic Eyes and magecraft and stuff, about how Miku talked about getting Uesugi-kun to teach her magecraft, too. Nino and Miku were mages all this time too - Itsuki remembers hearing that part and feeling utterly shocked. Her sisters, mages? As in the same type as their tutor? Then - then because they're quintuplets, does that mean that they are _all _mages too?

Then if that's true, does that explain why Itsuki was also able to sense that weird rise in temperature near Nino's room? Is she, too, somehow a mage? The possible revelation makes Itsuki's head start to spin. How? She's never done anything special other than study, which itself is probably not really all _that _special, especially when she keeps bombing all her tests for the most part. She's never felt like anything special, either. So how is she a mage?

Then, again as if on cue, Itsuki hears the quiet, careful opening of a door down the second floor of their penthouse. Because her room is furthest from the stairs, it's hard for Itsuki to gauge, especially with her head underneath the covers like this and the quietness of the opening door, how far away the sound is to estimate which one of her sisters is emerging, so Itsuki listens for the speed with which the footsteps reach the stairs, which is quite fast, so it could be either Ichika or Nino since their rooms are closest. And since Ichika doesn't usually just wake up randomly in the middle of the night, and given Nino's situation the past two days, Itsuki guesses that it's Nino who's finally come out of her room, probably to go use the bathroom again or something. She wants to also get up and go talk to her, but Itsuki doesn't want to incite her, so she stays put in her bedroom.

However, to further complicate things, she hears yet _another_ door open, with the corresponding pair of footsteps also heading towards the stairs. What is going on?

Wait a minute - could this be Nino and Miku again, meeting in the middle of the night to talk once more?

Now her curiosity reaches a boiling point at which it can no longer be contained. Itsuki, driven by such bubbling curiosity that she can't keep suppressed, quietly slips into action herself and gets out of bed to tiptoe over to her own door, unlock it and open it slowly so as to not make any noise, and continues to tiptoe up to the railing to begin eavesdropping on her sisters again.


	48. A Small Promise

**A/N**

**Kuman: Judging by the fact that you're the first one so far who I can recall has made a complaint about the profanity in this fic five months and 450k words into me writing it, unless this is an issue that others have as well and they just haven't bothered bringing it up, unfortunately I'm going to have to chalk your critique up to personal preference. I've met and worked with people who do not like profanity of any degree IRL, so I understand that my liberal use of it comes off as disagreeable, but that's a tick you're just going to have to put up with if you wish to continue reading, especially because you're only on Chapter 20 as per your last review as of me writing this A/N.**

**On the subject of me writing Fuutarou to swear a lot, I don't think this is a problem personally. In this fic, not only does he still have the poor financial situation that he's got in the manga, but he's had to lead a rough life as a mage on top of that, dealing with people who are far more profane than either Nino or himself is, and it's not like Fuutarou's original disposition itself was doing him any favors. So it's not as if Fuutarou himself would care what others might think of his speech when he's got too many other things that he's got to worry about that demand his attention far more, whether he swears around close friends or his clients, since he's not there to be polite, he's there to do his job, and it's not like there's anything in his contract that forbids him from having a potty mouth.**

**And if you think that just because someone swears a lot their insults can't still have as big of a sting when it matters, you'd be quite mistaken. Granted, in print format like this fic, it's tricky to convey varying degrees of vocal seriousness so it's easy to believe in the "misconception", dare I say, of extensive profanity equaling cheapened insults, but I don't think you've met someone who swears a lot casually just because they can (and for your sake, it's perhaps best if you never do) and can still be just as frightening with the same insults that they use casually. I don't know about you, but I'm plainly able to differentiate between someone just joking around with me by saying "what the fuck, man" and someone who's legitimately angry with me by saying "what the _fuck_, man!" That's why I don't quite subscribe to the whole notion of "excessive swearing cheapens the insult", because that tells me that you are either unable to discern what real insults sound like or you simply don't like it when someone swears more than what you're comfortable with. And I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt that you have enough social experience to be capable of the former.**

**Or, even better, hopefully you've noticed by now once you get to this point in the fic that Fuutarou actually swears _less_ (at least, if I recall correctly) when he needs to talk his way through situations he deems serious enough. So in this case, curiously, I feel his liberal use of profanity works in his favor, because when the person who normally swears a lot suddenly stops swearing as much, you know it's something to take note of.**

**Regardless of our little disagreement here, I appreciate your feedback. Contrary to your belief, I do in fact take the time now to go back and make slight revisions to fix things that I can see are a bit _too _OOC or grammatical errors that I happen to catch when going back to certain chapters for reference for chapters I'm currently writing. As a matter of fact, your last review as of this writing was made on Chapter 20, where I even have a small A/N to that fellow RedGlasses saying that I took his feedback into account and changed one part of a previous chapter because I agreed with his bit of critique there, though I understand if you only said that because the story has advanced far past that chapter by now.  
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**And I'd like to extend the same treatment to you, because now that you brought it up, I also agree that even Nino wouldn't go so far as to drop F-bombs around Fuutarou's little sister who's still only in elementary school. You'll be pleased to know that I've removed profanity where Raiha is involved in Chapter 20 (which is basically the whole chapter), though naturally you won't know about this until you see this A/N.**

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Stepping out of the bathroom, having gone to use the toilet and put her contacts back in for the time being so that she can get herself something to drink, Nino steps into the kitchen with the light in the short corridor leading to the bathroom illuminating her way so that she can turn on the kitchen lights and turn off the hallway light behind her. The second quintuplet doesn't feel like fixing herself anything fancy to drink, and she likes plain old room temperature water anyway, so she opens one of the many cupboards in the kitchen to take an ordinary bottle of water. The cupboard that she stoops down to open is on the side of the kitchen facing towards the rest of the living room, so Nino stands back up perfectly to see Miku sitting silently on the long couch in the living room.

"...not even gonna tell me that you're there?" she snarls over at her younger sister, but her voice is weak and hoarse, worn out from her mental exhaustion and roughened from the lack of use for the past two days. Miku raises her head in response, but her eyes don't look over.

"You already knew I followed you down here, Nino," Miku points out quietly. "So there wasn't any need for me to tell you I was here."

"And how the hell do you know that?"

Miku's eyes slowly sink back down to her lap.

"...just a hunch," the third quintuplet murmurs softly, tightening her cardigan around her neck and shoulders to keep herself warm in the relative chill of the first floor compared to her cozy bedroom, even though it's well into the middle of June.

Nino continues to glare at her from the kitchen. "That's not supposed to be some kind of roundabout way of telling me that you've actually gone and asked Uesugi-kun to start teaching you magecraft, now, is it?"

"No. Though...I'll admit that yesterday, I came close to asking him."

"Came close?"

"Yeah. But I remembered what you told me last time we talked in the middle of the night like this...remember, exactly two weeks ago? So...I didn't end up asking him."

"Hmph. Surprised you'd take my advice."

"Oh, bring me a bottle of water too."

Clicking her tongue in annoyance, Nino throws another quick scowl in Miku's direction.

"You've got some nerve asking me to do something like that when I'm like this, you know...?"

But Nino still stoops again to grab another bottle of water to bring over to her sister at the long couch, on which she also sits to have the two quintuplets together in this early Sunday morning.

"So? How was it yesterday?" Nino grumbles, twisting the plastic cap off her bottle of water and taking a quick swig once she's handed one of the bottles to Miku as well.

Miku, also taking a sip of water, slowly twists the cap back onto her bottle. "It was fun. We ate a whole ton at Saizeriya, and when we came back, Fuutarou took some time to teach me how to cook, and then Yotsuba joined us and we made homemade onigiri together for dinner. It was some of the most fun I've had in a long while." The younger quintuplet points at the microwave in the kitchen. "Fuutarou made some for you, too, in case you were hungry. Did you see them?"

"Huh? Why would I want some mediocre fucking rice balls that he - "

_Grooooowwwwwwl._

Sighing lightly as Nino clenches her teeth, wallowing in her own slowly rising embarrassment, Miku finally turns to her older sister, the living room currently illuminated only by the lights that Nino left on in the kitchen.

"Nino, be honest with me, when's the last time you ate?"

The second quintuplet, not wanting her embarrassment to be seen by her younger sister, already has her face turned away so that Miku can't see.

"...since...since Friday night..."

"Please go eat."

"I don't need it."

"Please eat."

"No. I don't want anything that _he's _made."

"Nino."

"I said - "

**"Nino."**

Nino's skin crawls as Miku's voice douses her ears, which makes her whole body feel like it's just gotten doused by a bucket of ice water. Such a mental shock chills Nino into glancing back at her own younger sister instinctively to find herself staring straight into Miku's active blue Mystic Eyes that shine subtly, even against the lights from the kitchen.

"I tried asking nicely, but it seems that won't do," Miku quietly whispers, her icy Mystic Eyes boring directly into Nino's through her Mystic Eye Killer contacts. "This is not a request, Nino. Go eat the onigiri that Fuutarou made for you."

Having managed to compose herself in the shock of Miku pulling them out on her, Nino silently retaliates with her own Mystic Eye activation, which, with its recent development, now allows for her own sizzling purple Mystic Eyes to glare back with equal intensity.

"...is that a threat?" Nino whispers back.

"If that's how you want to see it, but you're not leaving this floor until you've eaten."

The siblings hold their magically charged glares at each other for a few minutes, but exhausted emotion and her body's physiological reaction to the mention of food like her salivation and constant rumbling of her stomach from the lack of nourishment burns through what little magical stamina she has left and forces Nino to withdraw from their little staring contest prematurely. So Miku, to her own silent surprise, watches as Nino's Mystic Eyes fade unwillingly from view from her lack of magical energy to support their upkeep, something she's never seen before.

"Starting to sound like _me _now," Nino grumbles, her Mystic Eyes flickering softly before disappearing behind the veils of their Mystic Eye Killers, as though struggling to stay afloat but resigning themselves to sinking back down into the dark ocean of smoldering embers that is Nino's tired but still volatile thoughts and emotions.

"Are you referring to those times back in middle school when you yelled at me to eat my tomatoes, otherwise I couldn't go back to my room?" Miku asks.

"You still remember that?"

"How can I forget, is the better question. I hate tomatoes."

"So you should learn to get over that and start eating them."

"And you should get over yourself and stop hiding in your room all day."

The swiftness and ease with which Miku delivers her verbal impunity catches Nino off-guard, and it leaves her stunned for a moment into silence. Miku could take advantage of this and press her point, but she relents and waits to hear what her sister has to say.

"...you really _have _changed. I don't remember you sounding quite like _that _before," Nino hisses slowly. "Have you been learning from Uesugi-kun or something?"

"Implying that he was the one who got me to change? No, not quite, when I know someone who sounds like that on the regular much longer than him."

"So you're telling me that you learned from the best..."

"Not sure if I'd call that the best. I think I learned how to talk better from Fuutarou."

"Yeah, just like how you're learning cooking from him too, right?"

Miku raises an eyebrow. "Does _that _bother you too?"

"You'd feel the same way, if someone you've been teaching something to suddenly starts to take lessons from someone else."

Hearing this, the third quintuplet lets out a small smile that Nino misses because she isn't looking at her.

"Then let me bother you some more about it. He teaches cooking just as well as he tutors, you know? He doesn't talk to me like everything that I'm doing is wrong, he doesn't say things like 'How do you not know this?' and 'This is so obvious, why don't you get it', and he works with me and does the same things I do so that it feels like we're both learning together."

Feeling the weakened but still smoldering embers inside her heart get slowly reignited, Nino grows more and more irritated the longer Miku talks, to the point where as soon as there's a break in her sister's thoughts, Nino jabs back with, "If he's such a good teacher, why don't you start learning from _him _from now on? Just like how you suck him off with all his stupid tutoring and crap. You clearly don't need _me_."

"No, we do," Miku says simply. "Even Fuutarou said so himself yesterday. Because for as good of a teacher as he is, he just doesn't have the same level of experience or the sheer breadth of cooking knowledge that you do."

Nino is surprised at herself at how easily her re-bubbling anger got defused with just two sentences.

"It makes sense, right? Fuutarou's always busy with his mage stuff, and he only really worked and got any cooking experience when he was younger, probably before he started working as a mage full-time like he is now. And he said so himself that he's still largely out of practice; that's why he's been helping you out cooking dinner sometimes for the past month or so, to practice cooking again."

"Sounds like that's _his _problem. And he's smart enough where he can figure out how to cook better stuff on his own."

"Yeah, I'm sure he can do that, but right now he can't. After all, who the heck eats nothing but onigiri for dinner?"

"It's not like we don't know what that feels like from before."

Miku smiles softly again. "It did bring back memories with Mama, for sure."

Glaring a little over at Miku with just the turn of her eyes, Nino grumpily folds her arms, her neck barely moving so that her head is still facing straight ahead from the long couch on which the two siblings sit.

"What're you getting at here? You're not the type to sit here and just gloat about everything that's happened to me."

"Yes, because that's _your _job."

"Shut up, I'm not in the mood for this right now."

Miku takes another methodical drink from her water bottle.

"Fuutarou said yesterday that he also wants to learn cooking from you," she reveals quietly. "He said that the times he's cooked dinner with you was fun, even if you're always harsh on him like you are to me. He said that it's only natural because of how strict he is when he tutors us, so...he wants the three of us to learn how to cook together."

Grimacing with discomfort, Nino waves her hand a little. "No way. I only let him help me out with cooking because cooking for five people can get pretty annoying sometimes - make that six with Uesugi-kun around if he stays for dinner. But straight-up _teaching _him, too? When _you're _already a handful?"

"Well, you can't deny that he'll be a much better student than me."

"That's true, but no, I don't wanna. He couldn't even _pay _me to teach him."

"But he's poor, Nino."

"That's the point, it's not gonna happen."

"And why not? You seemed to be pretty happy to have someone helping you out who wasn't a complete stooge like me or Yotsuba."

As soon as Miku asks this, Nino realizes the direction in which she's trying to take this conversation. But perhaps the two of them meeting in the middle of the night like this, following the events of the past two days, would have inevitably driven their conversation in this direction without Miku's guidance, so Nino reluctantly indulges her. At the very least, she can use this as an opportunity to prepare herself for what she'll eventually have to do for the rest of her family anyways.

"That's certainly true; I guess that saves me the trouble of having to tell you that myself," Nino manages a small smirk, but it doesn't last long. "Besides...I can't stand him...for what he's done to me. For what he's done to _us."_

At this, Miku wears a concerned look of suspense. "W-What did he do to us...?"

Turning to her younger sister, Nino purses her lips together for a moment before letting loose.

"He's been making us change, all of us. Ichika, me, you, Yotsuba, and Itsuki - and there's no doubt about it. _He's interfering with our lives, Miku!_ Can't you see that?"

"Uh-huh."

Nino blankly watches her younger quintuplet sibling take another calm drink from her bottle of water; it would appear that Miku is rather parched too.

"Th-That's all?" the second quintuplet asks, blinking with her fake blue eyes at her sister, whose Mystic Eyes have also since faded back into obscurity. "You _know _he's interfering with our lives this much, yet you're just..._letting _it happen?"

Setting the water bottle down before her on the glass table, Miku turns back to her older sister.

"Well...the thing is, even without him, we would have slowly changed over time anyway. And if you want to talk about having our lives interfered with, we can always talk about what would've happened to us if Fuutarou never showed up to save us from those guys back at that warehouse. And I don't think I need to remind you why we ended up in that situation in the first place?"

"You could've just left me there! I even _told _you guys to stay, so by that point you can't put the blame for you all showing up on me!"

"And you really think we would've done that? When Mama told the five of us to stick together no matter what?"

"But she obviously didn't mean that when our _lives _were at stake!"

Miku frowns more deeply back at Nino. "Maybe not, but that still won't change the fact that when one of us is in trouble, the rest of us won't hesitate to jump in to help out."

Clicking her tongue in annoyance, Nino takes her chance to turn away in indignation. "Stupid. Absolutely stupid..."

"Hey, they didn't call us the Five Stooges back at Black Rose for nothing. So you could say that this is just par for the course."

"We're _book-dumb_, not _absolutely braindead._ At least have _some _semblance of street smarts, will you?"

"Street smarts? That's a bit much to expect out of rich, spoiled girls like us, don't you think?"

"We're quintuplets, okay. If _I've _been able to do that for the past four years, the _rest _of you certainly can."

"But eventually, even your street smarts couldn't keep you safe. Not just once, but twice."

"Shut up."

Again smiling a little, this time at this lack of response from Nino, Miku also turns away to look straight ahead at their large flatscreen TV.

"We were all going to change eventually, Nino, with or without Fuutarou. I'm sure you know that too because you're the one who thinks about this the most, because of your promise to us back then and whatnot. Once we get out of high school, assuming that we can do so safely, by that point you're all likely to have paths you want to take, paths that most likely aren't going to overlap or cross much. So inherently, the promise you made to us is...flawed from the start. If it were clear that you only made that promise to us because you wanted to make us feel better after Mama died, then I wouldn't feel the need to bring this up to you. But clearly because you said that you have a big problem with Fuutarou and what he's done for us, you feel much more about that promise than just it being a coping mechanism."

"Your point?" Nino snaps back.

"You would have reacted like this at some point. You might not agree now, but eventually when our sisters get boyfriends or they start moving out of the house to pursue their own dreams or careers once they get them, you'll eventually end up being as miserable as you are now. All Fuutarou did, in my opinion, was accelerate the situation. Maybe a lot faster than what any of us anticipated, to be fair, but...that's what I think."

"Well, you're wrong. Uesugi-kun isn't _just _an accelerant, he's a whole damn catastrophe. You _are _right that...maybe my promise was always going to be a hopeless one; I get that we're all gonna change over time and there's nothing much I can do about that. Like, I get it, the rest of you are going to have your own dreams and stuff that you wanna pursue, like you said, and you're gonna get boyfriends, get engaged, get married, blah blah blah. But that's natural, that's organic. Those are things that happen eventually with time, and I don't mind that; those are things that I can accept and come to terms with...at least when I'm older, when...when I'm hopefully a bit more grown-up to handle those kinds of things happening."

Miku turns her neck slightly in Nino's direction, a bit surprised to hear such a mature outlook from her sister.

"But Uesugi-kun is _not _natural; how he came into our lives is anything _but."_

"Why not? Papa wanted to hire a tutor for us to help us get our grades up, and he went with someone he felt was most qualified for it."

"Most qualified, my_ goddamn ass,_ Miku, he's not even a professional tutor. He's the same age as us, for God's sake!"

"So? What's age got to do with anything here? There are child prodigies out there who graduate college at early ages, the exact antithesis of people like us."

"Tch, okay, fine, he doesn't have any kind of teaching degree or anything! There are plenty of tutors out there who have years of teaching experience, people who, like _you _said, graduated from university and got their teaching credentials and all that!"

"And yet somehow he's teaching us better than our own teachers are at school."

"Th-That's because he only needs to deal with the five of us instead of a whole _class!"_

"That's the point of a tutor, is it not? For more personalized teaching. That's why Papa figured that Fuutarou was the best for the job: he's our age and he's in our same class, so not only does he have direct access to the same material that we do, but he knows how to cater to our needs and work with us better than some thirty or forty-something year old professional from Tokyo U or something."

Nino tightens her folded arms into her chest. "You can tout Uesugi-kun's tutoring all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that Papa could've easily hired two separate people for his contract. I told Yotsuba this on Friday night, did she already tell you this or do I have to tell you, too?"

"She did, yeah, so you don't need to go on about it again."

"Good. Then what do _you _think about it? Isn't that the more efficient way to handle this? Both Papa and Uesugi-kun are all about efficiency, aren't they? So why was someone like _me _able to see that but not _them? _Shouldn't they have figured this one out on their own?"

Miku brushes some of the long bangs away from her face, the portion that typically covers her right eye.

"By that point, we'd just be going into hypothetical territory because that's something we know almost nothing about. The terms of Fuutarou's contract is his and Papa's business, and we shouldn't pry into that."

"Then why's Uesugi-kun prying into _our _business? Tell me about _that!"_

"Because that's what he's being paid to do, by our own Papa, no less. And if we weren't all so bad at studying, maybe we would've never been in this situation in the first place, have you ever thought of _that? _It's not Fuutarou's fault that we're all so stupid!"

For the first time tonight, Miku lets her voice rise until it hits its muffled climax at the end of her last spoken thought, and the two quintuplets remain silent to let the figurative dust settle in her wake.

"If you want someone to blame, Nino, blame the five of us. Blame us for not being smart enough, not being diligent enough, studious enough, whatever. Blame us for not wanting to study when we were supposed to. Blame us for ignoring the signs that we needed help, for not recognizing the facts that we needed help on our own and we all just ignored it to the point where Papa had to take the time out of his own busy schedule to make sure that we wouldn't continue like this into high school."

Miku then turns her head slowly to her older sister. While her Mystic Eyes do not resurface, her regular blue eyes are still cold and piercing.

"You think _you're _going through a lot just because of how you think everyone's changing because of the tutor Papa hired for us? Imagine what Yotsuba must've felt when we _all_ transferred schools with her."

Beginning to clench her teeth back at her younger sister, Nino does her best to stand her ground. "...as mean as this sounds, that's got nothing to do with what we're talking about right now, though."

"Yeah, you're right. But then again, you can't get much meaner than you were on Friday when you hit her like that."

"Shut the hell up!"

"Hey, you set _yourself _up for that one." Miku merely reaches for her bottle of water again.

Nino watches her younger sister take yet another swig of water with muted anger, but she does manage to swallow most of it back by the time Miku screws the cap back on.

"...for the record, I _do_ feel bad about hitting her. A lot was going through my head that night, and Yotsuba trying to intervene between me and Uesugi-kun when I was telling him off on the roof that night got on my nerves enough to make me hit her. Not to mention I still had that stab wound in my shoulder..."

"While that's good to hear that you feel bad about it, I'm not the person you should be telling that to, you know?"

"I know, damn it, you don't need to tell me. I'll make sure to apologize to Yotsuba...once I've calmed down enough."

"Still not quite there yet?"

"...well, having to talk to you tonight didn't do me any favors yet, so no, not yet."

Miku sighs defeatedly. "I was hoping it would. Sorry I couldn't get you to feel better."

"How the hell were you expecting me to feel better after all the shit we've talked about? Some counselor you are."

"Kind of a tall order for someone like me who hardly talks to people and makes friends as easily as you do at school, though."

"Then why did you even try?" Nino scoffs.

"Because we're sisters, Nino," Miku returns swiftly. "We're family. Is that a weird reason?"

The sisters exchange a quick and unexpected glance at each other before both looking away again.

"It sure doesn't _feel _like it as much anymore to me," Nino mumbles.

"With all that stuff you said about us changing, I can see that," Miku concedes. "But that doesn't change the fact that we're still siblings. That's what you want, isn't it? Something that's impervious to change, something that stays constant about us that you can rely on? That's it right there. Nothing will change the fact that we're sisters...quintuplets, even."

Miku leans back in her seat on the long couch, letting her head rest into the top of the couch pillows behind her as she looks up at the ceiling.

"I'm not good at talking with people, to people, so I'd probably never do this for anyone else, even if I somehow did have friends at school. But it's clear to the rest of us that you're going through something that's really bothering you, and so even if I'm not good at it, I wanted to do what I could to help you get back on track. Especially now that we have something in common...that the two of us share."

Nino's right ear involuntarily twitches a little as she senses Miku's Mystic Eyes resurface momentarily. The feeling is slight and easily passable if she hadn't felt it a few times before, but it's to the point now where Nino knows when her sister's Mystic Eyes are active even without having to look at her.

"You could even say that it's thanks to these that we can even have a conversation like this, conversations that only the two of us have like this in the middle of the night." Miku smiles to herself a little. "Kind of ironic, though, that it'd be the two of us to end up like this, given how much we'd usually butt heads. But even still...despite all the change that you see in us, despite us getting these Mystic Eye things and learning about the existence of magecraft and such...despite even getting to know Fuutarou, I still want to have the ability to talk to you like this like family."

Nino says nothing.

"It's true that Fuutarou's become a big part of our lives now in a short amount of time; no one's denying that. And I get that you don't like it, especially now that Itsuki's joined us in studying with him even after midterms two weeks ago, so now it probably makes you feel like you're on your own while no one else sees the problems that you might. Even still, all of this doesn't mean that _you _can't keep being a big part of our lives as well."

Miku raises her left arm slowly to point over to the kitchen, making sure not to hit her sister accidentally in the process.

"When we were eating lunch yesterday at Saizeriya, we talked about what we'd do about our meals since you weren't making them for us. That's why Fuutarou offered to teach me what he could about cooking, because we'd have to rely on him for our meals every day if we didn't want to keep ordering delivery three times a day until you start feeling better. And you wouldn't want _that _now, would you?"

Rolling her eyes, Nino manages to pout a little. "Isn't that exactly what you'd want? You get to spend more time with him that way, right? And I'm sure Uesugi-kun can get to the level that I can in a short period of time. It's not like you need to wait long for him to get there."

"Maybe so. But just because I can spend time with him doesn't mean that I won't miss being able to learn how to cook with you."

"Weren't you complaining about my way of teaching you, though?"

"I was, yeah. That doesn't take anything away from the fact that you're still a better teacher than Fuutarou is at cooking."

Tussling her long peachy-red hair in annoyance, Nino purses her lips together again. "...you can stop flattering me now, you know. It's not going to get you anywhere."

"It's not flattery, though. It's the truth."

"Oh, is it now? You'd rather go with the truth than Uesugi-kun, huh?"

"Again, there's nothing that says I can't do both. Why should there be a need to abandon one or the other?" Miku sits back up on the couch again. "At the end of the day, Nino, you already know without me having to tell you that we're all going to change eventually; we can't stay the same identical quintuplets that we used to be when we were younger, specifically from six years ago. But as long as we can keep in our hearts that we're still quintuplets, as long as we don't forget how we all came to be the ways we are and how we will be in the future...I think that's what's most important."

Listening to her younger sister, Nino feels the tensed muscles in her face slowly begin to relax.

"...remember the past, but don't deny the present or the future," Nino mutters mainly to herself, though she knows Miku can hear this plainly. "That...would the logical way to think of this, huh."

"The question is will you, though."

"You don't want me to? Then what was the point of saying all those things?"

"Of course I would like you to. But just like how Fuutarou never forced you or Itsuki in the beginning to study with him, I'd rather that you come to that conclusion yourself. Forcing you to do it would defeat the purpose."

"Yeah, if only Papa thought that way too."

"Well...like I said, we had that one coming from a kilometer away."

"Make that _five _kilometers."

Miku turns to give Nino a funny look, which Nino herself returns. Without warning, the two of them begin to giggle at Nino's lame quintuplet joke.

"When you said even _you _were changing, I didn't know it was because you started making dumb quintuplet jokes like Yotsuba does sometimes," Miku smirks a little at her older sister.

"Shut up, I'm not a clown like she is. What do you want from me..."

"To stop sulking and apologize to Yotsuba. Oh, and to eat those rice balls in the microwave."

"Yeesh, so this is what you must feel whenever I talk to you like that, huh? This medicine's bitter as hell."

"I've certainly never heard of _sweet _medicine."

"What? We used to take those gummy vitamins during middle school, remember?"

"Bleh...you know I didn't like those. Not only do I not really like sweet things, but those were just..._weird."_

_"You're _the weird one for liking bitter things at our age! And who the heck likes _matcha _soda?! Talk about something weird to eat or drink, huh!"

"Funny you mentioned that, but yesterday at lunch, I got a matcha parfait, and it was delicious."

"M-Matcha _parfait_..." Nino holds her hand over her mouth, pretending to vomit. "I-I think just _thinking _about it made me lose my entire appetite..."

"Not only is _that _a lie, but even Fuutarou said it was good too," Miku pouts back at Nino. "So you take that back."

"He was only saying that just so that he wouldn't offend you, you do know that, right?"

"How would _you _know? You weren't even there with us!"

"Well gosh, _sorry _for that, I was busy doing my best impression of you being holed up in my room all day."

That statement ticks Miku off a fair bit. "That so? Then I guess we really _don't _need to have you cook for us, we can just wait until Fuutarou gets good at cooking and just have him cook for us from now on."

"So much for all that sweet talk you were giving me a few minutes ago, then!" Nino gripes while Miku continues to giggle back at her.

"Then what will you do now? Clearly I wasn't really able to get you to change your mind about anything that's bothering you, but...is it safe for me to say that you're at least willing to talk to the rest of us?" Miku asks once she's done with her giggling. Nino leans forward in her seat and rests her elbows on her knees slowly.

"Even I don't want to be like that, all barricaded in my room like that for a full day. I almost couldn't stand it...I didn't know just _not _talking to people outright could be so tough," Nino transparently admits. "I don't know how you do it, Miku. And I'm not trying to diss you, before you say anything."

"I know, don't worry. And I'm sure Itsuki could probably give you a scientific explanation for why people can't normally handle being isolated like that. I guess I can handle it better since...I just avoid people on my own, ever since I came out of the hospital."

Nino raises her head somewhat. "So I'll wake up at the usual time tomorrow. Er, sorry, today. I'll suck it up and apologize to everyone for making them worry about me, especially to Yotsuba for hitting her."

"Honestly, you should apologize to Fuutarou too for having to deal with your behavior as well."

"Hell no. _He's _the one who's giving me the _most _trouble, you know." Nino sighs heavily, hanging her head again. "But...I'll try to get myself in order. If nothing else, I'll do whatever I need to do to make sure something like this doesn't happen again."

"...is it wise for you to keep something like that to yourself, though?"

"As much as it might not be, it's something I have to handle myself." Nino sits up again. "Talking with you like this may have helped me feel better to the point where I don't feel the need to turtle myself up in my room anymore, but...Uesugi-kun is still a concern for me that I feel like I need to come to terms with on my own."

"So you're still angry at him, then."

"Not angry. I don't actually hate him, if that's what the rest of you think, because I know that there's no way for him to know everything that I feel about him at the moment, so hating him for something he has no idea about feels unfair, even for me. But even though you're right about how all of us are bound to change and go our separate ways and that all Uesugi-kun did was accelerate that process, his involvement with us still doesn't feel genuine to me, as in it wasn't meant to happen this way. Not to mention, seeing all of my sisters grow all close to him like you all have been for the past few weeks...gets under my skin. All those times that I've chased other guys off from making moves on you, only to have one get all close to everyone just because he's our tutor - it's frustrating, to say the least, like all the effort I've made to keep everyone safe's just...gone down the drain."

"Well, Fuutarou isn't a bad guy like the others were."

"I know he's not. Probably. But I still can't help but feel that way."

"Then that'll have to be another thing for you to come to terms with."

"Tch..." Nino lifts her left leg over her right and refolds her arms across her chest. "I wanted just the five of us to grow up together. I don't want a sixth wheel who's an outsider to grow up with us, because that's just as good as calling him part of the family when he's not."

"I mean...with how much time he's been spending with us and how he keeps us safe, it wouldn't be too far from the truth to consider him as such..."

"That's _exactly _what I was afraid would happen!"

"I'm just kidding, kidding."

"_Are _you, though..."

After this little chuckle, Miku clears her throat and lets her amused smile drip away.

"Besides that, I want to discuss one more thing with you, if you're okay with it. It _is _pretty important, especially for the two of us."

Nino looks sideways over at her younger sister. "What, our Mystic Eyes?"

Miku nods. "That, and - "

But Nino raises a hand.

"Hold on. Because before you start, I think we need to address the quiet little mouse upstairs that's been listening in on us having our little heart-to-heart talk..."

Turning to look up at the second floor railing, Nino frowns deeply in that direction as Miku, suddenly alarmed at this potential intruder, also snaps her gaze up in the same direction; the second quintuplet knows that she doesn't even have to raise her voice to make herself clearly heard to whichever sister of theirs is hiding from view behind the second floor railing. And sure enough, their youngest sister, Nakano Itsuki, easily identifiable by her tall ahoge that emerges first, slowly stands up from beneath the top of the railing. She is visibly trembling.

"Nino...how did you...?" Miku asks quickly and in a low voice to her older sister.

"Seems like holing myself up in my room wasn't _completely _pointless," Nino murmurs, looking up at Itsuki on the second floor with her own Mystic Eyes, which have managed to activate once more, though only briefly. "Itsuki, come down here and explain to us what the hell you're doing eavesdropping on us like that."

Standing up from the couch, still in quiet shock that Itsuki has been listening in on them this whole time, Miku watches Itsuki timidly climb down the steps in stunned silence, and when Itsuki nears them, Nino jabs her left index finger over at the short couch to wordlessly instruct their youngest sister to be seated. Poor Itsuki, sweating nervous bullets now that she's been found out, still trembles occasionally, even when seated before her two older sisters as Miku also compels herself to sit back down, too.

"And how much of our conversation did you hear, exactly?" Nino asks quietly, her eyes narrowed dangerously at her youngest sister.

"...a...all of...it..." Itsuki can barely get herself to squeak, petrified of having to look straight into Nino's eyes. "I...I apologize for...for this..."

"I never asked you to be sorry, I just asked for an answer. Though it feels to me like you somehow knew we'd have this conversation, seeing that you didn't just _accidentally _stumble upon us talking like this. So is it safe to assume you've been listening in on the two of us talking in the middle of the night like this for a while now, or is this really your first time?"

Itsuki manages to raise her head a little, though she doesn't look any less miserable and uncomfortable. "...I...I listened in on the last time you two talked like this too, but...but that was the first time, and _that _was on accident, I swear. I didn't...I did not mean to come off like I was...trying to be up to no good, I really mean it..."

"Don't put so much pressure on her, Nino. Itsuki isn't the type to lie to us like that," Miku says softly, wanting to come to her younger sister's aid now that Itsuki has explained how she's ended up in this situation.

"Maybe not, but that doesn't explain _why _she'd want to listen in on us," Nino points out. "Just because she didn't mean to doesn't mean she doesn't have her own reasons. Because if you really did _accidentally _stumble on us talking like this, you'd just stop eavesdropping on us past the first time, right?"

"But that's probably only because she was curious as to what - "

"Miku, shut up. Itsuki should be explaining this herself, not you." After shooting Miku a warning glance, Nino turns back to Itsuki. "So? Was Miku right? Or is there anything else you wanna add?"

"M-Miku was...she is right for the most part," Itsuki stammers, trying to calm herself down as much as she can to converse properly. "Curiosity was what drove me tonight to...to listen to your conversation in secret like I was, in part because...I was there the last time you two talked like this, too, like I said."

Nino turns to Miku briefly. "When was the last time we talked like this? Do you remember?"

"Um...I believe it was...right after midterms. I mentioned it earlier, the Sunday before we got our midterm results back."

"Right." Nino turns back to Itsuki. "So is it safe to assume that you know that the two of us are mages? Because you should've heard us talking about mage stuff for part of the time last time."

The youngest quintuplet nods uneasily.

"Hmph. I suppose that saves us the time of explaining everything, at the very least."

"Um...but...how did you know I was...eavesdropping? I didn't make a sound coming out of my room because I think you were in the bathroom, and I heard Miku who came out of her room after you just sit here on the couch..."

"Yeah, that's...I want to know how you knew she was there, because I didn't even know," Miku supports Itsuki's question by paraphrasing it to their older sister, who raises her hand and scratches the side of her head, a tic she probably picked up from their tutor at some point.

"I just...sensed someone there. I don't want to sound all...all chuunibyou and stuff...but that's what happened. I don't...I don't know how to describe it. I don't really get it myself either, just so the two of you know."

"So when you said earlier that holing yourself up in your own room wasn't completely pointless..." Miku murmurs, "...were you...like, _developing _your magecraft or something?"

"Like I said, I don't know!" Nino tosses up her hands briefly in frustration. "I wasn't doing anything in particular, at least! I was literally just sitting in bed all day, not doing much except look at my phone every once in a while! That's it!"

Miku looks uncertain, however. "I don't know...things don't just..._happen _because we sit around all day...that doesn't sound right."

"Well...this is magecraft we are talking about, yes?" Itsuki points out. "When we have so little knowledge of magecraft and how it works, anything is possible."

"...maybe..."

"Then for now we'll just assume that somehow my magecraft developed on its own to the point where I knew that Itsuki was peeping on us," Nino shrugs while Itsuki balks a little at her sister's use of the word "peeping". "How about you, Itsuki? Is there anything that you're keeping a secret from us in regards this whole magecraft bullshit or what?"

"M-Me? No, nothing, I do not possess any such - " Itsuki pauses in the middle of her defensive claim, frowning deeply as she realizes that this might not exactly be the case. "Um...actually..."

"So you _do _have something to tell us," Nino grumbles scornfully.

"Well, um, it - it is not what you think! Miku, please vouch for me when I say this, but...but yesterday, when Uesugi-kun took us to lunch, he mentioned that he sensed a strange difference in higher temperature just outside your room when he went up to try to talk to you before we left. He also brought it up at Saizeirya where we went to eat lunch, asking us whether or not we noticed that same slight increase in temperature just outside your room. Initially I said that I did not feel it, but upon returning home and heading to my room, I remembered what he told us and tried looking for what he was talking about, and sure enough, I, too, felt that slight increase in temperature just outside your room. It was...very odd, and I did not know what to make of it, so I simply went back to my room to study. I...I stayed up late studying, so...so that was why I was able to listen to the two of you talking tonight, because I was just about to go to sleep when I heard you two come out..."

"The first part of what she talked about is true, Nino. You should know, right? Didn't you hear Fuutarou try talking to you in your room?" Miku asks.

"...I did, yeah," Nino admits slowly, folding her arms for a third time tonight. "Fine, I'll believe you, Itsuki, since your alibi seems strong enough. So if you know about the two of us being mages and us having these Mystic Eye things and all, how about you tell us what's going on with you? Do _you _have Mystic Eyes too?"

Itsuki shakes her head. "I do not have anything of the sort. I was shocked to learn that you two were mages as well, and...perhaps by extension, because we are all quintuplets, that I could be one too. Like I said, I did not think too much of it because I have experienced nothing in the way of magecraft that would suggest that I am a mage like you. Literally yesterday was...was the first time when I felt like I had any semblance of being one when I was able to sense that odd difference in temperature outside your room. And even then, that could very well have been a placebo effect."

"You're sure about this? No weird panic attacks at night? Nothing your eyes are doing to you that's bothering you or anything?"

"Huh? Uh...no, nothing," Itsuki shakes her head slowly. "W-Why, were...were those things that...that you two have experienced?"

Nino clicks her tongue in annoyance again. "Listen to her, Miku. She doesn't know the struggle..."

To Itsuki's shock, Miku also sighs with Nino, nodding in disappointment.

"H-Hey! I thought you were on _my _side, Miku!" Itsuki cries in a small voice, since it's still in the middle of the night and their other two sisters are still sleeping.

"I'm just kidding. But seriously, Itsuki, you haven't had any issues at all? Your eyes haven't ever given you any issues?" Miku asks again, and Itsuki shakes her head in response once more. "Huh..."

"These...'Mystic Eyes'...what are they, exactly?" the fifth quintuplet asks slowly. "I have heard you two discuss them, but I do not know what they are, other than the implication that they have something to do with your eyes, of course..."

"They're magical eyes, basically. According to Fuutarou, whom we asked to tell us more about these eyes, he said that they're supposed to be very powerful magical abilities that have powers vested in them," Miku explains concisely. "And for some reason, Nino and I have them. That's why we're interested to know if you had them too."

"Though I want to be clear that I'm not thrilled at the fact that we have them," Nino clarifies quickly. "And I don't know if Miku is, either, given what she's been through."

"Been through? You mean...those panic attacks or something?"

Miku smiles weakly at her youngest sister. "It's...not something you have to worry about, but...do you remember that one time I got hospitalized? After those girls at our old school punched me in the back of the head and knocked me out?"

"Er...y-yes, I do remember that..."

"Long story short, I started having these...panic attacks after I got discharged, and I've been having them ever since, every so often. As it turns out, they were because of my Mystic Eyes."

Miku closes her eyes as she gives her explanation, and at the end, in closing, she reopens them, putting her blue Mystic Eyes on display for Itsuki to see. The moment Itsuki gazes into the younger of her older sisters' active eyes, she feels a small chill tingle down her spine that causes her to sit upright subconsciously.

"...so...so those are Mystic Eyes..." Itsuki finds herself whispering.

"We don't know what our Eyes do yet exactly because they're still immature, but...they're probably developing on their own even still," Miku says softly. "But the biggest piece of evidence that we have to know that they are is that Nino and I now know how to show them at will like this. Two months ago, I had no idea what was causing my panic attacks, and Nino didn't even know that her nearsightedness was because of her Mystic Eyes."

"Eh? Her - her nearsightedness is because of them?" Itsuki repeats in hushed revelation.

"I don't know if you remember exactly the day when I started wearing contacts, Itsuki, but one day I suddenly lost my vision in the middle of class during our first year in middle school," Nino recounts for her youngest sister. "And I don't think you've ever seen me without my contacts since then, partly because I never wanted to show anyone what my eyes looked like without them on."

Itsuki watches Nino this time as she, too, activates her Mystic Eyes briefly to show her, and when her purple Eyes emerge, Itsuki feels her own eyes flush with sudden warmth.

"When I lost my vision, I asked Papa to get me contact lenses because I didn't like how glasses looked on me - and I still don't. But he specifically got me contact lenses that hid my eyes when they turned like this. I thought these were just colored contact lenses at first - but recently, I've come to believe that maybe they're a little more than just that."

"What do you mean?" Miku asks curiously, and Nino turns to her.

"Remember that day when you dragged me into that alley and made me lose my phone? I had to take out my contact lenses to show you that I had Mystic Eyes too. Because back then, for some reason, I couldn't bring them up while I still had my contacts on. But now, I can just show you my Eyes like this even when I've got them in."

"So...so your contacts actually blocked them somehow?"

"That's what I figure." Nino lets her tired Mystic Eyes fade away again, probably for the last time tonight since her body is quite burnt out on magical energy, no thanks to her lack of proper nourishment and her weakened mental state. "So that's how _my _Eyes've been developing on their own, I guess."

Itsuki has since lowered her gaze down to her lap, wearing a somber and guilty facade.

"...I never knew...I never noticed that...that these were things that you were dealing with all this time..." she mumbles sadly. "I apologize for never noticing. If I had known, maybe - "

Miku parts her lips to stop Itsuki, but to her surprise, Nino responds first.

"Don't worry about it. It's not your fault that you never knew when we both tried covering our problems up as best we could," she answers quietly. "Sure, maybe if you were a bit more attentive you could've noticed that we were trying to hide something, but there's no point in bugging you about something like that now."

A break in the conversation falls among the three quintuplets on the first floor, with Miku starting it again.

"You said that you also sensed what Fuutarou told us about at lunch yesterday, right, Itsuki? Then that probably means you're a mage too," Miku notes quietly.

"L-Like I said, it...it could have been a mere placebo effect, something that I only think I notice simply because someone else said it exists," Itsuki shakes her hands quickly back at Miku. "I did not notice it the first time before we left the house yesterday but noticed it when we came back. It could merely just be a coincidence, or some convenient timing."

But Nino shakes her head. "I don't think it's just convenience; I think that there's a big chance the five of us are all mages," she declares. "Because think about it, right? Remember when we were young, towards the last few years before she died, Mama was almost never home, and when she was, she'd be too tired to talk to us or even take care of us towards the end. If you think about it, what's Uesugi-kun been doing? He sleeps all day during school, most of the time, anyway, tutors us in the afternoon, and then goes to do his mage stuff or whatever, rinse and repeat. Don't you think there was a chance that Mama was a mage herself and never told us? Because she had that same kind of exhausting schedule that Uesugi-kun has now?"

Blinking at their older sister, Miku and Itsuki exchange a quick glance of stunned epiphany.

"And speaking of convenience, not only that, but after she died, Papa just conveniently showed up to take care of us and pulled us out of poverty, and later when my Mystic Eyes started developing, he got me these contacts that used to stop me from activating my Eyes while I was wearing them."

"But...are you sure that something like magecraft is something that can be inherited? That it is hereditary?" Itsuki asks uncertainly.

"Fuutarou mentioned to us once or twice about how there are old mage families and such, right?" Miku tries to recall aloud. "So it should definitely be a hereditary thing, yeah."

"But we have no idea what Mother was doing for a career when she was taking care of us. We did not even bother trying to find out, in part because she was almost never home."

"And when she _was _home, she always seemed so tired, so we figured it was for the best if we just didn't bother her," Miku adds with melancholy.

"Exactly. So...so what proof do we have that Mother was indeed a mage as well?"

"None, but you can't deny that some things about our lives are suspicious, like the things I mentioned. And the biggest question mark of all is Uesugi-kun himself: not only is he a mage himself, but the timing of when he started tutoring us - well..." Nino points at Miku shortly. "...as in, you, Ichika, and Yotsuba at first - lines up a little too conveniently with when our Mystic Eyes started really putting themselves out there."

"Well, in that case, I do not think it is because of Uesugi-kun's timing, because Father may have hired him in response to when Ebata-san was killed," Itsuki points out. "If anything, you should suspect whoever is targeting us of somehow knowing that your Mystic Eyes are beginning to mature."

Nino twists her lips, unable to think of anything to say to refute Itsuki's argument. "...I suppose that's true...but in any case, clearly, I think we have a good reason to believe that someone, at some point, decided to keep it a secret from us that we were actually mages all this time. While I'm not thrilled at the fact that _I'm _one, like I said to Miku earlier, I'm even _less _thrilled at the fact that we've been kept from the truth this whole time and it's only just _now _that we're finding out about it. Was it Mama who made the call to keep it from us? Or was it Papa? I don't know. But you best believe when we find out, as long as it's not Mama, I've got a lot of questions to ask, some of which I'll be asking with my fucking fists. Now _there's_ a promise and a half for ya."

Nino starts cracking her knuckles ominously after she says this.

"P-Please do not say such things towards Father. Like him or not, like you yourself said, he is the reason why we are even living in this penthouse today," Itsuki warns, albeit rather reservedly.

"Yeah, I know. That's just the frustration in me talking."

"Frustration..." Itsuki nervously gazes back at the older of her two older sisters. "...speaking of which, Nino, um...are you feeling better now?"

"What? Weren't you listening in on us this whole time?"

"Er, um, y-yes, I have, but - but I just wanted to...ask you myself."

Nino sighs deeply through her nose. "Yeah. For the most part. There are still a few things that I've still got to come to terms with, but...they're things that I have to handle on my own, and letting the rest of you guys get affected by my problems isn't right, now that I've taken some time to isolate myself and calm myself down." Nino returns Itsuki's gaze for a few seconds before looking down at her own lap. "...sorry about my behavior the past two days. I know you've missed my cooking, too."

_"Even at a time like this, you STILL bring up food?!"_

Both Nino and Miku start cracking up, holding their hands over their mouths to try to stay as quiet as possible while giggling hard while Itsuki pouts so hard she could turn rice into diamonds.

"And speaking of food, you should eat those onigiri in the microwave," Miku reminds their older sister.

"I'll eat them for breakfast, eating in the middle of the night is - "

_Groooowwwwllll._

" - weird," Nino finishes her thought quickly, taking her turn now to turn red with embarrassment.

"I will go warm them up for you. You did not eat at all the past two days, have you?" Itsuki asks, getting up from the short couch to prepare the riceballs that Fuutarou has set aside for her the previous day.

"N-No...but seriously, it's...you should just let me worry about that..." Nino tries calling after Itsuki, but the latter is already headed for the kitchen, ignoring Nino's request.

"Just eat them, Nino. They're good, I can guarantee you that," Miku smiles, but her smile doesn't last either as she drops her voice down to a whisper, though it's not because she doesn't want Itsuki to hear since she'll be rejoining them soon anyway. "And...before you caught Itsuki eavesdropping on us, I wanted to tell you something that Fuutarou told me."

Nino's ears perk up. "Oh? And what's that?"

"It's about Ichika. Fuutarou told me that she's a mage too, and most likely she's been one a lot longer than any of us have been."

Hearing this, Nino's eyebrows at first rise, then furrow as she processes this information.

"Oh ho, is _that _so...man, this just keeps getting better and better," Nino sarcastically drawls, rolling her eyes.

"You believe him, Nino?" Miku is surprised at Nino's willingness to believe their tutor's words.

"In this case, I'm willing to trust his word, yeah, since that sounds just like what Ichika would do. Plus, you're the closest to Uesugi-kun too, so if there's anyone he'd tell that kind of info to, it'd be you."

"Um...I-I...guess so..." Miku stammers, blushing at the notion. "But...but there's...there's more to it, too. Not only has Ichika been keeping it a secret from us this whole time, whenever it was that she knew she was one, but she also has a Mystic Eye of her own, and she even knows what it does and how to use it, because she used it on Fuutarou once before."

At this, Nino turns to Miku to give her her full attention. "Interesting. Tell me more."

"Er..." Miku hesitates, "...that's...that's it, basically. Fuutarou just wanted me to know that he found out that Ichika was a mage like us. But he doesn't want us to tell Ichika that we know about her now."

"Yeah, that's probably for the best, since I wanna find out why the hell Ichika's been keeping that a secret. And judging by the fact that I knew Itsuki was hiding from us earlier, that must mean Ichika should surely know about us; no way she doesn't." Nino glances over at Itsuki, who's checking the onigiri to make sure that they're at just the right temperature for her sister. "If that's all you wanted to tell me, should we tell Itsuki about this too?"

"Erm...I...don't know..." Miku's face is contorted with pained uncertainty. "I'd...feel bad for leaving Itsuki out of the loop...like, we know that she knows that we're mages now, and she's probably one herself too, all things considered..."

"Yeah, good point, let's tell her. So that way, in case Ichika's up to no good, we can have Itsuki on our side and make sure Ichika doesn't find out about _us _knowing prematurely."

Miku still looks painfully uncertain, though. "...I really don't like how this is all shaping up to be, Nino. I agree that it's pretty suspicious that Ichika's been been holding out on us about her being a mage too, but...I don't want this becoming another situation like we had with you, no offense."

"I understand that, but...I don't know if we can confront Ichika about something like that _without _some kind of conflict coming out of it in the process, I really don't. I'll admit that the crap I've pulled could've maybe been preventable if I'd just kept my cool on Friday night, but this is Ichika we're talking about, you know? Who knows what _she's _got going on."

At this point, Itsuki returns with the warmed onigiri and delivers them to Nino, who accepts them, putting the plate on the glass table before her.

"You two can have one too," Nino offers her sisters, noticing that there are a total of three seasoned, reheated rice balls on her plate, but both Miku and, surprisingly, Itsuki shake their heads.

"I don't feel hungry, we ate a ton yesterday between lunch and dinner," Miku says.

"As much as you all are fond of teasing me over my eating habits, even I do not like eating in the middle of the night like this," Itsuki explains.

"Fine, then I'll be helping myself. Miku, tell her about Ichika while I'm eating."

Nino bites into the first riceball, seasoned with nori komi furikake and with cooked salmon filling, while Miku explains the situation quietly to their youngest sister, who listens with concerned attention.

"...so even Ichika too..." Itsuki notes aloud, raising her hand up to her chin in thought. "Given that it is Ichika, perhaps it is no surprise that she is the most experienced in magecraft."

"Even so, I'd still like to know _how long _she's been a mage. If what Uesugi-kun told Miku is a hundred percent true, that means for Ichika to know what her Mystic Eye does, she must've had it for a while _and _practiced using her Eye frequently or something like that. Because if you look at the two of us, neither of us know anything about our own Eyes because we just found out about them, even if technically we've both had them for a while now." Nino points out as well before moving onto her second riceball. Now that she's eaten one, her raging appetite compels her to continue eating to provide her body with the nourishment she's been denying it and she gets to work immediately on the second, this time a plain riceball with a small crunchy tempura shrimp inside. Even after eating the first riceball, Nino feels so much better already.

"This may be an offtopic question, but...what about Yotsuba?" Itsuki mentions. "The two of you are mages for sure, though it is likely that I am one too, Uesugi-kun claims that Ichika is one...which leaves only Yotsuba."

"If the four of us are either mages or likely to be one, then let's just assume that Yotsuba's one too just to make this easy on us. If only one or two of us were mages, sure, maybe there could be a chance that the others aren't, but that's not the case for us," Nino replies.

"We just have no evidence to suggest that Yotsuba is aware of herself as one," Miku adds.

"Right. So I say for now, we leave her alone. She's the kind to just let it slip on accident, which would be risky now that we're trying to keep Ichika from knowing that we know about her being a mage too."

The two younger sisters nod slowly, but they both independently think to themselves about how doing so brings them considerable discomfort that they're keeping a secret from one of their sisters.

"It's funny, though, Nino, how you wanted to keep us from changing, yet here we are, agreeing to you to keep all this a secret from Yotsuba," Miku mentions aloud.

"Didn't you say that we were all going to change eventually? And Uesugi-kun's been accelerating the process, so what difference does it make if I throw my own hat into the ring, so to speak?" Nino scoffs lightly, already working on her third riceball.

"Whoa - you are really wolfing those down. Are you a twin of mine or something?" Itsuki smirks a little, in revenge for the food joke that Nino made earlier.

"We're _quintuplets_, not _twins, _get it right, Itsuki," Nino gripes shortly at the younger of her two younger sisters, who smiles back at her with the satisfaction of a joke precisely delivered. "In any case, I think we're just about done talking here; it's already been almost an hour and we risk waking the others up the longer we stick around down here and talk. Remember, keep everything we talked about here a secret from Ichika and Yotsuba."

"What else should we do, though?" the fifth quintuplet asks, to which Nino simply shrugs.

"Just act like everything's the usual, I guess. Ichika shouldn't confront us with anything because we know that most likely she's been keeping her own magecraft a secret from us on purpose unless we let it slip first, so as long as none of us leaks any info, we should be safe."

Taking one final bite to finish her third and last onigiri, Nino stands up finally, her stomach filled with food thanks to the sheer size of the riceballs that Fuutarou made that caused them to be almost twice the size of regular convenience store riceballs.

"I'll put away my plate; you two get going and go to bed," she advises, and Miku and Itsuki get up from their seats to comply and to go use the bathroom while their older sister journeys back to the kitchen, where she is about to wash her plate but then decides against it, as the noise might wake up their two sisters upstairs. Then again, the flushing of the toilet in the bathroom might be loud enough to wake them up, but Miku oftentimes goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night, so neither of them should suspect anything is afoot.

Once Itsuki is done with her business and Nino's removed her contacts, the three quintuplets venture back up to their rooms together.

"Make sure you get some actual sleep, Nino," Miku advises her older sister in a small whisper now that they're slowly tiptoeing their way back up the stairs. "I know you haven't been sleeping much."

"Tch, this whole magic stuff's really annoying, I swear..." Nino grumbles back. "But yes, I'll make sure to go to sleep now."

Arriving at her room first, Nino puts a hand on the door handle but stops, and her two younger sisters, noticing her hesitation, also halt to see what's wrong.

"...I know I can be hard to deal with sometimes," Nino whispers to them, glancing at them one more time for the night, "but...even though I still need to sort things out on my end...thanks for putting up with me. I know you all wanted to talk to me, but leaving me alone was...probably the right thing to do."

Both Miku and Itsuki nod and offer warm smiles back at their older sister.

"Just make sure to apologize properly to everyone later in the morning," Itsuki reminds her.

"I will, geez, I get it."

"Good night, everyone," Miku nods, and the sisters bid each other good night and each retire to their respective bedrooms.

Once inside her own room, the second quintuplet silently pushes the door closed, making sure to hold the handle down while the door is fitting into its frame before slowly letting it return to its upright position to make sure it closes without a sound. She trudges back over to her unkempt bed with one more big sigh of the night before making her bed properly and then getting back into it with a satisfied stomach. The thought of going to sleep on such a full stomach is disturbing to Nino, who normally makes sure not to eat anything for at least two hours before going to sleep for fear of gaining unnecessary weight, but she has no room to worry about such niceties now.

As she snuggles underneath her sheets, Nino remembers what Miku said, that Fuutarou was the one who made those riceballs that she ate for her, which then leads her to remember that Fuutarou had offered to bring her lunch yesterday.

Hold on a second - did he make riceballs specifically for her because he still had that in mind? Since riceballs aren't exactly something you'd eat for dinner; even Uesugi-kun should know that, for all the times _he's _gone without feeding himself properly...and even if he's not as good at cooking as she is, he should still be able to make a more appropriate dinner...

"...there's no way," Nino mumbles softly into the top of her blanket, beginning to grip the top of it with both hands to press her lips against its underside as she feels her face heat up in the dark. "There's no way..."

But this is Uesugi-kun in question; he's definitely smart enough to remember what he said and make good on it. No, actually, it's got less to do with his intelligence and more so with him as a person.

The bags of clothes he carried around and then back to their hotel for her on foot during their Golden week vacation.

The surprise fireworks that he treated them to.

The dango that he gave her the day she managed to sabotage his weekend tutoring lesson, and the grape Ramune he bought for her the same day when Miku pointed it out to her later, most likely because he knew that Miku would just grab a drink that Nino wouldn't like, probably because he noticed that she likes sweet things.

The times they spent cooking together, however teeth-clenched and unwilling their cooperation may have been at times.

The day that he injured himself even more getting them to school on time for their midterms because of a prior injury he sustained from keeping Itsuki safe, even if he was the reason why they were about to be late in the first place.

The night he treated her injury and meticulously and completely healed it, not even letting a scar form where it should have on her shoulder, despite Nino herself giving him an especially hard time; not to mention the fact that he saved her a second time from a dangerous situation just before that, even if he was a little late to the party.

The time when he came to her room not to ask her if she was okay, but just to tell her that he intended to keep his promise to her by bringing her a parfait and lunch.

The time when he made good on that promise, at least half of it, by making her riceballs to eat.

And, of course, all the tutoring that he's done for them.

Unable to help herself, Nino begins to softly bite the inside of her lower lip with her front teeth.

"I hate you," she whispers, again into the top of her blanket. "I really hate you..."


	49. Tonkatsu Curry

Knocking in a peculiar fashion, as if following a beat, Uesugi Fuutarou waits to be answered. He's dressed in a similar style as he was on the night he visited Takebayashi at the Night Crawler nightclub, the same streetwalker style that fits him as naturally as a dog trying to sleep in a cat's bed because the cat is occupying _its _bed. Fuutarou waits outside in a long hallway on the top floor of a three-story commercial building in the heart of the city, shadowed by the cluster of skyscrapers that easily overshadow it and whose number is slowly growing. It's two in the morning; by this point, most generic businessmen and salarymen in the area have long since gone home to rest up for their next busy days at work here, and the same holds true for the rest of the building that Uesugi is paying a visit to at this ungodly time of the night.

Yet, perhaps due to the peculiarity of his knocking, Fuutarou's summons are answered swiftly by a pair of hurrying footsteps on the other side, and soon enough, the door opens to reveal a tall Caucasian man in his mid-twenties, rocking a snapback cap like Fuutarou himself with the English letters S.O.B. printed with stylized font above the visor, several silver chains with a small medallion hanging off one of them around his neck, and wearing a long-sleeved olive shirt that sports the words "BELIEVE ME" and has its sleeves rolled up and clean jeans.

"Hey, what's up, Ryu?" the young mage grins shortly.

"Yooo, what's good, dude?" the man speaks in American English with a vivid Californian accent as he goes in for the hand clasp into chest bump greeting with his guest before beckoning into the room. "Come on in."

Fuutarou closes the door behind him as his American acquaintance heads in first, going to a moderately-sized refrigerator to fish through its contents to give his guest something to drink, deciding on a bottle of Kamoshika Cidre.

"I know you're not real good with super alcoholic stuff, but you don't mind cider, right?" Fuutarou's friend asks, offering it to him, and the young mage nods, accepting it.

"Yeah, cider's fine." He takes a quick glance down at it. "Kamoshika...you usually drink Angry Orchard, no?"

"I do, but I drank 'em all, so I gotta head out and pick up some more. Tak stopped by here and dropped off a pack of that Kamoshika stuff, sayin' I ought'a try it out, so I did, and it's good, I like it."

As his friend is talking, Fuutarou twists off the cap and takes a sip of the cold, refreshing cider.

"Word out there's that the apple growers in the country's lookin' to expand into the cider business, and I guess they've been doing that. Couple years back, I don't think I saw as much of that cider brand as I do now whenever we walk into stores 'n shit," Fuutarou's friend remarks, watching him take another sip.

"Yeah, I heard about it too. It's because Japan's farming population, especially those in the apple industry, is getting old, and they're struggling to find successors or enough people willing to become farmers to take over once they need to retire. Not to mention, the apple crop itself is vulnerable to bad weather, which translates to volatile income for those in the industry. So expanding into the cider business helps deal with some of those problems, though I don't see it being a permanent one."

"Growing old, huh. I've only ever lived in this city, and there's not much of an older generation here, is there..."

"There is, but they're situated mainly in the suburbs, and since you usually stick to downtown, you're never really gonna see them."

"Right, makes sense." The two men move to the neighboring reception area, where there are two black couches and a low table in between them, with a few American fashion magazines sitting on them. "So, what brings ya here at two in the fuckin' mornin'?"

"Why else would I be here at two in the morning?" Fuutarou delivers a cheeky grin at Ryu.

"Oh c'mon, bro, you know I can never tell with you. You always do your own fuckin' thing, after all."

The two men exchange a brief round of chuckles before Fuutarou sits up in his seat on the couch.

"I'm looking for a guy who's been stirring up trouble in the city. Drug trafficking, possible money laundering, you know, the usual shit that people do in the city these days."

"Yeah, you're tellin' me. But you gotta be more specific than that, plenty 'a dudes runnin' around the city doin' that kinda shit."

"His name's Rio Shirazumi. Heard of it?"

"Rio Shirazumi...Rio...Rio..." Ryu leans back in his own seat across from his guest, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Nah, sorry, ain't ringin' a bell. What's he like? I might know who he is, and I just don't know his name..."

"He's like me. A mage."

Ryu snorts under his breath. "Well shit, bro, that's all you needed to fuckin' say, no goddamn wonder I haven't heard of his ass. You think someone like me's gonna be able ta keep tabs on _mages?"_

"I just figured I'd ask. You never know - the city's nightlife is something else."

"Truuuuuuue. But either way, I ain't heard 'a him. But what's he like? It's been a while since you came to us askin' if we've seen someone you're lookin' for.'

"I only met him once." Fuutarou takes another long drink of his cider. "But that one time, we had one hell of a fight. Blonde hair that looks dyed, red leather jacket, and jeans, and he uses a knife to fight."

"Shit, that sounds like a pretty damn distinct profile. Red leather jacket and blonde hair? Even in a city like this, someone like him'd stand out hella hard in a crowd."

Listening to his friend Ryu, Fuutarou nods slowly. Perhaps Rio also knows how to use Presence Concealment magic and is using it to traverse the city undetected?

"I'm hunting him 'cause he's going after a few clients of mine, and I've also got reason and evidence to believe that he's contributing to the whole drug problem in the city. So by taking him out, I'll be killing two birds with one stone, if that's the right phrase."

"Yeah it is. Your English is pretty damn good for someone who said he'd only lived abroad a couple years, huh?"

"I'm just a fast learner," Fuutarou answers simply before continuing. "When's the next time you'll be performing? And where?"

"Our next show? Next month at the Night Crawler, second weekend."

"Next month, huh...you gonna be doing any side gigs before then? Any collabs? Guest appearances?"

"I'll have to check our schedule again, but we should have a few guest appearances for some shows throughout the month, yeah."

"Good. In that case, I want you and the boys to pay attention to anyone who matches that description I just gave you about Rio Shirazumi; also be on the lookout for anyone who might be smuggling needles into the venue."

"Needles...so this Rio dude's got his hand in the needles business, huh?"

Fuutarou takes another long swig of his cider, wanting to drink it all before leaving so that he doesn't have to deal with holding a bottle on him when he exits the building. "The situation is...weird, let's just say. He's not _specifically _dealing with needles, it's just that the drug he's making happens to use it. He's a mage; he doesn't really give a shit about the other drugs or his 'competitors'. I think he's just trying to circulate whatever drug he's got to see what their effects are like."

"Real shit? Son of a bitch ain't sellin' drugs to make a profit, only to see what it does? Damn, bro," Ryu grimaces with a click of his own tongue. "Like, I don't mind drugs 'n shit; like, it's like this in America too, as you know. But I dunno, man, hearin' somethin' like that where a muh'fucka's out here circulatin' a drug just so that he's got free guinea pigs...I dunno how well that shit sits with me."

"Exactly the same boat that I'm in. I'm not asking you and the boys to go out of your way to track this guy down, though; he's a mage, and having fought him once before, like I said, he's dangerous and I don't want any of you getting involved with the likes of him. Like I said, I just want you all to keep an eye out and hit me up if you see anything like I mentioned."

"Yuh-huh, ain't gonna do nothin' weird, no sir. But why do you think someone like this Rio bastard's gonna bother showin' up to one of our shows?"

"It's not just your shows in particular; I also have a friend I know who works at the Night Crawler as a late-evening shift bartender who's keeping an eye out for me over there too. And as for why, my theory's that since the Night Crawler's the most popular nightclub in the city where even during weeks where there aren't really any shows going on it still manages to maintain a good turnout of people every night, it's the perfect place for Rio to circulate his drug."

"Sounds like he's jumped into the drug game a bit late, though. Like, we already know lots of other drugs that're circulatin' through that place already."

"It is, yeah. You hear about the drug abuse deaths and the kidnappings in the city lately?"

"Shit, yeah, I do. I take it that the Rio dude's the one responsible?"

"Indirectly, yeah; not all, but a lot of the drug abuse deaths were cases that, after I investigated them, had direct links to the drug that Rio's circulating. And the kidnappings were pretty much _all _a direct result of gangbangers with Rio's drug draggin' people off the street, sometimes literally, and shootin' them up just to see what would happen since Rio paid them to do that. At least, that's what my theory's looking like."

"Jesus, this shit's startin' to sound a hell of a lot like that one movie with Denzel Washington in it...I forget the name since it's been a while since I last saw that shit, it's the one where he plays a real famous drug lord in Harlem back during the Vietnam War era...good movie, we should hang out some time and watch it after I remember what its _fucking _name was, goddamn it...it's gonna be like Netflix 'n chill, except it'll be with the boys, y'know..."

Fuutarou drains the last few drops of his Kamoshika cider and gets up from his seat on the couch, prompting Ryu to also jump up to his feet. "I gotta get goin' now, but I got one more favor to ask you."

"Yeah, do it up, bro. What'cha need?"

"You still got that guitar in the back?"

At the mention of a guitar, Ryu's face lights up enormously.

"Yooooo...Mikey _boooooyyyy, _you ain't tryin'a tell me right now - "

"No, it's not for the reason you're thinking of."

Ryu immediately hangs his head thanks to the muscles in his neck going slack with disappointment. "Fuuuuck...bro, why ya gotta do that shit to me, man? Gettin' my hopes up 'n shit..."

"That's your _first _mistake, getting your hopes up around me."

"Bro, like, you can't keep gettin' away with it, I'm tellin' ya!" But Ryu leads his friend out of the reception room and tells him to wait while he goes to the back to grab the guitar in the studio, and when he returns, he shows Fuutarou a plain black guitar case and opens it up to show him its contents. "You mean just the regular guitar, right?"

Fuutarou nods, taking the guitar case. "Yeah, this's good. I'm surprised you still have it here."

Ryu grins, pointing his hand in the shape of a finger gun back at his buddy. "It's been waitin' there ever since ya left, waitin' for ya ta come on back."

"Ain't happening." Fuutarou hands Ryu his empty cider bottle and snaps the guitar case shut. "...for now."

* * *

Eight hours later, after dropping his newly borrowed guitar from his good friend Ryu, the young mage steps into the polished floor of Revival, with the tinkering little doorbells behind him jingling to signal the entrance of a customer.

"A new customer first thing on this glorious Sunday morning! Come in, do come i - " The illustrious manager, easily identifiable by his own dyed blonde hair and clean-cut and stylized beard, practically moonwalks out into view from the kitchen to greet his potential customer before seeing that it's only Fuutarou. "Oh, it's just you. I'm afraid I don't have work for you at the moment; business has unfortunately been rather slow, no thanks to that shitty bread shop across the street..."

The manager glumly points out the front door to the bakery across the street, and Fuutarou, having seen it a few times while visiting his friend's artisanal cake shop, knows which shop he's referring to.

"Kinda cheeky for you to be calling that place a 'shitty bread shop' when I've seen how some of your experimental cakes turn out," Fuutarou grins with amusement at the manager's chagrin.

"Oh, quiet, you. They're called _experimental _for a reason, I'll have you know." The manager sighs lightly, putting his hands on his hips. "Anyways, what can I do for you? You're not the type who just shows up to chat, after all."

"You know me," Fuutarou nods in confirmation. "I'm here to make a parfait."

"Excuse me, sir, we sell _cakes _here, not _parfaits," _the manager dully recites, throwing out a hand in a declining gesture.

"Bullshit. I demand to see your manager."

"I _am _the manager!"

The two men exchange a few chuckles at this inside joke between them, a reference to several incidents that they've had here at Revival where customers have demanded to see the store's manager, only to have the manager recite that particular line due to the usual shortage of staffers in the store.

"No, but seriously though, what're you doing in my shop," the manager asks again with another polite, professional smile that is hiding all the opposite sentiments behind it.

"I _am _serious. I wanna make a parfait."

_"Boy, I swear to God, if you don't start takin' me seriously, I'ma slap your cheeks so hard your firstborn's gonna feel it."_

"Alright, calm down, Mr. Thirty-Five-Year-Old Virgin."

The manager immediately reels, clutching his heart as if he's just been stabbed there with a kitchen knife. "Uuuffff! H-How dare you go to such lengths to wound my pride like that...!"

"...Boss, every time Valentine's Day rolls around, we always joke about being the ones who made Singles' Awareness Day a thing, it's not like you're _not _used to that."

_"Nonsense, _Uesugi-kun! I only said that before, but now that I'm already halfway through my thirties, that joke's slowly _not _becoming a joke anymore! _You _don't have to worry about that because you're less than half my goddamn age! Ah, how blissful it must be to still be so young ~ "

"Ah shit, Boss, you're going into your whole Boomer mode again."

"Shut it, you! We boomers still got some fight left in us! We _will _conquer the final obstacle that bars us entry into the mystical paradise of companionship known as marriage! And not even _you _can stand in my way!" The cake shop manager stands up tall, once more assuming his hands on his hips to strike a heroic pose that could put him on a movie poster of a superhero film, but Fuutarou is already walking straight past him, helping himself into the kitchen.

"Yeah, good luck with that," he drawls with a lazy flick of his wrist, totally ignoring the manager's brief but somewhat grandiose speech of self-confidence. The manager in question follows after him, still with a miffed look on his face that his sole part-time employee simply waved him off like he was just a scrap of paper wafting down the street.

"So? Why a parfait?" he asks, leaning lightly against a nearby commercial refrigerator while watching Fuutarou gather up the necessary tools and browse the other fridges for ingredients. "I know I've been joking around with you, but I hope you're not so blinded by whatever it is that you're doing to _not _see that this is a cake shop."

"Remember a while back you told me that a friend of yours who you studied with back in culinary school went into dessert-making and recently started working at one of the Saizeriya chains here?"

"Hm...yeah, I do remember that. Did you go?"

Fuutarou nods, checking the flavors of ice cream, yogurt, and gelato available. Admittedly there aren't too many flavors, as his manager keeps reminding him that this is a cake shop and not an ice cream shop, but he can still make do with what he's got access to.

"I went there with a few friends from school. I'm tutoring them too, and I promised I'd take them there if they did well on their midterms a few weeks back."

"Friends from school? One of them wouldn't happen to be the one who stopped by here a while back and had us bake that five-section cake that one time, was it?"

"Funnily enough, she _was _supposed to be there with us, but she couldn't make it."

"I see. Wait, wait just a damn second, didn't you say that you didn't know what friends were either? I thought we were in the same boat!"

"That was a lie, I never was in the same boat as you. Who'd want to be in the first place?"

"Guh!" For a second time, the manager doubles over, feigning pain coming from his chest. "R-Rejected by the only other person who could understand me! How could you betray me like this, Uesugi-kun!? We were brothers, once!"

"We were _never _brothers, Boss!" Playing along this time, Fuutarou points dramatically across the large central table once he's assembled all the necessary ingredients. "You expect loyalty and brothership in a day and age like this? Truly, your own shortsightedness was your own undoing!"

"Such words have never been so painful, yet so truthful! Aye, it is as you say - such is the result of my own folly and the upbringing of this new generation of young adults. However, even my own shortcomings cannot deny the shame that ought to be placed on your name!"

Fuutarou gets to work on crafting his parfait. "You said that you used to be into acting for a time, right?"

"Yeah, before I switched to culinary school. I was part of the theatre club back in grade school...those were fun times," the manager nods sagely, reminiscing on good times long past.

"Out of curiosity, what made you switch? I don't think you've ever told me that."

"Oh, it was a stupid reason. In my final year of high school, I met a girl in my class and become infatuated with her, to the point where I even joined the same club that she was a part of, the cooking club. It was there that I also found cooking to be quite enjoyable, so I had to choose between pursuing a possible career in acting or culinary. Acting at the time was a bit more unstable as a profession unless you made it big right away, so I went with the safe pick and went to culinary school, which I told you about."

"Safe pick...yeah, and look how this turned out for you."

"Hey, hey, cut me some slack, it's the first time I'm running my _own _show here. Give me some time, and I'll show you what I'm _really _made of."

"Right. So that's your origin story, huh? Got your heart broken by a classmate in high school and now you're the President of the Heartbroken Middle-Aged Guys Club?"

"Who are _you _calling a heartbroken middle-aged guy, huh!?"

"Who the hell else?"

"I'm going to dock your salary, you hear!"

"Go ahead, it's not like you're even gonna give me my paycheck for helping out over the month."

Speaking without looking at his boss, Fuutarou commits most of his concentration on the parfait he is preparing, washing the various fruits that he'll add to the parfait at a nearby sink like strawberries, blueberries, grapes, and raspberries.

"Going for the simple homemade parfait style, huh?" the manager asks, observing Fuutarou's prep, and the young tutor nods.

"I don't have very much experience in making desserts, but I did take the time to look up some easy homemade ones, and they seem pretty easy to make. The only problem is that what I'll make is gonna look real sad compared to the ones we had at Saizeriya."

"Naturally. That guy actually specialized into making desserts, especially parfaits, so those things are his pride and joy; you'd have to train for a thousand years in a mountain dojo somewhere before you have a shot at making a parfait that'll beat his."

"For once what you're saying _doesn't _sound like a bad joke."

"...is that supposed to be a complement?"

"Who knows." Fuutarou swiftly and efficiently chops up the strawberries that he'll be adding. "How's the business doing lately? I know I haven't been by for the past week or so."

"Pretty slow as usual. It's starting to get a bit concerning, honestly." The manager folds his arms worriedly. "And no, before you ask, I haven't been spending all this time just holed up back here working on new cakes; I've been doing all the stuff you've told me to do like making social media pages and putting ads online and such. Maybe it's one of those things where it takes some time before we start seeing the results, but for now it's about the same as usual. By the way, I hope you know that I'm charging you for all the stuff you're using."

Fuutarou just waves his hand at his boss. "Sure, whatever, just take it out of my non-existent paycheck that you'll never give me."

"Oi, oi, oi, I'm not a bad guy, I actually _will _pay you properly. As soon as we start getting some actual business goin', obviously."

"Goddamn it, Boss. On a somewhat related note, it's just about summer, right? Why not consider branching out to other stuff? Cold treats and all that."

"Uesugi, you know how I feel about that. For the last time, we're _not _a silly little ice cream shop."

"And those 'silly little ice cream shops' make more money in a month during summer than you ever have baking cakes."

"Oh c'mon, that's not a fair assessment when I've only been baking cakes for a living for the past four months!"

"Excuses, boss. Excuses."

"By the way, did you make sure to wash your hands? You didn't even bother changing into uniform!"

"Have you ever _seen _me in uniform? That's the better question. And yes, I did wash my hands, don't worry."

"I'll give _you_ a better question, why the hell _weren't _you?! Is _that _why I haven't been getting many customers? Because people see that my only employee's not even wearing my uniform and think that this place's run by a bunch of loonies?!"

"Well...they wouldn't be _wrong _about that last part..."

"Goddamn it, Uesugi-kun! My _biggest _mistake was hiring _you! ! ! !"_

* * *

Nakano Nino, the second of the identical quintuplets, sits on the lone chair at one width of the dinner table while the rest of her sisters all sit around her along the lengths of the same table. The clock to the side, built into the large wall behind their television, reads ten minutes to eleven in the morning, and Nino, still with a bit of reluctance tugging at the back of her mind, does her best to ignore it as she sets her eyes down at the table in front of her.

"...sorry for making you all deal with me for the past two days," she apologizes finally. "And...sorry for hitting you that night, Yotsuba."

With a big fat grin on her face that seems to have completely forgotten what Nino did to her two nights ago, Yotsuba nods heartily. "It's okay, I'm over it now. I'm just glad you're feeling better!"

"You're lucky it was Yotsuba you hit, Nino," Miku remarks. "Anyone else, and there probably would've been a bloodbath afterwards."

"Or at least, they wouldn't forgive you as easily as Yotsuba did," Ichika notes.

"But the important thing is that we are all back together again," Itsuki smiles at Nino. "Even though it was a bit scarier than usual this time around."

"Yeah, you said it. That's the first time we've seen Nino literally board herself up in her own room, or however close she could get to it," Ichika shrugs, taking a sip out of her Shirley Temple that Yotsuba has made for everyone after they ate a late breakfast.

"Was that the first time she's ever done that? Yeah, I guess it is..." Miku quietly marvels at this. "Usually she's so convinced that she's right that she wouldn't do something like that since she thinks it'd make her look like she's wrong..."

"Hey, hey, don't make me go _back _to how I was acting yesterday," Nino snaps irritably at her younger sister.

"But I still want to know what made you act like that, Nino. I might not care about the whole you hitting me part, but now that you're feeling better, I do want you to tell us what made you act like that," Yotsuba insists. The big fat smile on her face is no longer there as she switches her tone to something a bit more serious.

"Yeah, I second that. Normally I wouldn't mind, but you can't deny that you acted so differently this time that we're all pretty curious as to what was going through your head the past two days," Ichika nods to support Yotsuba's proposal, and Nino takes a sip out of her own Shirley Temple to prepare herself for a long conversation.

"Fine, fine, I will. I figured I'd have to talk about this," she mutters. "I won't make it long, though, since it's not worth getting everyone all worked up about like I was - "

"No, I think you should explain everything, Nino," Itsuki says calmly, almost in a motherly fashion, like a parent trying to give counsel to their troubled child. "It will help you sort out your own thoughts as well while you explain what you were going through to us."

Nino scowls a little back at her. "That's for me to decide. In any case, the long and short of it is...I just can't stand Uesugi-kun."

"Right, we figured as much from what Yotsuba was able to tell us about your behavior on Friday night. So you're going to have to tell us a bit more, like Itsuki said," Ichika says.

"Not to mention, you were studying with us pretty well for the most part for the past two weeks after midterms. Why did you just...blow up like that all of a sudden?" Miku follows up, though of course she and Itsuki are in a position where they have to pretend like their conversation in the middle of the night earlier that day never happened.

"Why do you think? Because I was keeping it in all that time," Nino clicks her tongue back at Miku. "It wasn't bad at first. And honestly, I didn't mean to end up like I did. After I lied to Papa saying that we passed our midterms, I figured I should at least make good on what I did for Uesugi-kun and study with everyone. But as the days went on, like...all the feelings I had about him from before just kept stacking up."

"Well...I suppose that makes sense. You never really liked him ever since the beginning, and even if you did have a bit of a change of heart after midterms, it'd be unrealistic to expect you to start liking him all of a sudden..." Ichika nods slowly.

"Exactly. So...all the resentment I had towards him and stuff, I still had that. And so going through hours of studying with him and everyone else, watching him hang out with everyone, interact with everyone and whatever...like, it wasn't long before everything that he was doing went back to getting on my nerves. It was just that, I didn't want to say anything about it because it wouldn't make sense, right? Like, I - I was all like, hey, Uesugi-kun, here's your job back, make sure it do it better next time, and then a week later I'd be like, no, I don't wanna study with you anymore because you're getting on my nerves - that doesn't make any sense, right? So I just sort of...kept it in, I guess."

"You could've talked with us about it. It didn't need to get to that point on Friday," Yotsuba points out gently.

"I probably _should _have, yeah, but...I didn't."

"Then...why not?"

"I don't know. If I had to say, I guess...I guess it's because I must've thought that I could get over it or something, I dunno. Maybe I just didn't want to deal with them, those feelings I had."

"You thought that if you just didn't pay attention to feelings like that, they'd just eventually go away? That's some pretty convenient thinking you've got going on there," Ichika smirks a tad bit before taking another sip of her fizzy drink.

"Hey, you don't need to rub it in," Nino snaps back lightly. "I've learned my lesson."

"Hopefully you did, yeah."

"Then...why did you keep resenting Fuutarou? Even if you understood enough about him and his situation to help him keep his job as our tutor?" Miku asks.

Nino sweeps a lock of her long, peachy-red hair back over her right shoulder. "I couldn't stop thinking about how much of an impact Uesugi-kun's having on our lives. It was one of my original gripes with him back when he first starting tutoring the three of you, and then it came back with a freaking vengeance on me."

"Does this, by chance, have something to do with that promise you gave us when we were younger?" Itsuki asks. "The one you gave us soon after Mother died?"

Sighing quietly, Nino directs her somewhat sullen blue eyes down at her own tall drink, of which she's already consumed a third. The cherry that Yotsuba has added in each of their Shirley Temples sits on top of the ice cubes that float at the surface.

"It does. And I still haven't forgotten about it. As a matter of fact, if I think about it, that's the source of it all, of why I resent Uesugi-kun so much. It's because of that promise I made with you all that makes me feel this way, you know? I wanted the five of us to grow up together, to stick together, to be together. I didn't mean for there to be someone else. I just wanted it to be the five of us. Yeah, I get that the promise I made wasn't going to age very well since we're all going to go our own separate ways at some point and we're never going to be together forever like we are now. But I at least wanted us to stay together for as long as possible like this before it's time for us to say goodbye to this kind of a life that we currently have, living together and going to school together and such. And so when someone like Uesugi-kun shows up and starts tutoring us for anywhere from two to six hours a day, and sometimes even on the weekends too, like..."

Nino shakes her head slowly.

"...I couldn't handle that. It was actually easier for me to deal with that _before _midterms, back when Itsuki and I didn't join you three and just studied on our own, because I could just sit around not accepting Uesugi-kun as my tutor; I didn't have any obligation to force myself to put up with him. I didn't have to force myself to watch him ruin the whole promise I made to you guys by sitting in with everyone while having him tutor us."

Nino's four sisters all solemnly listen to her testimony, occasionally taking sips out of their Shirley Temples while listening.

"So the moment you decided to handle things that way..." Miku begins,

"...eventually something like this was going to happen," Yotsuba finishes.

Nino nods slowly. "Not as...as extreme as this...I think. Because, like...that night, Yotsuba and I got attacked, right? That one guy hit Yotsuba in the face with something, I don't know what, but it made her nose bleed, so I got pissed off because of that. Then another guy stabbed me in the frickin' shoulder, and _that _hurt like a bitch, on _top _of me being scared of seeing blood and whatnot...and then when Uesugi-kun finally _did _show up, I started getting angry at him because he took so damn long to show up to save our butts, and then when he teleported us back home, I just...I just blew up on him. I just lost it."

Hearing all this, Yotsuba begins to press her lips together uncomfortably.

"Nino, by any chance...did any of what _I _said to you earlier that night make you angry too? Or rather, I should say, did anything I told you before we got attacked contribute to how you got really mad at Uesugi-san when he brought us home?"

The second quintuplet recalls to the best of her memory the conversations she had with her younger sister that night at the Izumi supermarket, raising her hand up to her chin to help her think.

"...no, you weren't...I don't think anything that you said to me then was another reason why I got so mad at him," Nino shakes her head in denial. "But if there _were _something that pissed me off, it's the fact that you didn't run away from those bad guys when I clearly told you to."

Inhaling sharply at this, the fourth quintuplet averts her eyes with even more acute discomfort. "...s-sorry, but...I-I couldn't just...leave you behind..."

"And so what if Uesugi-kun didn't reach us in time? What if those guys didn't waste their time fighting themselves and actually did their job of kidnapping us? Then that'd mean _two _of us would be dead or worse, while if you'd've ran away, at least only I had to get offed!"

"Okay, okay, Nino, that's enough, you know Yotsuba isn't the type to leave anyone behind like that," Ichika intervenes while Nino is still talking, sensing the tension levels at the dinner table rising at worrying speeds.

"I _know _she isn't, but..." Nino scratches her head briefly in frustration. "Ugh, it just ticks me off, thinking of what the rest of you would think if you found out the next day that the two of us are missing or dead..."

A hard silence falls on the quintuplets, which Yotsuba, naturally, takes the hardest of all. Ichika, who's sitting with her on their side of the table, puts an arm around her silently but comfortingly.

"I also wanna mention that part of that was because of the first time I got everyone into trouble two months ago," Nino reminds them. "Y'know, back at the warehouse when I was meeting that guy whom I was buying that Heisei drug from at the time. I told you guys to just stay home because there wasn't anything good that could come out of you guys coming to bail me out, yet you all showed up anyway. It was a similar thing with Yotsuba two nights ago, I just wanted her to get out so that only one of us would have to suffer, not two."

"You expected to...to _die_, Nino...?" Itsuki asks in a hushed voice.

"I mean, do you _think _those were situations that could end well for me if things had gone my way?"

"But...but now that we have Uesugi-kun looking after us - "

"We didn't know that was his job the first time around. Even this second time with me and Yotsuba only, it's not like I _expected_ him to show up like - like some kind of knight in shining armor or something. Ask Yotsuba; those guys who jumped us could've easily killed us both if they didn't start arguing amongst themselves!"

Yotsuba remains silent as the quintuplets briefly glance in her direction.

"But you shouldn't have just gone in and started attacking them like that; you need to prioritize your safety first and foremost," Ichika insists. "Like, they were just regular thugs, right? If you had money on you, I'm sure they might've thought twice if they realized they could just make some quick cash instead."

"Yeah, fat help that did the last time _you _tried that."

"Those guys were different, Nino, you should know that better than we do. Yotsuba said that these guys who attacked you this time around weren't any sort of organized gang members or anything like that. So you shouldn't have just charged in like you did; you should've at least tried to stall for as long as you could so that you could buy time for Fuutarou-kun to show up."

"But that's just twenty-twenty hindsight you're using. Obviously if I'd known he'd show up soon, I would've handled that differently - "

"But you _knew_ he was on his way, because he'd done that once before, and we _know _that's something he should do."

"No I didn't, what the hell? Just because it's his job doesn't mean that he'll do it!"

The quintuplets all exchange somewhat confused looks, like they don't know what to make of what Nino is saying right now.

"...what do you mean? That's...that's his _job, _of course he's going to do it. When _hasn't _he?" Ichika responds slowly, raising her left eyebrow over at her younger sister, who raises her hand in self-correction.

"Sorry, that's - that came out wrong. What I meant to say was: I don't want to feel like we're relying on him for protection. Because if we do, that's just going to make me feel even worse, you know? Not because I don't think he'll do his job, but because of the stuff I said about him ruining my promise to everyone."

Ichika leans forward a little over the table, pulling her comforting arms off Yotsuba's shoulders.

"So can I get one thing straight with you, Nino?" the eldest quint asks. "From what I'm hearing, it sounds like it's not actually Fuutarou-kun you have a problem with. Is that right?"

It's the second quintuplet's turn to avert her eyes, and after a moment's hesitation, she, too, nods her head slowly and shortly.

"...that's right. I don't actually _hate_ Uesugi-kun...you'll notice that I've only ever said that I resent him," she reveals quietly. "In the beginning, sure, I probably legitimately hated him. But...eventually, even if it was reluctantly, I did come to recognize that he's a hard worker, and that he does a lot of things for us. And even if I myself don't like it, all those weeks that I sat here at the dinner table listening to him tutor the three of you showed me that you all like having him tutor you. And so no matter how much I didn't want him tutoring us, outside of a few times in the beginning where I tried sabotaging him and the lessons he made for you guys, I didn't bring myself to try to stop him from doing his job."

"And that's why you lied to Papa to help Fuutarou keep his job..." Miku notes quietly.

"That's not saying that I like him or I'll get along with him or anything like the rest of you clearly do. I'm just saying that I get why he's here," Nino clarifies quickly.

"Then if that's the case, isn't the _real _problem here not Fuutarou-kun, but the fact that you're still clinging to that promise you made us so long ago?" Ichika points out with a deep frown. "Because to me, it sounds like it's holding you back. Because without it, you wouldn't really be all that resentful towards him. Maybe a little bit in the beginning, like you said, since we all were like that towards him just because of how suddenly Dad dropped a tutor on us, to be fair. But now, it's like, the rest of us have gotten over that except you. Even Itsuki, who was with you in the beginning about not wanting him to tutor us with her own reasons why not, got over that and she's been studying with us regularly since the end of midterms."

Nino raises her nose back at Ichika due to the tone that she's getting from her. "Your point?" she returns, even though she has a good idea of what Ichika will say.

"My point is - forget that promise you made us six years ago," Ichika shakes her head firmly. "It was a nice little promise that you made to us, a neat little coping mechanism that we probably needed to help us get over Mom's death back then. But from the start, a promise like that was never going to work. _You _even said as much yourself just now; how you said that you understand that we can't be the same forever, that our lives as they are now aren't going to stay like this forever. So even _you_ understand that without me or anyone else having to tell you. So how does it make sense that even if you understand that, you still feel so resentful towards Fuutarou-kun?"

"Because he's instigating change in everyone here that I didn't want to have happen so soon!" Nino growls lightly, doing her best to control her anger that is beginning to rise again.

"Instigate change? But that was already going to happen no matter what, right? With or without him! It's not like we can't make friends with other people at school or something, right?"

"I _know _that, but things like that I'm okay with because that's just natural! We go to school, we meet new people, get to know them, hang out with them a little, but at the end of the day we all still come back home and have our lives like this together. You can't tell me that all the time that Uesugi-kun's spent with us is something that happens to most people! You can't sit there and tell me that having one of our classmates tutor us for anywhere from two to six hours every day, and sometimes even on the weekends too, is _normal!"_

Ichika scratches her forehead a little. "...maybe not, but...I still think that you're letting yourself cling to that promise of yours too much. Like, let me put it this way, right? The rest of us aren't suddenly going to hold it against you when we think you're not keeping your promise; like, oh, we're all changing now, now that Fuutarou-kun's here to tutor us, let's start shoving it in Nino's face that she's not keeping her promise from six years ago! That's not how it works; that's not how we'd react. Something like that, we know that for the most part, a promise like that was just you trying to look out for us when we were kids. So of course we're not going to really pay much attention to it these days. I think you're just being a little selfish with your promise just because _you _think that you're not doing a good enough job of upholding it when clearly the rest of us don't really bother with it."

"Selfish? _Selfish? _That's rich, coming from someone telling me what to think about something that's clearly important to me," Nino scoffs back. The rest of the quintuplets have, in the meantime, delegated themselves silently to the sidelines, opting to watch their family conversation get narrowed down to just the first and second quintuplets. "If selfish is how you're going to think of this, then I can say the same thing right back, and you won't have a point to make about it."

"Then it seems we're at an impasse," the eldest quint determines firmly, making sure to correct her posture. "But make no mistake, Nino: this whole 'selfish' argument aside, I don't think even you can dispute the fact that it's your promise to us that's holding you back, that's making you feel this way towards Uesugi-kun. No matter what you might think of him and what you think he's doing to us, there should be no reason for you to be so resentful towards him. He's just our tutor; he's just our friend, and the guy who's keeping us safe from the bad guys in town. Yes, there've been a couple close calls, but the important thing is that we're all still together; we're all still able to talk together like this, like what we're doing right now. So if you think about it, Fuutarou-kun's been doing more to keep your promise to us for you than you give him credit for. Because if it weren't for him, who knows what our situation would be like right now. Would we be sitting here without you? Without you or Yotsuba? Would _any _of us still be here if it weren't for him?"

Nino bites her lower lip visibly. "But it didn't _have _to be him. It could've been - "

"Oh? It didn't _have _to be him?" Ichika interrupts her younger sister swiftly. "But didn't you say that you don't particularly _hate _him? Then why are you saying that like it's him that you have a problem with?"

"Listen to me, Ichika! I meant that Papa could've easily hired two separate people to do Uesugi-kun's jobs; one to handle our tutoring, and one to handle our protection. Did it _have _to be handled by the exact same guy? Why didn't Papa hire a - a - a professional tutor or something and just let Uesugi-kun handle our whole bodyguarding thing on his own?"

"Oh, you meant it _that _way...because clearly, it seems like Fuutarou-kun and Dad have some history together, right? And if you know anything about work contracts, Nino, they can get really complicated sometimes. On top of that, Fuutarou-kun's a mage, too, and he's using magecraft and all that to keep us safe, so imagine how complicated the contract Dad's got in place with him must be with magic being involved and all that. And not to mention, Dad's a super busy person with all his hospital work, so do you think he's got the time to look through two different contracts, both of which involve his daughters? Maybe the tutoring contract would be simple enough, to be fair, but even then, why bother relying on an external tutor when someone you already have history working with and feel is reliable can do both the tutoring and the bodyguarding at the same time? How about this, Nino - what if whoever Dad would've hired as our tutor if it weren't Fuutarou-kun were also out to get us like all those gangsters, huh? Ever thought of that?"

Nino opens her mouth to speak, but like a fish out of water, her mouth can only tremble and quake a little as the second quintuplet finds nothing she can respond with to this point. Ichika presses her advantage to finish this thought:

"What if Dad hired Fuutarou-kun _because _he couldn't trust anyone else to do the job? In a situation in the beginning two months ago when Ebata-san was killed and we didn't even know about it until some time later, when Fuutarou-kun brought us back home from that warehouse, Dad couldn't know what our situation was really like until Fuutarou-kun could get to work and start figuring the situation out. At least, that's what I'd think. So why would he hire someone he didn't know anything about to have access to our house, and to us? What if _they _were a mage, too? We don't know what mages can do - as far as we're concerned, they can do anything, pretty much, right? What if a mage who's coming after us, like whoever's gunning for us now, was posing as a tutor, and Dad found their application or resume that they forged or something and hired them? Then it should be easy to figure out what happens next, right? Boom, we're all dead. And there'd've been _zero _point in hiring Fuutarou-kun as our bodyguard or whatever because - "

"No, that's not true! Because Uesugi-kun could've done a background check on potential tutors for Dad!" Nino blurts out, finally managing to grab onto a firm rock amidst being washed away from the torrent of Ichika's rationale. "That would be part of his responsibilities of keeping us safe! To make sure that Papa doesn't hire any phonies!"

"Well, well, then that sounds like you're actually trusting him to do his job when earlier you said that you couldn't trust him to reach us in time whenever we got into trouble," Ichika almost smugly points out.

"I-In this case, I don't mind that since it's not like he's going to be interacting with us much, you know! So it's not like _I _need to deal with him personally or anything!"

"Then what if our tutor whom Fuutarou-kun greenlights for Dad suddenly turns rogue and does something bad to us when both Fuutarou-kun and Dad think that he's trustworthy? What then - "

"Alright, alright, you two, please - that is quite enough hypothetical thinking that we had no need for," Itsuki interrupts quickly to break up this seemingly never-ending argument between their two oldest sisters. "Besides..."

Pointing up at the clock, Itsuki watches her sisters turn to see what time it is, which is now almost half-past eleven.

"Oh gosh, we've already been talking for this long..." Ichika puts a hand over her mouth briefly to express her surprise. "When did Fuutarou-kun say that he'd be stopping by? Noon?"

"Yeah, sometime around noon. Knowing him, he'll arrive a bit sooner than that," Miku mentions.

"He always says that if you're on time, you're late, doesn't he?" Yotsuba chuckles a little.

"Yeah, says the guy who almost got us late for our own midterms," Nino chortles back, and her sisters, except for Yotsuba, all let out varying levels of groans.

"Oh boy, here we go again..." Ichika sighs with a forced grin before taking a big gulp of her Shirley Temple. "In any case, we might've spent the last fifteen minutes just going back and forth with each other like this, but at least you apologized to Yotsuba for hitting her the other day, and you're at least somewhat back to your normal self, which is good, since we were about to start ordering delivery for three meals a day until you got back to normal if it weren't for Fuutarou-kun volunteering to cook for us..."

_"Learn to cook for yourselves for once, damn it!" _Nino gripes with a grunt of sarcastic amusement.

"But are you sure you're okay with Fuutarou coming in today, Nino?" Miku asks her older sister.

"Yes, I am, don't worry about me. Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta start making lunch for us before - "

"Oh, don't worry about that, Nino," Ichika waves her down as her younger sister starts getting up out of her seat to head to the kitchen. "Fuutarou-kun said he's going to handle lunch for us today."

Nino scowls down at Ichika. "So _that's _what you meant by 'ordering delivery'?!"

Ichika finds herself blushing a little as Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki all burst into laughter at Nino's joke that does much to break up the tension that was left behind from the eldest two quints' argument. "N-No, that's - that's not what I meant, guys! Geeeeeeezzzzz..."

"Didn't you check your phone this morning, Nino? Uesugi-kun sent us a group text," Itsuki informs her.

"Well, I wasn't even paying attention to my phone since I had _this _to deal with. Actually, how the hell does he know my number? I never gave it to him!" Nino blinks at the rest of her siblings. "Wait a minute, _you guys _didn't give it to him, did you?!"

"Aha, she found out ~ " Ichika smiles plainly as everyone goes for another round of giggles.

"Grrr...normally I'd blow up again over this, but...now's not the time for that," the second quintuplet once more puts a lid over her annoyance and manages to let it go. "I guess more to the point, what's he bringing?"

"Homemade fried rice and tonkatsu curry!" Yotsuba says, showing Nino her phone with their tutor's group text. "He said that he and Raiha got up super early today to make enough portions for all of us and then some!"

"Tonkatsu...? Uesugi-kun knows how to make _that...?" _Nino can't stop herself from wondering aloud, her lower jaw going a little slack with amazement. "And wait, does he mean that he and Raiha-chan made the curry itself from scratch, too...?"

"It's possible, though it probably won't end up looking like curry that we're familiar with," Miku notes.

"Any curry is fine by me," Itsuki smiles, wiping some dripping saliva from the corner of her mouth.

"Of _course _it is when _you're _the one saying that! And don't start drooling even _before _the food gets here!" Nino berates her youngest sister swiftly as Itsuki ducks behind Miku for cover from Nino's wrath. "Actually, now that I think about it, it's probably Raiha-chan doing most of the heavy lifting...she told us back in Hawaii that she handles most of the cooking in their household..."

"In any case, let's get the table all set and wait for him to show up, shall we?" the eldest quint suggests amicably, and the rest of her sisters follow her lead and get up to help set the table for lunch.

* * *

As soon as the clock on the wall strikes noon, the quintuplets plus one all clap their hands together once and chant,

_"Itadakimaaaaaaasu!"_

"Whoa-ho-ho, this is _some _lunch you brought us!" Ichika cries out, unable to help herself as she marvels down at the food that their tutor and classmate has brought them. Before each of the high schoolers sitting at the dinner table sits a big plate of freshly steamed and fluffy white rice half-covered with Raiha's trademark homemade curry that is also poured over the crispy, perfectly fried cuts of pork katsu that sits next to the fluffy rice. "It smells so goooood ~ !"

"Raiha-chan...thank you...thank you..." Itsuki is murmuring her thanks, on the verge of literal tears from the mere aroma of the curry tonkatsu meal before her. "If only I could trade Nino for you..."

"Food really _does _turn you into a different person, now, doesn't it?" Nino menacingly smiles towards her youngest sister across the table.

"We made a lot this morning, so help yourselves as much as you want," Fuutarou informs the girls. "And I don't really plan on bringing home the leftovers since Raiha can just make more for our family anyway, so let's try to finish it all; either that, or you can save the rest and reheat it for dinner or something."

"Okaaay!"

And thus the quintuplets' Sunday lunch with their tutor begins, kicking off about half an hour of merry talking, gossiping, laughing, and eating. The first floor, especially around the dinner table, becomes pungent with the scent of homemade curry, and Yotsuba makes sure to have everyone's Shirley Temples topped off with the big pitcher of the drink that she's mixed in preparation for their lunch with Fuutarou.

"So your little sister really made all this, huh," Nino remarks aloud, munching on a piece of pork cutlet smeared with curry on one end.

"She made all the curry, yes. I made the tonkatsu," Fuutarou clarifies.

"Even still, this is pretty impressive. This's as good as the curry we'd eat at family restaurants and such."

"That so? Glad you think that way. I'll tell Raiha that everyone liked it."

"This tonkatsu is really good too!" Yotsuba says quickly, not wanting to let Fuutarou feel left out. "It matches the curry so well!"

"It tastes like you two practiced making tonkatsu curry at lot," Ichika notes before taking a bite of curry rice with her spoon.

"So, originally I was the one who got Raiha to pick up cooking," Fuutarou explains to his students after taking a drink of his Shirley Temple. "Years back, right when _our _mom passed away, since our dad was usually pretty busy and only came home at night, I had to cook for the two of us for a time, so I figured I should teach her what I knew about cooking so that in case I needed to get out there and find a job myself, Raiha would be able to take care of herself. And when I did start looking for jobs, I tried getting jobs in the food industry, and whatever I was able to learn from the kitchens I worked in, I brought back home to teach my sister."

"And now Raiha-chan's basically as good as Nino at cooking, huh? I guess we have her big brother to thank for that," Miku smiles over at her tutor.

"Not _just _as good as, this food is even _better!" _Itsuki exclaims, her eyes unable to stop sparkling ever since she took her first bite of Raiha's curry rice.

"I appreciate your kind words, but for the sake of making sure that Nino doesn't blow her top for the second time this weekend, let's try to chill off on the praise," Fuutarou says calmly, warily eyeing the second quintuplet who's now starting to glare daggers over at her youngest sister. "Besides, that's just your bias for Raiha showing through there."

"That's right! Uesugi-kun gets it!" Nino nods strongly in agreement. "I'll make us curry rice later this week for dinner and we'll see just _whose _food is better then!"

"I don't know if you should be letting _my little sister _get you all worked up like this, Nino..."

"Just leave her be. When it comes to food, Nino's pride always gets put on the line," Ichika explains with a chuckle. "Especially when it's to get us to praise her for it."

"Ah, so she's one of _those _types? The type who makes food for her siblings because she wants to take care of them so much?"

"N-No, that's not it, you're wrong!" Nino pouts at Fuutarou as her sisters all giggle at her expense. "I was literally the _only _one who bothered learning how to cook, so I don't have a choice _but _to cook for everyone! That's why I was teaching Miku how to cook before you showed up so that it doesn't have to be just me cooking all the time in this house, I'll have you know!"

"For what it's worth, I still do think you're the better cook between you and my sister, having cooked with both of you and eaten the food that the two of you make."

Nino opens her mouth to defend herself, thinking that Fuutarou was going to diss her somehow, but she stops herself when she hears what he says.

"Ugh, now y-you're just trying to pull my leg," Nino grumpily frowns, looking away while doing so.

"So much for saying earlier that you were all resentful towards him, huh?" Ichika snickers lightly, and Nino snaps her eyes back up to her, her face once more reddening like a whistling teapot.

"Th-That's got nothing to do with this! I swear to God, you guys!" Nino says hotly as Ichika's snicker escalates into a full-blown laugh. Itsuki, meanwhile, is trying to seriously gauge the quality of her curry rice and tonkatsu, mentally comparing with the food that Nino has served them in recent memory.

"...what makes you believe that Nino's cooking is indeed better than Raiha-chan's?" the fifth quintuplet wonders aloud. "Because to me, they are both excellent; that joke about me wanting to trade sisters with you aside, I am having a hard time determining which is truly better."

"Well, logically speaking, Raiha's knowledge and experience of cooking is limited to what I taught her in the beginning and what little she's been able to figure out or look up on her own," Fuutarou explains after eating a spoonful of his own curry rice. "We do have internet at our place thanks to our dad's office being in the same house, so she can look up things there, but she just doesn't have the sheer experience that Nino does; that, and Raiha likes making things that she already knows how to make, or stuff she's comfortable with making. But then again, part of that is because we're poor, and she doesn't have the luxury of being able to experiment around or have the money or ingredients to use to practice making new foods with. I'm sure she'd love to learn how to cook new dishes, but given our financial situation, she doesn't get very many opportunities to do so, whereas Nino does have those things."

"Hey, hey, that's not cool, trying to guilt-trip me like that."

"That wasn't my intention; I was just trying to explain why I think you're still the better cook at the end of the day. You're just looking a bit too deeply into my explanation."

"Then you could've just said 'you have more experience' and left it at that!"

"Now, now," Ichika waves her hand at Nino to get her to calm down.

"But that'd just be a really vague answer..." Fuutarou shrugs, munching on a piece of his own pork cutlet smothered with curry.

"But we were surprised that you'd be making tonkatsu for us, Uesugi-san," Yotsuba smiles cheerfully. "Like Nino said before you came, we didn't know you could make tonkatsu from scratch."

"I've made tonkatsu before; it's not that hard. It just, uh...it can make a mess if you're not careful, so I tend not to make it too much. But I guess you can say the same about making curry..."

"I mean, cooking in general can get super messy," Nino points out to her tutor.

"Yeah, but our kitchen back at home is right next to my dad's office, and our place is just one big room, pretty much, no other separate rooms or walls or anything. So we try to keep the place there as clean as possible. Today was an exception, obviously, with what, us working with the breadcrumbs and whatnot."

"You ought to bring Raiha-chan over at some point so that I can teach her how to cook," Nino offers nonchalantly.

"But Fuutarou said that he'd like you to teach the two of us yesterday," Miku reminds her older sister.

"I'd rather teach Raiha-chan than the two of you."

"Well, so much for that plan," Fuutarou grins darkly before scooping up another spoonful of curry rice. "Guess we're just gonna have to teach ourselves the rest, just between the two of us."

Hearing this, Miku turns her head away slightly in embarrassment. Even though they've already done so yesterday, for Fuutarou to put it in those exact words still comes off as a little embarrassing for her.

Nino, watching their interaction, narrows her eyes at the two of them on her end of the table. "Oooooooon second thought, maybe I _should _teach you two, if only to keep an eye on you two," she says suspiciously. "Who knows what'll happen if we leave the two of you alone."

"Speaking of being left alone," Fuutarou mentions now, looking up from his plate at the second quintuplet, "maybe this is something I should be able to clearly see, but I'd rather hear it directly from the person in question. How are you feeling?"

The quintuplets, having expected their lunch conversation to turn in this direction at some point, quiet down once they hear their tutor begin addressing the elephant in the room. Nino, for her part, tussles her hair slowly in response.

"Better," she answers simply at first. "And yeah, that should've been obvious when you came here, right? If I'm willing to sit here and eat lunch with everyone, including you."

"True. Did you apologize to Yotsuba?"

"Yes, I did."

Fuutarou nods and says simply, "Cool," before munching on another cut of tonkatsu. The quintuplets wait for their tutor to say something else, expecting more out of this phase of this conversation, but they simply wind up staring at him eat his own lunch for a couple minutes straight, with only Itsuki eating alongside him because she's eating while staring at him at the same time.

Especially puzzled is Nino. "...that's it? Just...'cool'? Isn't there anything else you wanna say?" she asks him slowly.

"Is there?" Fuutarou merely shrugs back at her. "You tell me."

"W-What kind of a question is _that? _You were angry at me on Friday night when I started going ballistic too, you know. Don't you wanna say stuff to me too? Because now's your only chance to do it."

"Then I'll pass. If you've resolved your issues with your sisters and made up with them, then that's all I care about."

"Is it, though? I don't think it is." Nino puts down her utensils for the time being to fold her arms tightly across her ample chest. "You can't tell me that when you went over to me and literally picked me off the ground and held me up in the air after I hit Yotsuba."

"Er...i-is...is that true, Fuutarou...?" Miku asks meekly, visibly surprised at Nino's testimony.

"It is, I don't deny it. I'll admit that it was a bit of extreme behavior on my part too because that was my kneejerk reaction to seeing Nino hit Yotsuba like that, so I acted on my instinct to detain Nino in case she started going after Yotsuba for real. But to make things clear, I didn't hurt Nino; I just held her by her collar up in the air so that she couldn't do anything else to her."

"Even still, I don't believe that you really don't have anything to say to me right now, because you went off on me when you started manhandling me like that."

"You trying to exaggerate what I did aside, no, I really don't have anything to add. I only talked to you like that because I needed you to calm yourself down. In that situation, telling someone like you who's clearly pissed off about something to calm down isn't going to do shit unless that someone respects me enough to consider calming down as something they should do, and I doubt I'm that kind of person to you, Nino. So I fought fire with fire, so to say, to stop you from hitting Yotsuba again if you were planning on doing that and to get my point across to you that I needed to take care of that stab wound you had on your shoulder."

Fuutarou takes a drink from his fizzy beverage to help clear his throat.

"If you think I hold something against you for how you acted two nights ago, that's not the case. Whatever it is that made you that angry that night is clearly something that I don't get, and I'm not going to sit here demanding you to tell me just because I'm your tutor. I think that that's your business and your sisters' business if they're involved but not mine. Not to mention, as far as I know, you still see me as an outsider, so what's the point of me trying to stick my nose in further than I already am when you're probably gonna blow up like that in my face again."

"That's right. And yet even as you say that, today you've just waltzed into our house like you always do and even brought us lunch. Is that what an outsider would do?" Nino challenges.

"Maybe not to _you_," Fuutarou briefly points his index finger across the table back at the quintuplet in question, "but I know that your sisters don't see me the same way, at least."

Setting down his spoon and chopsticks, now that he's already wolfed down his meal faster than even Itsuki, Fuutarou first wipes his mouth with a napkin before looking back up at Nino and saying:

"And might I add that for someone who still views me as an outsider, you sure are enjoying the food I brought you."

Nino quickly darts her blue eyes down at her plate. Sure enough, she's already eaten through half of her food, a rate that matches both Miku's and Ichika's.

"Th-This - this's because I hadn't eaten anything all day yesterday," she blurts out quickly, the words escaping her tongue before she can take the time to think them over. "And I only barely ate those riceballs you made for dinner yesterday earlier this morning - "

"Oh, so you even ate those onigiri I made for you. Interesting, very interesting," Fuutarou nods in understanding as Nino's face goes even redder as soon as she realizes that she's let slip some information that she probably shouldn't have, given the context for their current dialogue. "For someone who distrusts this outsider who's talking right now, you sure trust him an awful lot, enough to eat the food he's made."

Nino puts down her own spoon on the table next to her plate, a bit more loudly than she probably needed to.

"So then what's your point? Just spit it out already; where are you trying to go with this?" she demands assertively.

"I don't have a point; I didn't come here to make one," Fuutarou answers swiftly to oblige her. "But I _would _like to ask you this: do you really still see me as an outsider? Or is that a cover-up for something else?"

Nino narrows her eyes at her tutor while her sisters look on somewhat tensely. Cover-up? Does he somehow know about the conflicting feeling that she has towards him? Could maybe Miku or Itsuki have told him? Nino should have asked them earlier that morning if they talked to Fuutarou about her to any considerable degree, but it's obviously too late for that now. Then for now, she goes with this:

"I'm not trying to cover up anything. You're still an outsider to me," Nino answers confidently, "but I'll at least recognize the work that you've done for me and my sisters, like how I'm eating the food you made for us out of courtesy for your and Raiha-chan's efforts. But that's all."

Fuutarou nods curtly. "Alright then. That's all I wanted to hear."

"...eh?"

Slowly growing confused, Nino blankly watches their tutor pick up his empty plate and take it over to the kitchen sink so that he can wash the dishes all together once everyone else is done eating. In the meantime, Fuutarou himself returns and looks around at the girls' plates.

"Anyone want seconds? Like I said, we made plenty," Fuutarou reminds his students, waving the ladle and rice scooper he's brought from home to scoop the curry from its tupperware and rice from the Nakanos' large rice cooker onto their plates.

"Wait, wait wait wait wait!" Nino stands up from her own chair quickly, staring at her tutor with an utterly confused frown. "Something's not right here. Why's that all you have to say? Are you saying that you're okay with me thinking that about you?"

Fuutarou returns Nino's frown with a small one of his own. "Yes. What of it?"

"Well, like...that doesn't bother you at all?"

"No, not when I already knew you thought of me like that. Do you not remember that one conversation we had outside? The night when I accidentally walked in on you after you'd come out of the shower, and you ran out and accidentally locked yourself outside?"

"Okay, okay, stop, I remember that, you don't need to go into so much detail."

"Then yeah, I still kept in mind what you told me back then." Fuutarou takes Itsuki's plate, which the latter has held out to him while he and Nino are talking, and carefully puts another serving of fluffy white rice and piping hot curry onto it before giving it back to its owner. "But I also kept in mind the fact that you think of me as an outsider because you were concerned about your sisters and what would happen if an outsider like me got so involved with them. That's why, when I saw you hit Yotsuba that night, I got pretty angry myself and intervened, because for a moment I felt like it wasn't just me who was the source of what you've been going through, if that makes sense."

The young tutor snaps the plastic lid back over the tupperware containing the rest of the curry.

"So now that I can see that you're back to getting along with your sisters and that you've apologized to Yotsuba, there's no need for me to get involved any further in this. Everything's back to normal, or at least it should be. Which means that I can go into this week not having to worry about our lessons being jeopardized."

The quintuplets all groan in unison, during which Nino takes the opportunity seat herself again.

"It's always back to studying with this guy," Ichika sighs with another chuckle.

"Hey, might I remind you girls that finals are fast approaching, and I don't intend on wasting the second chance that Nino gave me," Fuutarou reminds his students sternly. "And we can't afford to have things like this happen anymore, just so you know. Weekends are a valuable source of time to use for studying."

"Tch. You're even taking our _weekends _away from us? What a hardass," Nino complains, gobbling down a spoonful of her own curry rice and downing it with a swig of her Shirley Temple.

"I wouldn't have to if your grades weren't all so pathetic. But there _is _that silver lining that you've all been improving, and if we can keep this up, I think you all can actually at least pass all of your subjects."

"Ehh...I think you're putting too much faith in me; I don't know if I can pass Math at all," Yotsuba smiles weakly, and she hands her plate back to her tutor. "Seconds, please!"

"Not with that attitude, you won't. You can't give up, not until the bitter end. As your tutor, I won't let you give up partway through; that's not what I'm being paid to do." The young tutor, reopening the curry tupperware, puts another helping of curry rice onto the plate and returns it to Yotsuba.

"By the way, Fuutarou, why aren't you having seconds? This is _your _food, you know?" Miku points out.

"Oh, don't worry about me, I ate a whole serving already before coming here. Since Raiha couldn't join us, I ate some with her in the morning after we were done cooking everything, so I'm pretty full now."

"Speaking of Raiha-chan, where is she? I was just about to ask why you didn't just bring her along," Nino wonders aloud.

"She's over at another friend's house for a school project, so a bit of bad timing. I'll bring her here another weekend when we're not so busy..."

* * *

An hour later, all of the curry is eaten and all the Shirley Temple is drunk, and Nino, Ichika, Yotsuba, and Itsuki sit at the dinner table, absentmindedly watching Fuutarou and Miku wash the dishes for the crew.

"Hey, Nino, how's it feel not having to clear the table and wash the dishes?" Ichika says quietly, gently poking fun at her younger sister.

"Amazing. You have no frickin' idea how good this feels," Nino snorts in a deadpan tone, pulling out her phone to check for any text messages from her friends. "All these years of cooking and washing the dishes for everyone...ugh, sign me the hell up."

"W-We help you wash the dishes from time to time," Itsuki objects while Yotsuba nods with an indignant pout.

"Not enough, though."

The eldest quint leans a little closer to Nino across from her at the table. "But don't you remember what Fuutarou-kun said earlier? About how you trust him an awful lot, considering that you think of him as an outsider? You're even letting him wash the dishes for you."

"You're not going to get under my skin with that, Ichika, so don't even try. Besides, that's the least he should do for intruding on us as much as he has."

Nino pulls her gaze away to put it down on the screen of her phone.

"But I really thought he'd, like, yell at me or something...or scold me or something like that..." she mumbles, the volume on her voice being turned down several notches so that Fuutarou and Miku can't hear her over the sounds of running water and clanking dishes. "Given how harshly he reacted to me hitting Yotsuba, I thought he'd chew me the hell out today when he got here. The moment he started talking about how I seemed like I was back to getting along with everyone, I was like, oh shit, here we go..."

"Uesugi-san is a nice person; he knows that you had a lot going through your head," Yotsuba insists.

"Not just nice, he's considerate," Ichika adds onto Yotsuba's thought. "He trusted us enough to handle this on our own and didn't intervene more than what he did. If Fuutarou-kun were any other boy from school, either they'd chicken out and bail on us entirely or they'd try to get super involved because they're trying to be the world's greatest simp and they think that hours of playing dating game sims is going to somehow help them solve our problems or something dumb like that."

"That's an awfully specific example you just gave there," Nino notes worriedly.

"Eh, don't dwell on it. I've met my fair share of weirdos and guys who don't know when to back off whenever a girl starts having some trouble."

Itsuki glances next to her at Nino, with whom she's been sitting at the table for lunch. "Nino, you are fine with studying with us like usual starting tomorrow, yes?"

"Yeah, I am, don't worry about it. If he's not going to pursue this, then I won't either. There's no need for me to drag this out any longer. Like Uesugi-kun said, I don't want to waste the second chance that I gave him by _not _studying with him; then there'd be no point in me saving his job for him."

Smiling with relief, Itsuki nods. "That is good to hear. But just in case, if you feel like something like this could happen again, please make sure to talk to us."

"I'll be the judge of that."

Having finished the dishes, Fuutarou and Miku, after drying their hands, return to the dining table, where the tutor summons his small storage rune with his right hand and puts his left hand underneath it. At this small display of magecraft, the quintuplets all perk up, curious to know what their tutor is doing. As they watch, though, a moderately sized plastic jar the size of a regular jar of jam slips out of the storage rune and perfectly slides down onto Fuutarou's outstretched left hand, and he twists off the cap and puts it down on the table before Nino. Because the jar is see-through, the girls could already see its contents even without Fuutarou having to unscrew the cap, so they can already see that it's a homemade parfait made with two layers of yogurt, blueberries, raspberries, grapes, and strawberries. Once the cap is off, Fuutarou reaches into the old shopping bag with the recycling emblem on it to pull out a box of store-bought granola, and opening it, he carefully sprinkles the top of the jar with clusters of granola and hands the clean spoon that he's brought with him from the kitchen to Nino.

"Here's the parfait that I promised I'd bring you," the young tutor announces simply as Nino blinks down at the admittedly small parfait. "I'm sure it's a sad excuse for one compared to ones you've eaten before; I know for a fact that it just looks outright pathetic compared to the ones I bought for your sisters for dessert after lunch yesterday. But since I couldn't just buy one to go, and since I've never tried making parfaits before, I just went with this. If you don't want it, that's fine, I can just eat it myself."

"But didn't you say that you were already full?" Yotsuba asks.

"Obviously I meant that I'll eat it later when I'm at home or something. I read that this kind of parfait is even considered to be a breakfast food of sorts, so I could stick it in the fridge and save it for tomorrow when I'm on my way to school or something."

While Fuutarou is talking, Nino picks up the spoon that he's brought her and scoops up some yogurt, fruit, and granola, silently putting the bite in her mouth. Watching her eat her first bite of Fuutarou's parfait, Miku gives her a tiny little smile.

"How is it?" she asks.

Chewing slowly and swallowing, Nino lowers her spoon somewhat.

"...if this's meant to be a parfait," she says deliberately, "then it fucking sucks. Who the hell uses _yogurt _for a parfait? What are you, poor?"

"Why yes, I most definitely _am _poor," Fuutarou says flatly. The swiftness and matter-of-factness of his delivery causes the rest of the girls to start cracking up a little. "I take it that it's not to your tastes, then?"

"As far as parfaits go, hell no. If you say you're gonna get me a parfait, either just take me out somewhere and get me one, or learn to make an actually good one, not some el cheapo let-me-throw-fruit-and-yogurt-together-into-a-jar type shit."

Shrugging in defeat, Fuutarou reaches for the parfait he's made for Nino. "A'ight, then I guess I'll have to eat the rest of this la - "

But his hand is stopped by Nino's, which seizes his wrist suddenly and with a much stronger grip than Fuutarou expects.

"Hold it. I never said it was _bad_," she clarifies for him.

"But you said it's garbage."

"_As a parfait_. But...just as a food..." Nino slowly weakens her grip on her tutor's wrist before letting go of it entirely, taking another bite out of the parfait jar. "...it's...y'know...not bad..."

Swiftly getting up from her chair, Ichika stands up next to their tutor and nudges him a little with her elbow, wearing a suggestively teasing look on her face.

"Hey, Fuutarou-kun," she whispers loudly so that everyone at the table can still hear, _"you're in."_

The table promptly explodes with laughter from the quintuplets, which is proportionate to the blush that explodes onto Nino's face as she starts yelling at her sisters to shut up and stop taking her words out of context. Fuutarou, with only a heavy sigh as his reaction, puts his hands on his hips, watching Nino angrily shovel more and more of the parfait into her mouth.

"Well, as long as you like it," he concludes shortly. "You can call it whatever. Doesn't have to be a parfait."

"But hey, this really _can _be a good breakfast food, like you said! It looks easy to make, it's got a lot of fruit, and it looks healthy!" Yotsuba says supportively, analyzing the contents of the parfait.

"Indeed, the yogurt and fruit will give us plenty of energy that our bodies can use quickly to give us the boost we need to pay attention in class in the morning until we can get to lunch, and depending on how easy it is to make, I am sure that we could easily prepare these the night before or even the day of," Itsuki nods.

"Yeah, this is super simple. It's literally just...put in yogurt, then some fruit, then another layer of yogurt, then another layer of fruit, and then sprinkle some granola at the top like what I just did," Fuutarou explains shortly. "The toughest part of it is either washing and cutting the fruit up or picking out the fruits in the first place. The actual assembly is easy-peasy. So easy, even Miku can do it."

Miku pouts hard at Fuutarou next to her as the rest of her sisters laugh again, this time with Nino having a chance to join in.

"Fuutarou, you meanie..." she grumbles, continuing to pout at him with her arms straightened out next to her sides in irritation.

"Sorry, I couldn't resist. But no, really, it's actually really simple. Maybe give this a try as a breakfast food in case you guys don't have time to make a real breakfast or if Nino doesn't feel like making breakfast for you guys or something."

"Can I have a bite, Nino?" Yotsuba asks curiously, having eyed her sister partake in her parfait, so Nino obliges her, guiding a spoonful of yogurt, fruit, and granola to her younger sister's mouth. "Mmm ~ ! The crunchiness of the granola, the texture of the fruit, and then smoothness of the yogurt - it's super good!"

"Oooh, I wanna try too ~ gimme a bite too, Nino ~ " Ichika also leans in and says "Aaaa ~ " while opening her mouth to receive a taste as well.

"Hey, back off, Uesugi-kun made this for _me!" _Nino yowls at her sisters as Miku and Itsuki also imitate Ichika.

"Oh ho ~ so you really _do _like what Fuutarou-kun made for you, huh?" Ichika teases Nino some more.

"I-I don't particularly mind it! And I don't want to make him feel like his food's going to waste!" Nino says hotly in self-defense, using her spoon like a fencing rapier to keep her sisters at bay. The scene reminds Fuutarou of that one Jurassic Park meme of the man trying to hold three dinosaurs surrounding him at bay. "Stay back, all of you! This is _mine! _Go make your own or get Uesugi-kun to make you some!"

"Awww, don't be like that. Besides, Itsuki's looking like she's just gonna grab the entire jar and make a break for it," Ichika points out, and sure enough, Itsuki's blue eyes are swirling, mesmerized by the sweet, sweet goodness of Fuutarou's homemade parfait while a small trail of drool is beginning to emerge from the right corner of her mouth.

"Itsuki, for fuck's sake, you _just _ate, so _stop drooling!" _Nino screeches, beside herself with delirious incredulity. "Uesugi-kun! Uesugi-kun, tell these stupid idiots of sisters I got to BTFO, will you!?"

"No can do. Remember what I told you? This is _your _problem, so I'm letting _you _handle it," Fuutarou raises his hands innocently. "I'm just an outsider, remember?"

"Y-You son of a _bitch_, Uesugi-kun! I know you're only saying that because it's convenient for you! Itsuki, hey, Itsuki, no, wait, stop - !"

Unable to contain herself any longer, Itsuki dives with her hands outstretched for Fuutarou's parfait jar, which Nino manages to intercept by snatching the jar away just in the nick of time out of Itsuki's grasp, causing the youngest quintuplet to whine like a sad dog.

"I guess I know what I'll be doing before I leave today," the young tutor thinks aloud as Nino reluctantly gives Itsuki a bite, which immediately raises her spirits again, and in so doing, she gives bites to Ichika and Miku just so that everyone has had a bite.

"Teaching us how to make this parfait?" Miku asks once she's swallowed her bite of Nino's treat.

"Yeah. Hopefully you have some fruit stocked up. It doesn't have to be the same ones that I used for Nino's."

"You don't need to teach them, I can do that!" Nino says once she, too, has taken another big bite from her parfait. "This shit's so easy - literally the hardest part about making this is cutting the actual fruit itself!"

"That's...what I just said, yeah."

Then, Fuutarou feels his phone vibrate and reaches into it to fetch it. It's a reminder that he's set for himself, notifying him of a meeting he's got with Dr. Nakano later on this afternoon.

"...actually, scratch that, you'll have to get Nino to teach you 'cause I totally forgot that I have a meeting with your dad in a few hours," he announces briefly.

"Whoa, the ever-diligent workaholic named Uesugi Fuutarou-kun forgot about a meeting? And one with Dad, too? You're slacking, Fuutarou-kun. For shame, for shame," Ichika shakes her head in mock disappointment, but to her surprise, she finds Fuutarou actually looking a bit disturbed by this himself.

"It's a good thing I set a reminder like this just in case, but...I guess I'm letting myself get too distracted with all this, for me to forget that," he agrees with another sigh.

"Er, well, it's - we still appreciate it, you coming over and eating lunch with us! We really do!" Ichika says quickly, stuttering slightly in an effort to undo whatever discomfort that she's impressed onto her tutor with her last couple of words. "We aren't distractions to you...right?"

"Yeah, if you're late to a meeting with Papa because of us, just have us explain the situation to him, I'm sure he'll understand," Miku also adds reassuringly. "By the way, how's Papa doing?"

"The same as usual, working too much to give his daughters any attention," Fuutarou shrugs for a third time or so. "Nothing you're not used to."

"I do wish that one day, we could all eat together, though," Yotsuba sighs longingly. "But...it _is _Dad we're talking about, so..."

Fuutarou is already moving to put the empty tupperware that he's washed out in the kitchen sink back into the shopping bag that he's brought it in, and he waves and bids the quintuplets who stay behind at the dinner table goodbye as Miku and Yotsuba trot after him to see him off at the door.

"Again, thanks for coming by, Uesugi-san. Today was a lot of fun," Yotsuba nods wholeheartedly at their tutor, who pulls his shoes on to get ready to leave.

"If you wanna try making that parfait that I made Nino, I can send you the recipe I found online with some simple instructions on how to make it. It should be really easy though..."

"Aha, but remember, we're total dummies, especially me. I think for my own sake, I could use those instructions."

"I-I could probably make that without the instructions..." Miku mumbles uncertainly.

"Then I'll just send it in a group text to everyone, how's that." Once his shoes are on, Fuutarou turns to the girls one last time for the day. "If anything else happens, be sure to let me know. We're lucky that Nino came to her senses on her own, so I'm pretty glad about that so that we don't need to deal with it going into this week. But just in case, keep in touch."

The two quintuplets both nod confidently back at him, and Fuutarou, before turning to leave, reaches out with his free left hand and puts it back on Yotsuba's head, smothering her green hair ribbon for a moment in the process.

"Might be a bit late for this by now, but sorry that I couldn't stop Nino from hitting you. In hindsight, I probably could've stepped in faster to make it so that she didn't hit you at all," the mage says in a low voice so that he won't be heard by the others back at the dining table.

Her heart fluttering a little when she feels her friend's hand on her head again, Yotsuba quickly shakes her head.

"It's okay, I'm already over it. And you don't have to apologize, it was my own fault for trying to get in Nino's way when she was acting like that; I got what was coming."

"Eh, I don't quite agree with you saying that, but...again, that's none of my business. Thanks for handling that situation as well as you did...wish more people would be as mature as you."

Yotsuba feels her face fill with warmth at the sound of Fuutarou's kind words. Her heart does the same, but it also fills with a twinge of pain, because she knows that she isn't as mature as he thinks she is.

Watching Fuutarou give Yotsuba another headpat, Miku finds herself taking little microsteps to put herself ever so slightly closer to her tutor so that he'll notice her, too, before he leaves. And notice her too he does, and Fuutarou also pats Miku on her head too before bidding the two of them goodbye for the day.

* * *

"Whew ~ that's the best I can do for tonight."

It's now Sunday night, nearing the quintuplets' bedtime so that they can get plenty of rest for the start of the school week tomorrow. Ichika has already gone to sleep, citing her need for lots of it tonight since she'll be leaving their tutoring session with Fuutarou early so that she can go to her part-time job. Miku and Yotsuba are playing Mario Kart together over in Miku's room, which leaves Nino and Itsuki, who are in the latter's room where the second quintuplet is helping the fifth quintuplet with her English studies, which is one of her weaker subjects. Nino stretches out her arms in exhaustion, looking forward to taking a good night's rest tonight.

"Thank you for helping me out tonight," Itsuki thanks her older sister earnestly, causing Nino to look away, a little bit bashful.

"...wouldn't asking Uesugi-kun tomorrow for help with English be better? I'm not a tutor like him, so I was surprised you even bothered asking me for help with this," she says quickly to divert Itsuki's attention away from herself.

"Well, given that yesterday was supposed to be an extra weekend lesson, I did not get the chance to ask him the questions I had regarding my English studies, so...I figured I would turn to the next available source of help."

"It's not like my English score is _that _good."

"It is still better than mine."

"While that's _true_..." Nino trails off, browsing through Itsuki's notebook that is filled with questions and answers from her past two months of self-study and studying with the rest of her sisters and their hired tutor. "...you've been working hard, haven't you."

"Ah...uh...well..." Seeing her sister flip through her study notebook, Itsuki also grows a little bashful herself and begins to fidget, finding it a bit embarrassing that her sister is taking a look at all the work she's done. "...yes, I have been doing my best."

Closing her younger sister's notebook, Nino folds her arms lightly and leans back in her own chair that she's pulled in from her own room.

"Can I ask you something?" the older quint asks quietly.

"Of course. What is on your mind?"

"Back when Uesugi-kun first started tutoring us, remember how it was just Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba, right? And the two of us didn't cooperate at first?"

"Y-Yes...quite different times those were."

"Yeah, no kidding. Well, what I wanted to ask, now that I've looked at all the work you've done so far, is...how did you even manage to keep yourself motivated studying like this all on your own? Though, I guess this applies even before Uesugi-kun showed up as our whole private tutor thing..."

Itsuki adjusts her already good posture in her own chair. "Well...for me, it was because..." She falls quiet for a moment before resuming. "Nino, you know how you have that promise you made to us that you have been working to keep? The promise Ichika said that - "

"Yeah, yeah, I know, you don't need to go into all that detail," Nino says irritably, waving her hand to brush the rest of Itsuki's thought aside.

"Well...I...I also did something similar. Do you remember six years ago when I said that I would be the one who would take care of us? I believe my exact words were, if I recall correctly..."

The memory that Itsuki digs up in her mind in order to recall these exact words causes shadows to appear over her eyes as her head begins to dip down, her bangs casting shade over them from the lights on the ceiling of her room.

"...'From now on...I'll become Mom'," she mutters. Nino can no longer see her younger sister's eyes, so far down has her face banked.

"...that was right after Mama died," Nino says, dropping her own voice even lower to match Itsuki's. "Right?"

Nodding slowly, Itsuki manages to raise her head, though the shadows over her eyes remain.

"I never made it explicit like you did, Nino. I remember just muttering that to myself, with my head against the wall at our old apartment," Itsuki says, her voice becoming heavy with emotion. "I was having such a hard time coping with Mother's death that...in hindsight, I feel as though I must have been saying anything to myself just to make myself feel any bit better. But what I said then stuck with me anyway, and just like you, all this time...I had that in mind as we grew up over the years."

"That so. But why did you settle on studying, then? Because I don't know about you, but now that I remember what you said to us back then, it's like...you don't _study _to become a good mother, that's not how it works."

"I know, but...please hear me out. I remember talking with Yotsuba after we had come back from our Kyoto trip, our last trip with Mother before she died, and she told me about this friend she had met there with whom she got into trouble because the two of them were found wandering around late at night when we were all supposed to be in our hotel. She told me how since they were both poor, they would both do their best to study and get good grades so that they could graduate school and get well-paying jobs and become successful to get their families out of poverty. So when I said that I would 'become Mom', I eventually had to think about what I would do to make good on those words, and I remembered what Yotsuba told me and decided to pursue that path."

"But even then, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense...? I don't know."

"I-It made sense to me at the time," Itsuki says quickly. "Because in my head, I figured that I would study hard and get good grades, and that would help me cover my academic grades, which would then leave me with time to learn how to cook, to get a part-time job, so on and so forth to act like an actual mother would. But..."

Itsuki gazes sadly over at her notebook.

"...you got stuck at step one," Nino deduces fluidly, and Itsuki nods.

"It was...quite a rude awakening for me, finding out that I was simply no good at studying. I thought that perhaps it was merely test fright at first, that somehow I was bad at taking tests, but no, I simply could not study well, because I took practice tests at home and received similar results. I could not accept that. I believed that if you studied hard enough, if you tried hard enough, if you put in enough effort, then surely they would be rewarded." Itsuki shakes her head defeatedly. "I was wrong, but I was stubborn and did not accept that. So I kept studying, and studying, and studying...all the way into the start of high school, and having made only minimal progress in the process."

Nino lifts her left leg over her right while listening to Itsuki. "So that explains why you've been a study geek all this time, huh?"

"S-Study geek...well, I suppose at this point I cannot deny that..." Itsuki sighs again.

"Hey, I'm not trying to sound like I'm judging you. Maybe I would have before now, but...but now I don't feel like doing that. I wouldn't really feel good shitting down your throat about something like this, given what I was doing for the past two days..."

The two sisters let their conversation pause for a few moments.

"Then what about now? As in, what exactly convinced you to start studying with everyone and Uesugi-kun? Because remember how in the beginning, the two of us didn't study with them? Even though we had our own reasons, I'm sure..."

The fifth quintuplet puts her eyes down at her own lap again.

"...I began to change my mind when I saw the practice test results that the three of them were producing with Uesugi-kun as their tutor," Itsuki testifies. "I saw that all three of them were improving, even Yotsuba. Granted, it was only a slight improvement, of course, and if they had only been able to show such improvement once and that was all, I would not have thought more of it. But their improvement was consistent; looking at Yotsuba's practice tests that I had her show me, it was clear that with Uesugi-kun's tutelage, they were in fact raising their grades, just as Uesugi-kun was hired to do. Of course, our midterms show that we all still have a long way to go, but the fact that he was able to tutor the three of them well enough to the point where they all had a realistic chance of passing their midterms with a little bit more time and studying planted doubt in my mind in regards to my own resistance against his tutelage. Because if even Yotsuba could show such improvement, there was no reason I could not."

The youngest sibling looks back up at her older sister again.

"What finally got me to change my mind was when you forced me to join you with the others in that first overnight studying session we had with Uesugi-kun. I could immediately tell that he was an excellent tutor; he explained things in ways that even we could understand so that all we needed to worry about was making sure we could retain the material we were learning from him. I suppose the previous weeks of teaching the others leading up to that first night helped Uesugi-kun cater his tutoring to us specifically, too. I honestly feel as though if it were not for those two study nights we had with him, I would not have been able to score as high as I did on our midterms, to the point where I even beat Miku, who usually obtains the highest test scores out of us five."

Nino notices Itsuki's hands slowly squeeze a little on her lap.

"There was also..._that _night. The night when...he protected me from that...that person, the person who is trying to come after us."

"But that doesn't have anything to do with your studying, does it?" Nino points out.

"Perhaps not, other than maybe that I was heading home from studying at the library that night. But...that night still left quite a deep impression on me, now that I think about it. Because...I saw Uesugi-kun fighting that person. Perhaps in the beginning he was not doing this, but when I accidentally stumbled upon the street where the two of them were fighting one another, Uesugi-kun began to fight to protect me and even took a hit that was meant for me."

"Heh. So I guess I'm not the only one who likes the type of guy who're brave enough to take a hit like that for them?"

"I am not s-saying that he is _my type _or anything! It is more that...that afterwards, when he escorted me home, I realized that Uesugi-kun is basically the embodiment of everything that I wished to become: smart, good at studying, and powerful enough to protect and take care of your family."

Raising her head all the way back, Itsuki arches her neck backwards so that her closed eyes end up pointing straight up at the ceiling.

"I cannot cook, I cannot study, and I cannot take care of my own family," she murmurs softly. "I rely on you and Father's money to feed me, and I have spent so much time trying to study and to no avail on my own that I neither possess any other meaningful skills nor have any idea if the path I have chosen really is the right one for me. Ichika has been working her part-time job for quite a while now, so by this point she has probably made a fair amount. You learned how to cook from the start of middle school, so now you are the only one who can make sure that our diets are healthy and balanced. These are things that a mother would do, things I should be able to do if I said the things that I did to everyone after Mother died."

Nino sits quietly, listening to Itsuki without a word of her own. Once she's done talking for now, Itsuki notices that Nino, who would usually butt in to interject her own thoughts, hasn't done so yet.

"...well, I'm glad you at least recognize how vital my cooking is to the five of us. Like you said, without me, all of you are just going to order takeout all day, every day, and I'd hate to think what that'll do to everyone's health. I know for a fact that you weigh yourself every day after taking a shower."

"A-Aack! P-Please don't tell the others, please!" Alarmed at her secret habit being found out, Itsuki bows her head quickly.

"I won't, don't worry about it."

"Thank you...but how did you find out...?"

"Oh, I think it was when I was heading to the bathroom to take out my contacts...I don't remember exactly when it was, though...probably last year? But anyways," Nino pulls her arms off her chest and turns her swiveling armchair to face Itsuki directly. "You might be bothered by how you don't seem to have anything that would make you come off as 'motherly', but...I don't think that's the case."

"You do not...? But...what about me would be something that could qualify as a motherly trait?"

"Well...maybe it's not _directly _something you'd consider motherly, but..." Nino pulls her own eyes away from Itsuki. "You never give up. Even when you keep seeing yourself get bad test scores time and time again, you keep studying anyway to try to work past them so that you can do better next time; don't think that I haven't seen you get upset at getting your test scores back when we got back home from middle school. Even when you feel like you aren't improving, even when you start having doubts in the path you decided for yourself, you don't let them pull you away. That...that resilience, that determination, I guess...I think that's pretty damn mature of you."

"...but is that real maturity, or...is it simply stubbornness?" Itsuki wonders aloud.

"I don't know, I can't answer that, especially not when I just got over me being a bitch for the last two days. But my point is that that's what you have over us, Itsuki. I might know how to cook, Ichika might be working already, but you...you don't give up. I think...that's a way more valuable thing to have, especially when I think about how I was acting lately."

"...how so?"

"Well, you never self-destruct like I did. At least, I've never seen you like that. You bounce back from your lows really fast. You never get legit mad at anyone, and even if you do, it's not for very long. So it's not stubbornness that you have. Well, maybe a little, but it can't be _just _that. Anyways, we've been talking for long enough, let's get ready for bed."

Glancing sideways at the clock on Itsuki's desk, Nino gets up from her chair so that she can head downstairs to prepare for bed, and Itsuki follows suit. But before she turns to leave, Nino swiftly steps forward before Itsuki can react and puts her arms around her younger sister, who tenses up at first in surprise at Nino's sudden embrace.

"If nothing else, at least that makes two of us for the 'Can't Keep Our Promises' Club," Nino mutters with a grin. "What'cha say?"

"I-I intend to keep _my _promise, Nino! I have not admitted defeat yet!" Itsuki cries softly, but she, too, reciprocates Nino's hug and squeezes her older sister back. "...but...thank you, Nino. I'm glad that...you're feeling better now."

Nino smiles as well; it's been a long time since she's heard Itsuki talk normally like she used to. "Same. You can ask me to help you with English any time."

"Then I will help you with Science!"

"Ugh...no thanks, we already have Uesugi-kun drilling that into our dumb heads for at least an hour every day."

"Awwwww..."


	50. Tuner

With heavy breath and a brisk step, Nakano Yotsuba jogs quickly down one of the narrower streets in the city's southern suburbs. Due to her obligation with the track team, she's keeping herself in shape for an upcoming track meet that is important to the team, as their results and placings in it will determine the team's ability to enter regionals in a few months during their second trimester in the fall.

Today is Saturday, the first such one of the new month of July. Final exams are almost upon them, and as such, their tutor and classmate Fuutarou has been correspondingly ramping up their studies to ensure that they will be on track, no pun intended, to pass their first trimester's finals with better grades than their midterms. However, much to his annoyance and disappointment, the responsibilities and obligations that several of the Nakano sisters have besides their studying under him have taken priority, with the usual suspects in Ichika with her mysterious part-time job and Yotsuba constantly helping others at school out but predominantly the track team making up the most number of missed tutoring sessions.

So to make up for these missed lessons, Fuutarou has been issuing and delivering auxiliary lessons during the weekends as well, and practically every weekend since the incident they had with Nino has been occupied with auxiliary lessons, at least for Ichika and Yotsuba who have been frequently ditching their intended tutoring lessons. Miku and Itsuki have consistently been joining them for these weekend lessons anyway, however, even though Fuutarou did not require them to join since their attendance has been perfect thus far. Nino has chosen not to join them yet, instead preferring to use the weekends to relax and hang out with friends, though she did mention that she would consider joining them the last weekend before their finals as an opportunity for a final review.

But strangely, Fuutarou called off today's lesson. He did not give a specific reason why; after school yesterday, he even had a much shorter than usual review session with the girls, only for a mere hour when he'd usually be there for three times that amount of time. When questioned, he merely answered that he had some obligations of his own to keep, and that today's weekend makeup lessons for Saturday and Sunday for the usual pair of frequently AWOL quintuplets would also be cancelled, so they were free to use this weekend however they wished. Considering that finals are fast approaching, he advised them to take advantage of their free weekend, since afterwards until the end of finals and the start of summer vacation, there wouldn't be another opportunity for the girls to take a breather.

The girls simply assumed that Fuutarou probably needed to take care of whatever magework that's come up and so didn't ask him much more about it. But over the course of the past few weeks, again ever since their incident with Nino, Yotsuba couldn't help but notice that Fuutarou is once again slipping back into his unhealthy cycle of almost starving himself and depriving himself of proper sleep. Of course, it can be said that Fuutarou never really demonstrated what "proper sleep" entails since he's always used class time, apart from several lessons that he'd use to gather information about their tests to use as review material for his students, to catch up on sleep during the day.

But these days, ever since a week ago, Fuutarou has been sleeping so deeply that he's slept through entire lunch periods and even all the way to the end of school. On one of the days when Fuutarou didn't even budge at the sound of the school bell signaling lunchtime, Yotsuba decided to go over to him herself to try to wake him up, with Miku and Itsuki in tow, since they, too, shared Yotsuba's concern for his health, but Fuutarou simply waved them off and told them to leave him alone, so ever since then, whenever he sleeps past the lunch bell, the quintuplets just leave him be, however reluctantly they must do it. In addition, there have been a handful of days when Yotsuba woke him up to remind him that he has students to tutor that afternoon, and when they would walk home together, she would always hear his stomach growling to varying degrees, a clear sign of his irregular eating habits. It even got to the point where Yotsuba legitimately tried dragging her own tutor into a Wendy's to force a Baconator USA Double down his throat because she heard about some virtual white-tailed fox talking about it in a video online and had to threaten Fuutarou to let her buy him food after school one day because of how much his stomach was rumbling, lest she call Miku and tell her that she needed to whip up dinner for their tutor so that they could ensure that he'd eat _something _before heading into the night to do his magework, even if that something had to be Miku's barely-qualifies-as-mediocre cooking that hasn't improved much due to the recent lack of teaching on either Nino's or Fuutarou's part.

Yotsuba, having used the morning and afternoon to study with Miku and Itsuki while Ichika and Nino are out following their own agendas, is taking a break from her studies and keeping herself in shape for the upcoming track meet by heading out for an early evening jog while she's still got an hour or two of sunlight left. The truth is, though, that she's been barely able to concentrate on her studies because of how worried she's quietly been in regards to their tutor's condition, and not even heading out for a little night jog like this seems to help take her mind off Fuutarou.

Slowing to a walk, the fourth quintuplet takes the time to catch her breath and stretch her arms; she'll stop by a small park in the area that's mainly meant for kids and do some stretches for her legs there. In the meantime, though, Yotsuba can't help but feel annoyingly frustrated at herself for being unable to discard her feelings for her tutor like she told herself that she would. Just because she's known him ever since they were kids, just because they're technically childhood friends doesn't mean that she should treat him with any kind of favoritism that she didn't give everyone else whom she's drawn and discarded. There have been people who have done much more for her than Uesugi-san has done, people she's known for longer periods of time, so -

\- no, wait. Now that she thinks about it, Uesugi-san is practically the only person left with whom she interacts on a regular basis outside of her own sisters from back in her elementary school days. And he's spent countless, oftentimes grueling hours for the past three months with her and all of her sisters, working his butt off helping them with their homework and improve their test scores, and that's without going into his magework that may or may not also involve the quintuplets as well. So no, no one's done more for the Nakano quintuplets than Uesugi-san, for her, with the one exception being their own dad.

She knew this already. She's always known this. She didn't need to repeat this to herself as a reminder of sorts. She went over this like how she reviewed her study sheet for the finals because she caught herself subconsciously trying to remove Uesugi-san from her conscience.

Yotsuba must forget about Uesugi-san.

Yotsuba must _not _forget about Uesugi-san.

The mental vacillation continues beneath the quintuplet's wrinkled brow. She knows that she has to stop being so on-the-fence about this and confront her own feelings to discover which side of them are what she truly believes in. But that's a tall order for her, because she already knows what she believes in and recognizes the thing that she has to do, and that just makes her even more unwilling to confront these feelings because she'll always come to a conclusion that she doesn't want to accept.

At the very least, she needs to stop being so worried about him. Uesugi-san is infinitely more times the adult she can ever dream of being; he, more than her or any of her sisters, knows how to take care of himself, and she doesn't need to baby him like this, being concerned about _his _problems and all that. He can manage himself. He doesn't need her help.

In fact, he's the one person that she _can't _help no matter what because no matter how hard she tries, she'll never be able to put herself in a situation where she'll understand him well enough to help him to the best of her ability. She's been able to help out tons of different people in her life throughout school because she's able to put herself in the shoes of others to understand their problems and feelings and do what she can to assist them, and part of the motivation for that is because she doesn't want people to experience those feelings of pain and/or helplessness. She and her sisters themselves were once in that position, scared and vulnerable, following the death of their mother, because with that, the quintuplets didn't know what would happen to them at the time; since potential foster families wouldn't want to adopt all five of them at once, there was a serious threat to their future of growing up together because they could be split up and sent to different foster families if their current father had not stepped in at the time that he did. And while it's not like the people she's helped in her life are going through that exact same experience, Yotsuba still manages to relate to other people in need with their feelings of uncertainty in order to motivate herself to do the best she can to give those people a hand, just as she herself was given one.

Is that it, then? Is the reason why she just can't seem to let go of Uesugi-san _because _of the fact that she doesn't think that she can help him, that anything she does won't be of any help to him? That would seem to be the one difference that sets him apart from the countless number of others she's helped in the past. Everyone she's helped so far has had problems and predicaments where Yotsuba was confident she could help resolve them - as long as it didn't involve studying, of course, but so far she hasn't needed to worry about that since there hasn't been anyone else at school who's as dumb as she is. But things like helping the teachers in distributing papers and materials? No problem. Assisting several sports teams and clubs at the same time because they needed a ringer or a fill-in for a missing teammate or club member? Absolutely. Taking care of a sick schoolmate? Can do. Paying for a friend's ticket to the amusement park when they forgot to bring their wallet or purse? But of course.

None of Uesugi-san's problems are things that Yotsuba can help with. On top of that, Yotsuba is accustomed to dealing with people who are not hesitant - sometimes a little _too eager_ \- to ask for help with their problems - and Uesugi-san, for better or worse, is the exact _opposite_ and simply _refuses _to ask for help. It's perhaps because Uesugi-san himself doesn't see things like his irregular eating habits and his poor sleep schedule as problems in the first place because he simply doesn't have the time to waste even pondering things like this. But if that's the case, that only serves to deepen the slowly enlarging chasm of pain a little more that Yotsuba feels in her heart every time she thinks of Uesugi-san lately.

Yotsuba slowly arches her neck backwards to gaze up at the darkening blue Saturday sky. Now that it's well into the summer, the days have gotten quite long, permitting daylight during hours that, over the past several months, would normally induce darkness.

Perhaps that's why she can forget everyone else so easily. Once she's helped them, she doesn't need to worry about them anymore - and thus whatever memories or feelings she had going into them and kept coming out of them have so little weight. Yes, some of them may be her friends, people she meets on a regular basis at school, for example, but for the most part, outside of what problems they want her to help them deal with or fix, Yotsuba doesn't really care for them. She can't, not if she wants to keep throwing away whatever feelings and memories she makes out of them.

Perhaps that's part of the reason why she can't seem to let go of Uesugi-san.

Then what if she somehow found a way to be of use to Uesugi-san? To help him in some way? Would she be able to discard him just as easily as the rest, then? For the sake of her sisters who also value his companionship and presence just as much, if not more, than she does? Yeah, maybe that's worth a shot. Maybe if she can feel like she's made a difference in Uesugi-san's life, no matter how she must do it, she can begin to see him the same way that she sees everyone else. And then...

Yotsuba reaches the park in question faster than she expects, mainly because she's been so engrossed in her own thoughts that she's lost track of her progress up the narrow suburb street that leads to her stop. It indeed is a small park, and its usual admittance of young children playing on its even smaller playground and the limited number of swing sets is absent at this time of the day.

But there is someone already there.

"...seventy-two...seventy-three...seventy-four..."

The strained, hoarse grunts of someone clearly exercising somewhere in the park rolls throughout, and with the small size of the park in general and the absence of other occupants, these grunts are easy to hear, even for Yotsuba who was about to walk into the park herself but swiftly ducks behind a curbside bush for cover when she suddenly recognizes who that voice belongs to.

To the fourth quintuplet's silent amazement, Uesugi Fuutarou is doing pull-ups on the swing set, in between the two swings. Speak of the devil - _this _was something Yotsuba was not expecting whatsoever; the route that she's taken for her jog is well and out of the way of her and her sisters' usual routes that they take to get around the city; in fact, Yotsuba doubts that her sisters even venture much out to the surbubs around the city. Perhaps on second thought she shouldn't be _too _surprised that she'd run into Uesugi-san in a place like this, since he sounds like he runs around the entire city sometimes for his magework, but recognizing this doesn't make Yotsuba feel any less surprised for the moment.

The consistent grunting coming from the pull-upping Fuutarou regains her attention eventually, though, causing her to notice that he's taken off his shirt for his exercise. For how lanky and "normal" he appears to be at school and in regular daily life, Fuutarou quietly has well-built muscles hidden underneath his shirt. They're not as well-defined as they could be like bodybuilders or those who specifically work out to build muscle, but their form is there; no doubt with some proper gym training and cutting, Fuutarou could be just as ripped as your stereotypical protein shake-swigging gym nut.

But his hidden muscles aren't what keep her staring; it's the frightening, almost disorienting number of scars that are plastered all over his body from the waist up. Scars, scars, and more scars - sometimes even scars on _top _of scars. Most of them look quite old; some of them look weirdly stretched out, too, for reasons Yotsuba can't quite understand. At first the sheer mass of his scars gave Yotsuba the impression that they were just a really weird layer of tattoos, but she can still see them as scars, given that she's got quite a few herself from all the sports she's done.

Fuutarou is doing pull-ups on the swing set with his back facing Yotsuba, so she can't see if there are any newer-looking scars on his front where he'd sustained his injuries from before. Why she feels the urge to see them, not even she's sure.

When he reaches a hundred pull-ups, her tutor slowly eases himself back down onto the sand, putting his hands on his knees for a moment to catch his breath and to give his arms a much-needed rest. Realizing that there's a good chance that it's going to be time for Uesugi-san to leave soon, Yotsuba begins to turn around and slowly creep away, but when she's turned around and starts to sneak out of the area, she hears Fuutarou's voice call out calmly,

"...what're you doing here, Yotsuba?"

Yotsuba's never frozen in her tracks so fast, and she's never felt her heart jump so hard before that she feels like she might choke on it in her own throat.

But unlike how he'd address her often at home during their tutoring lessons, Uesugi-san doesn't repeat himself. Yotsuba senses that it's because he knows that she's there, and he doesn't feel the need to repeat himself to make himself known to her. Or is it because he's giving her a choice to run away and not have to acknowledge that they met today?

The smart thing to do would be to avoid him. He's already been a preoccupying presence in her mind; she doesn't need the real deal to add any more to that.

But Yotsuba isn't smart, so why would she bother doing the smart thing?

Getting up from behind the rather tall curbside shrubbery, the fourth quintuplet, wearing the Asahiyama Track Team's official jersey in lieu of the heavier tracksuit, slowly makes her way into the park to greet her tutor in person, though she can't get rid of the awkwardness she feels meeting her tutor in a place like this in time. Not that it seems to matter, since Uesugi-san is still catching his breath and doing some arm stretches of his own.

"H-Hey, Uesugi-san. Fancy...fancy seeing you here, aha," Yotsuba says a bit awkwardly.

Fuutarou narrows his eyes a little down at her with a bit of suspicion, his heavy breathing providing some ambient noise for the two of them whenever they have breaks in their conversation.

"Something on your mind?" he asks without hesitation. Yotsuba once more feels her heart jump a little, though thankfully not as much as the first time.

"Oh, um, n-no! I'm - I'm fine, I'm okay ~ "

Fuutarou eyes his student carefully, searching for whatever visible clues of a possible sickness that he can find, but he can't seem to locate any.

"...doesn't seem like you're sick, but something feels off with you today," he thinks aloud.

"Feels off? How so?"

"Well, for one, when you showed up to this park, if you were in your normal mood, you'd've hopped on in and told me good evening or something like you normally would. But today, you're acting all hesitant and stuff; you even hid behind that bush the moment you saw me, I think. The Yotsuba I know wouldn't do something like that normally."

The words "The Yotsuba I know" strikes a deep chord with the quintuplet in question, and Yotsuba is finally able to crack a smile, though it's just a tiny one for now.

"So you think of me as that noisy, annoying classmate who always gives you a hard time with all the bad test scores and questions about her homework, right?" she giggles lightly.

"You got it. Noisy, annoying, stupid, bad at tests..." Fuutarou lists off Yotsuba's less-than-ideal qualities with the fingers on his left hand. "Only knows how to make riceballs well as food..."

"Oh come _on_, where did _that _come from?!"

"Nowhere, I just remembered it for some reason from the last time you, Miku, and I made riceballs for dinner that one night when Nino was still holed up in her room." Fuutarou, noticing that he's still shirtless in front of one of his own students, quickly pulls on the shirt that he's taken off and left sitting on the swing behind him. "But that's what makes you, you. You're not that tonight. So that's why I asked if there's anything wrong."

Yotsuba shakes her head.

"Nothing's wrong. I just have a few things that I have preoccupying me at the moment, that's all. They're nothing serious."

"Nothing serious? If that's the case, then why don't you attend our lessons instead of helping the track team out all the time like you are today?"

Glancing quickly down at her own chest, Yotsuba only now realizes that she's wearing the track team's jersey, which immediately gives away what she's been doing this evening.

"A-Aaaah! This - this is - " Yotsuba stammers, feeling warmth rush up to her face in embarrassment as she turns sideways so that her tutor can't see her jersey as well, but he just sighs and waves his hand dismissively.

"Whatever, I don't care. I've already told you off enough times this week, and I haven't forgotten that there wasn't going to be a lesson this weekend, so you can do whatever you want today, including practicing for the track meet."

Smiling up at her tutor, Yotsuba nods. "Thanks for letting me off the hook, Uesugi-sensei ~ "

"You know I don't like being called 'Sensei'..."

Fuutarou looks around the park, surveying their surroundings briefly.

"So what brings you here? Your run just happened to cross through this area or something or what?" he asks.

"Um, yeah, something like that. I usually have my normal routes through the city, but sometimes, especially if I'm out running before dinner or something or at this time in the evening, I like going this route that takes me through the suburbs here," Yotsuba explains. "Plus, I get to visit this little park!"

Yotsuba spreads her arms out wide at the park in which she and her tutor stand.

"I actually come to this park all the time," she says, "especially when I'm feeling a bit down. When I am, I'll play a little on the swing sets here, because it helps me deal with whatever's bothering me, I guess. I know, I'm weird..."

"I find it weirder that you bother mentioning that when you just said that nothing's bothering you."

"Geeez, you just read into things way too deeply, that's why!" Yotsuba sighs heavily. "But anyways, that was the reason why I was hiding from you just now, because I was honestly pretty surprised that you knew about this place too. What about you, though? How do _you _know about this place?"

"I happened upon it a long time ago. I think this park's been here as long as I can remember," Fuutarou remarks, also taking another look around the park. "It's pretty nicely tucked away in this corner of the city; nothing really happens here, since these are just the suburbs that we're in. On days when there's not much going on, sometimes I'll come down here to get a quick workout in, since I don't want to bother with a gym membership or anything. So I just do the usual workout of a hundred push-ups, a hundred sit-ups, a hundred squats, and ten kilometers."

"That sounds like some kinda superhero workout! But you can always just ask us to pay for a gym membership for you," Yotsuba suggests. "This park _is _pretty out of the way from most of the places we go to around the city, so coming down here's a bit of a pain, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but I'm a mage, so distance doesn't mean _as _much to me as it does to others, which means I shut up and deal with it. Besides, I like it here too. It's quiet, it's highly unlikely that I'll be bothered here, and there's a vending machine right around the corner that I can grab a drink from once I'm done with my workout."

"But why a _park_ like this to work out in? You're not trying to show off in front of the kids that play here, are you?"

"And look, Ellis, it's Kiddieland!" Pointing off into a random direction in the sky, Fuutarou swiftly pivots on his foot and stares incredulously down at Yotsuba. "Do I look like some sort of queer to you?"

"I'll...take that as a no."

"Obviously not. I only come by here during the mornings when kids at are school, or during the evening like this when the kids've already gone home. That, and I use a spell to make sure that people don't notice me here while I am working out here, so I'm not even _trying _to show off to anybody."

"A spell that makes people _not _notice you...then wait, why was I able to notice you here, then?"

"Well, the spell doesn't work quite as well on people who know me well or have been around me for long enough. You happen to be one of them, with how much time we've spent together."

"Ah..."

The way Fuutarou words this makes Yotsuba look away again with shyness.

"It's not something to be proud of, just so you know," her tutor says in a disapproving, low voice to her.

"I-I wasn't trying to be _p-proud _of it!" Yotsuba quickly pouts hard back up at Fuutarou. "Geez! You meanie, Uesugi-san! Ruining the mood like that..."

"Mood? What mood?"

"Oh no...for all the questions we get wrong on our practice tests, the one thing we're _never _wrong about is your sheer denseness..." Yotsuba begins shaking her head in her own disappointment too. "Tsk, tsk, tsk...that's going to bite you in the butt one day, Uesugi-san."

"You're telling me _now? _It already has, hasn't it? What, with what happened with Nino and all."

"Ah, that's right." Yotsuba's look of disappointment swiftly fades at the mention of this. "But...that wasn't because of your denseness. You couldn't be blamed for anything that happened back then."

"Well, that's what I'd like to think. It would make my life easier if I could just settle on that and move on."

While talking, Fuutarou strolls slowly back over to the swings and takes a seat on the one where he hung his shirt that he's since put back on, and Yotsuba joins him, sitting on the other swing next to him.

"But it's become apparent to me that that's not a good way of handling situations like that; just applying my own usual ways of handling business doesn't work here when my clients are the five of you, since it's not like I can approach you girls the same way that I can approach other clients or problems. My run-in with Itsuki in the beginning, back when I turned down her offer of joining our study group during our Golden Week vacation, taught me as much. So even if I think I haven't done anything wrong, even if you think I haven't done anything wrong, even if we agree that I haven't done anything wrong, the fact that Nino got angry primarily at me means that there must have been something that I did that made her act that way, even if it's something I just don't grasp."

"Thankfully she's calmed down since then. In fact, you two've been getting along way better nowadays than you ever have," Yotsuba says encouragingly.

"Yeah, I guess that's the silver lining we got out of that. But it's Nino we're talking about; I don't really expect her to stay that way forever. Like, we know that she still sees me as an outsider to you girls. I feel like as long as she sees me that way, there's always a chance that she can explode like she did last time. And every time that happens, it'll only get worse and worse."

"Er, I don't know...Nino's been back to her usual self since then...it's not like what she acted like during those two weeks after midterms when she was getting quieter and legit acting a bit out of character..."

"Then I'll just have to take your word for it, huh?"

"Mmuuu, you sound like you don't want to."

"I just don't like taking other people's words for something in general. I'd rather make sure that something doesn't happen myself...but this seems like it's something that I can't completely handle on my own."

Those words weigh heavily on Yotsuba's conscience.

"Uesugi-san, how do you - "

But Fuutarou stands up just as Yotsuba begins to talk again.

"Sorry, I know we just sat down, but I'm gonna go grab a drink from that vending machine real quick; I'm kinda thirsty after working out," Fuutarou apologizes quickly, pointing over to the vending machine by the adjacent road nearby.

"Ah, then I'll come with you," Yotsuba offers, and the two of them head to the vending machine together. "I'll pay. What would you like?"

"You're paying? Do you even have your purse on you?" Fuutarou wisely points out, and to Yotsuba's dismay, she realizes that she doesn't have her purse since she came out of the house with the sole intention of jogging.

"Ah, ahaha...guess I left it back at home since I figured I wouldn't need it just for jogging..."

"Looks like I'll be paying, then."

"Oh, um, no no, you don't...you don't have to worry about me," Yotsuba tries to say quickly, but Fuutarou just ignores her and points at the choices of beverages offered by this particular drink vending machine.

"What would you like? I usually go with regular water. There's an orange drink here that I think you'd like; you like oranges and tangerines and such, right?"

Unable to bring herself to try to convince her tutor to stop, Yotsuba simply nods a little and watches Fuutarou slip in some coins from his wallet into the vending machine coin slot and punch the corresponding buttons to have their two drinks plop out at the bottom chute. He hands Yotsuba her orange drink, and they return to the swing sets together to sit back down on them and enjoy their drinks. Fuutarou unscrews the cap of his freshly purchased water bottle and takes slow but big gulps out of it to quench his thirst while Yotsuba takes small sips, still unsure of whether or not she's deserving of Fuutarou's generosity when he's already been so providing for them all this time.

When Yotsuba looks back over at her tutor, though, she does a small double-take, because Fuutarou has chugged all of the water in one go. Letting out a big sigh of relief, Fuutarou screws the cap back on, looking over at Yotsuba with a hearty grin on his face.

"Been a hot minute since I last chugged an entire water bottle like that, ha ha ha!" he laughs moderately. "Every once in a while isn't so bad, huh?"

Yotsuba has seen that face before. That same laughing face. She never expected to see it again, in this day and age, even after all these years.

"So...what was it that you were asking me before we went to the vending machine?" Fuutarou asks, now that he's gotten water back into his system to replace what he's lost by sweating, but Yotsuba simply shakes her head and takes another bigger drink out of her orange beverage.

"It's fine," she says, smiling warmly back at her friend. "I already got the answer to it anyways."

"That so? Then better for me. If only all the questions you asked could be something like this where I don't even need to answer them directly for you to get it."

"Oh, geez, there you go again, Uesugi-san."

"Heh..."

As Yotsuba enjoys the orange drink that Fuutarou has bought for her, Fuutarou takes out his phone and unlocks his home screen. Yotsuba figures he's probably looking through his texts and email again like he usually does for his work, but a curious glance over at him shows that he's not looking at either of them this time. Instead, there's a lot of English words on screen that he's reading for some reason.

"...what are you reading?" she asks, letting her curiosity get the better of her.

"These are...lyrics. Song lyrics," Fuutarou answers. He tilts his phone to show her, even though the two of them both know that Yotsuba can't read a damn thing in English.

"Song lyrics? Oh right, you _did _sing that one song for us that one night...are you going to do that again?"

"Regretfully for my pride, yes."

Yotsuba's blue eyes immediately brighten in excited anticipation. "You will!? Oh boy, oh boy, I can't wait, ehehe ~ "

"It's for educational purposes first and foremost, a'ight? I'm not doing this just to hold a damn concert in your house or anything like that."

"Educational...oh, so you're going to sing us a song in English to help us with English?"

"Something like that. You notice how my lessons lately've been much more interactive and such, I hope. My plan for English was to do this, since maybe you girls might be interested enough in my singing that it'll help you with English. It probably won't work, but it's worth a shot, since _any _amount of improvement to most of your English scores is a welcome one."

"If you just wanna tell us that we're absolutely hopeless at English, just say it. It's not like you're lying or anything."

"Okay, you all blow at English."

_"N-Not THAT harshly!"_

Snorting with amusement, Fuutarou grins in response and continues reading the lyrics written on his phone while Yotsuba continues sipping on her orange drink, making sure not to drink it too quickly lest her body process the fluid rapidly and make her go to the bathroom faster than she plans. Then again, there is a public bathroom here at the park, but it's now getting quite dark, and she's not fond of the idea of using the bathroom here.

She continues to watch Fuutarou diligently read the lyrics on his phone. By this point, she can hear him muttering the lyrics, practicing singing them presumably for a future English lesson.

"...Uesugi-san, if you don't want to sing in front of me, I can head home first," Yotsuba offers, trying to be considerate, though as soon as she says this, she becomes afraid that he might take this the wrong way and think that she's making fun of his singing or something along those lines.

"Oh, don't worry, it's not because of that. In fact, if you want, I can sing another song for you. The one I have here is the one I'll be performing later for all of you, so it'd kinda be spoilers if I were to do that one here..."

Hesitant to accept Fuutarou's generosity yet again, Yotsuba tries to find it in her to refuse his offer, but she just can't. Not when it comes to Uesugi-san.

"Y...Yes, of course! I'd love to listen," Yotsuba forces herself to smile. Or maybe she's trying to stop herself from smiling so hard?

So the young tutor gets up from his swing set, turns off his phone, and slips it into his pocket as he clears his throat. Quickly replacing his Presence Concealment rune in the area with a simple repellant Boundary Field instead to both contain the sound levels he'll make and to keep potential passersby away from the area, Fuutarou also crafts a small music rune like before to give him a steady beat before beginning to sing in English.

_"Woke up this morning holding my head  
Thinking last night is one I'll regret  
Washing off the bad decisions, the blurry vision,  
The clues that I'm still a mess  
Spitting out the taste I have in my mouth  
Knowing what this all is really about  
Knowing there's an explanation, an expiration,  
I gotta figure shit out_

_And they're asking me if I can see the darkness down below  
And I know it's true, I say I do, when half the time I don't  
Maybe I can't make what it may take to leave this thing behind  
But I shut my eyes and cross each line and every time_

_I keep on running backwards, I keep on losing faith  
I thought I had the answers, I thought I knew the way  
My brother said be patient, my mother held my hand  
I don't know what I'm chasing, I don't know who I am_

_Waking in the dead of night, I can't sleep  
Sleeping in the light of day for like weeks  
Reality was out of focus, I could be hopeless,  
Instead I gritted my teeth  
__I didn't have the patience left to explain  
Didn't wanna wait while nobody came  
I know the path ahead's uneven, but while I'm breathing,  
I have to make my own lane_

_And they're asking me if I can see the darkness down below  
And I know it's true, I say I do, when half the time I don't  
Maybe I can't make what it may take to leave this thing behind  
But I shut my eyes and cross each line and every time_

_I keep on running backwards, I keep on losing faith  
I thought I had the answers, I thought I knew the way  
My brother said be patient, my mother held my hand  
I don't know what I'm chasing, I don't know who I am_

_So, I make it up as I go,  
O-oh, o-oh  
I make it up as I go,  
___O-oh, o-oh  
____So I make it up as I go,  
___O-oh, o-oh  
__I make it up as I go,  
As I go_

__I keep on running backwards, I keep on losing faith  
I thought I had the answers, I thought I knew the way  
My brother said be patient, my mother held my hand  
I don't know what I'm chasing, I don't know who I am__

_So, I make it up as I go,  
O-oh, o-oh  
I make it up as I go,  
___O-oh, o-oh  
____So I make it up as I go,  
___O-oh, o-oh  
__I make it up as I go,  
As I go."_

Once the song is finished, Fuutarou reaches over to deactivate the music rune and clears his throat again.

"Another bottle of water sounds pretty good right now...damn, I'm out of practice..." Fuutarou mutters, shaking his head at himself at his subpar performance. "Sorry you had to listen to that, that didn't come out sounding anywhere near as good as it sounded in my head..."

"I'm more surprised that you have the guts to say something like that, that a song you're singing sounds better in your head," Yotsuba says flatly.

"Shit, then I guess I shouldn't have even bothered." Fuutarou shrugs helplessly, but Yotsuba also shakes her head at this.

"I...I really enjoyed it, even if you did sound out of practice, and even if that kind of music isn't really...my kind of music, I guess. But I could still feel the effort you put into singing that song."

"Is that, like, a participation medal or something? Like one of those medals they give you because they don't want you to leave feeling all sad 'n stuff because you didn't win anything?"

Yotsuba starts to pout back at her tutor halfway through his train of thought. "Geez, there you go again. How are you always so consistent on inferring the worst stuff possible whenever someone says something?"

"Sorry, force of habit. I tend to think of the worst stuff first whenever I'm faced with a problem or situation, as you've noticed. You'll just have to deal with that, unfortunately, since that's a habit that I can't drop just because it sounds bad."

Again, Yotsuba shakes her head at her tutor, but with a small smile this time. "It's fine, we're all used to it already. Without that, you wouldn't be Uesugi-san, after all."

"...then why bring it up?"

"For revenge for all the times you get mad at me for getting things wrong! Like the difference between 'rice' and 'lice'!"

"But you _always _get that wrong! Even after three months!"

Yotsuba starts cracking up at her tutor's visible disturbance at her inability to differentiate those two particular English words. Fuutarou glances down at his phone in the meantime, even though he doesn't need to to know that it's gotten very dark and very late.

"We should get going, not safe for us to be out and about at a time like this, so let me take you back home," Fuutarou says as Yotsuba gets up from her own swing. "I should apologize for interrupting your jog, though."

"Are you sure this wasn't planned, though? Maybe you're sabotaging me and the track team because I'm not showing up to lessons to help them out instead?" Yotsuba suggests teasingly, leaning in towards her tutor.

"Look, I get that I might strike you as the super-smart, 500-IQ Super-Tutor who can kick ass and chew bubblegum, but I'm all out of gum, mainly because I don't chew gum to begin with. So today was purely coincidental."

"Suuuuuure, hehehe ~ !"

Giggling, Yotsuba heads out of the small park with her tutor, and hopping forward a few strides ahead of him, she spins around and gives him a big smile that's bright enough to light up the park on its own if it were capable of generating light.

"I really enjoyed just sitting here and hanging out," she proclaims sweetly. "Next time, let's bring everyone along and hang out like this, too!"

"Sure. Maybe sometime during summer vacation, I guess, when we've got the time."

"Is that a promise?"

"I don't like making promises, though. And we aren't kids anymore, Yotsuba."

"Awwww, you're one of _those _people who say they don't like making promises because they always break them, aren't you!"

"Shhhh, you're gonna expose my secret, Yotsuba, shhhhhh..."

_"Aw heck, I knew it, I knew it!"_

As the two of them hit the street to head back home, Fuutarou turns to Yotsuba.

"Then how about a promise that I _can _keep - how about I stop by tomorrow sometime after lunch? I've got some free time then too; I know I haven't been able to hang out much after our lessons these days."

"It's not going to be another lesson, is it? Not that I mind, of course!"

"No, nothing like that. I'm sure Miku would like to have me teach her some more cooking."

"And we can play Minecraft together too! Miku has a second computer that you can use!"

"Minecraft? What is that, a computer game?"

"Geez, you're _really _out of the loop these days, aren't you?"

"...what am I supposed to say to that, 'I'm sorry for not playing video games'?"

_"Yes."_

"Give me a break..."

* * *

"...Miku, what are these?"

The next day, two hours after noon, Yotsuba stands in front of the kitchen counter next to the sink, staring down with blank eyes at a long rectangular plate that holds three black rocks that are steaming and charred, with black crumbs flaking off them every so often. The fourth quintuplet has headed downstairs from her room after doing a bit of morning study to see what's for lunch, only to find Miku manning the kitchen instead of the usual Nino. According to Miku, the replacement cook for today's lunch, Nino and Itsuki have headed out to eat lunch, watch a movie, and to do some weekend grocery shopping together.

"Croquettes," the third quintuplet answers, filling the frying pan that she's used to cook them with water and setting it down on the counter next to the stove so that the water can moisturize the gunk and make it easier to wipe off after a little bit of time.

Yotsuba turns to Miku, still with the same pair of blank eyes. Even her usual green hair ribbon sits still on her head, as if it, too, is unsure of what to make of these _unique _creations made by Miku's not-very-good cooking hand.

"Oh, so you're saying they're not just rocks you picked up on your way back home from school the other day."

"I wasn't aware that Ichika was awake, isn't she still sleeping in her room?"

"Well, she _is_, but more to the point, if these are supposed to be croquettes..." Yotsuba glances back down at the three black rocks sitting amicably on their plate on the kitchen counter. "...then I'll be acing our next practice test that Uesugi-san gives us."

This last remark finally chips the ice that's encased Miku's face, which breaks into a mean pout.

"I tried my best on these, okay? So I'm sure they taste fine. Try one."

"Uhhh...suuuree, I guess..."

Yotsuba knows that Miku's been practicing cooking whenever she has the chance, especially when Fuutarou has the rare bit of time to spare to hang out with them after their lessons, so Miku isn't lying about doing her best. So in order not to be rude to her sister, she obliges, picking up one of these charred croquettes, taking a cautious bite of it, and chewing carefully. Once she swallows her bite, Yotsuba turns swiftly to her sister and declares,

"It sucks!"

And with that, Miku goes straight back to pouting.

"I mean, the most I can say about it is, at least it's not bad enough where I spit it back out immediately? That's what happened a while back when you tried making homemade soba, remember?"

"I-I've gotten better since then!"

"I know you did, that's why these croquettes are at least edible and not literal poison. But c'mon, Miku, like, you can't look at these and think to yourself that they taste fine." Setting down the croquette that she's taken a bite out of, Yotsuba picks up another and offers it to her sister. "Here, try one for yourself."

So Miku does take a bite out of her own croquette. But the instant her teeth crunches into it and cause her tongue to make contact with the charred, rough surface of her ungodly creation, Miku immediately rushes over to the large kitchen wastebasket that slides into a nearby cupboard, throws it open, and spits it out with the force of a fire hose.

"...I can't cook anymore," the third quintuplet moans, her voice filled to the brim with defeated despair as she slides the wastebasket back in and wipes her mouth. Her more visible eye that isn't half-draped with part of her bangs is twitching uncomfortably, a clear sign that the foul taste of the burnt croquette will remain fresh on her mind for some time to come.

"Well, it's not that, it's just that you need to practice more with Nino or Uesugi-san," Yotsuba says.

"I've been trying to get them to teach me more, but no one really has time anymore, now that finals is in two weeks. Fuutarou said himself that this is probably our last weekend where we'll have free time to ourselves to do whatever. So I've just been scraping by with trying to practice myself and cook on my own."

"Well, he _is _coming over today, though we don't know exactly when. Why did you make croquettes today, anyway?"

"Fuutarou sent me a recipe for a cheese and potato croquette," Miku says. She produces her phone and unlocks it to show Yotsuba the recipe that Fuutarou texted her. "I asked him for a suggestion on what I should try to cook, so he sent me this."

"Aaaaah, so Uesugi-san's the culprit behind this. I should have known..." Yotsuba nods sagely, and so does her hair ribbon.

"Don't make it sound like this was _his _fault."

"But...he _is _still partly responsible..."

Just then, the two quintuplets in the kitchen hear the front door open, and the following voices of their sisters plus one.

"The hell's that burnt smell? Who the hell burned shit in the kitchen?!" Nino voice comes rushing through the short hall and disperses throughout the first floor of the Nakano penthouse. "Oi, Miku! I know it was you! Turn yourself in peacefully and no one gets hurt! And by that, I mean no one's gonna get denied dinner tonight!"

Following the voice is the real deal, and Nino, the second quintuplet, plants herself in front of the open kitchen entrance and takes one look at the plate of burnt croquettes to locate the source of the smell.

"What in blazes did you just make? Are those _rocks?" _Nino gawks scornfully down at the sad-looking croquettes that have taken multiple rounds of insults to their persons; it's almost as if they literally seem more and more dejected every time someone regards them condescendingly like this.

"N-Not _you __too_, Nino!" Miku cries a little with yet another pout as Yotsuba can't help but crack up at the coincidence that both she and Nino would describe Miku's failed croquettes as rocks. Itsuki and Fuutarou join them promptly, having taken off their shoes and closed the front door behind them. Their tutor is carrying all of the girls' shopping bags _and _wears a rather large and oddly-shaped black backpack.

"We're making rocks? With what, clay? We studying geology today or something?" Fuutarou asks, slipping through the quintuplets who step aside for him to come through so that he can set down the bags of groceries that he's carried in for the girls.

"Did you run into Nino and Itsuki on your way here?" Miku asks, nodding down at the bags.

"Sure did."

"He makes a good pack mule, at least," Nino smirks as she stoops down to sort the groceries alongside her tutor. "So maybe I'll drag him around some more if I can't get Yotsuba to tag along."

"As if you haven't been doing that already."

"What, today's the first time I had you do this!"

"Excuse me, did you forget the morning back in Hawaii when you dragged me around that shopping mall so that I could carry all the shit you bought for you?"

"Oh, so was that why you went to the shopping mall first before everyone else that day?" Yotsuba asks, recalling their Golden Week vacation.

"Th-That was because you needed to buy some proper vacation clothes while you were there! Remember? You literally went down there with us with no other clothes except the usual ones you just wear to school!" Starting to yowl loudly, Nino points her sharp fingernailed index finger up at her tutor, approaching him threateningly to give her advance more pressure.

"I didn't _need _to buy them. I never asked for them, either."

"But it's still pathetic having someone like that just walk around sticking out like a sore thumb! And so since I was paying, I had you carry my shit for me! That's only natural!"

"Then food for thought for next time, don't bother buying stuff for me."

"Hmph! Fine by me, but that's not going to get you out of carrying around stuff for me in the future."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, let's just get this stuff sorted out."

"I'll help too," Miku offers, and so Yotsuba and Itsuki make themselves scarce and relegate themselves to the living room to chat and let those three sort out and properly stock their newly bought groceries into their proper places in the kitchen.

Once they're done putting the groceries away and the plastic bags are tied up to use as wastebasket bags later and stored in a cupboard filled with other tied plastic bags, Fuutarou dusts his hands off. "A'ight, done with that. Were you cooking before we got here?"

Miku nods. "I tried making the croquettes that you sent me the recipe for."

"That would explain the potatoes and cheese..." Nino eyes the ingredients that still remain on their counter that Miku's brought out to practice with. "But you've still got a hell of a long way to go before you can make these properly, you know that, right?"

"Y-You don't know that," Miku says quickly in self-defense.

"...uh, no, yes I do. And besides, it doesn't take someone like me who's actually good at cooking to know just from one look at that shit that your croquettes are bad." Nino jabs her index finger again, this time over at the somewhat deflated, blackened croquettes.

"Then how about this - " The third quintuplet turns to her tutor in an attempt to appeal to a source of authority that even Nino would respect. "Fuutarou, please try one and tell us what you think of it."

"Me? Sure, though even I wasn't sure what this was when I first saw it coming in here..."

So the young tutor obliges his student and takes a bite out of the third and last untouched burnt croquette. Both Nino and Miku watch with two different looks of expectation, one of brooding certainty on Nino's face and one of hopeful anticipation on Miku's.

Once Fuutaoru swallows his big bite out of Miku's burnt croquette, he turns to Miku.

"It's edible, at least," he shrugs.

Nino just rolls her eyes at this. "No one gives a shit if it's _edible_, is it _good?"_

"No, it's not."

Miku immediately slumps where she stands, her bangs drooping over completely to hide her face in humiliated defeat.

"What made you even think they'd be anything remotely good? Like, you literally burned everything; last I checked, people don't like eating ash, grease, and oil," Nino points out to her younger sister while their tutor continues to eat the rest of the croquette he's holding and turns to eat the rest. "And stop eating those, you're gonna get a stomachache! Just toss those out already."

"Nah, it'd be a waste of food," Fuutarou shrugs before popping the half of the croquette that Miku ate into his mouth. Miku happens to lift her head up as Fuutarou talks, just in time to see him munch on the one of the croquettes that she and Yotsuba took bites out of, and she ducks her head again to hide the blush that swiftly hits her in the face. But Miku realizes that she doesn't know which croquette it was that she took a bite out of, so maybe Fuutarou didn't actually give her another indirect kiss, only to raise her head a second time just in time to catch him eat the third and final croquette to seal the deal, which then causes her to duck her head down a second time as well.

"Waste of food? Seriously, that stuff's _burnt!" _Nino gripes back at her tutor, watching him in disapproval as he eats all the burned croquettes that Miku made and heaving a big sigh. "You're a total idiot, you know that?"

"I don't want to be called an idiot by the likes of you, by the way," he fires back smoothly, as if he'd been waiting for Nino to call him an idiot this whole time while eating. "Besides, like I said, they're at least edible. It's better than drinking water spiked with Heisei, that's for sure."

"Oh, shut the hell up! You're _still _salty about that?!"

"You _wouldn't _be? If I wasn't contractually obligated to prevent this from happening, I'd like to see _you _have someone spike your drink and get knocked the hell out, see how _you _like it."

"But you didn't even get knocked out anyway somehow! You just pretended to be, if I recall correctly! So what does it matter? No harm, no foul!"

"Yeah, if only it were _that _easy..."

"Oh, just shut up already." Reaching back, Nino ties her hair up into a high ponytail with a plain purple hairband that she keeps on one of the shelves in the kitchen for use while cooking so that her very long hair doesn't get in the way. "You said you didn't eat lunch yet, right? I'll make something quick for you. Miku, go join the others in the living room while I cook something up for Uesugi-kun."

"Huh? But - but I can he - "

But Nino throws out her finger at Miku, stopping her hand right in front of her face.

"No buts! You've made enough of a mess here trying to cook these croquettes, so you're banned from this kitchen for the rest of the day!"

Pouting again, with real emotion starting to bubble behind it, Miku pivots quickly in Fuutarou's direction. "Fuutarou, convince Nino to let me stay!"

But to her shocked dismay, even Fuutarou shrugs helplessly. "That's not my jurisdiction. Nino's the master of this kitchen, after all; it's not my place to say what she wants to have done here. We just gotta listen to what she wants."

Miku doesn't give up so easily, though. "Mmmuuu! Why're you siding with Nino today, of all days!" she frets while beginning to throw a small little tantrum.

"Well, I'm pretty bossy and strict whenever I'm tutoring you girls, right? So it's only fair that I respect what Nino wants. Cooking is _her _domain, after all, and we're both worse at it than she is. So she sets the rules."

"That's right, at least _someone _gets it in this household," Nino chuckles victoriously; it feels good having their tutor, whom Miku holds in high regard, backing Nino up like this. "Even Uesugi-kun acknowledges my superior ability, oh~hohohohohohoho ~ !"

Lifting her right hand up to the side of her mouth, Nino lets rip a glorious, stereotypical Japanese noblewoman's laugh that fills both the kitchen and the rest of the first floor so that even Itsuki and Yotsuba on the couch are not free from being subjected to it.

"We don't have a lesson today, so we can practice cooking together later on once Nino's done making lunch for me," Fuutarou quickly whispers into the dejected Miku's left ear while Nino is still laughing haughtily in her victory. Drawn in by this strange laugh that they've scarcely heard Nino make, Yotsuba shows up at the kitchen entrance to see what the commotion's about.

"Something happen to make Nino laugh like that?" she asks loudly to make herself heard over Nino's laugh, which is admittedly getting stretched out a bit too long.

"No, not really," Fuutarou shakes his head as the third quintuplet, her dashed spirits raised back up considerably thanks to her tutor's promise of more group cooking, goes to join Yotsuba to exit the kitchen as per Nino's order.

"Then why's Nino laughing like she's a princess or someone from a rich family?"

"Beats me. Maybe because she _is _from a rich family?"

"Ah, that's right! We _are _from a rich family, ehehe ~ "

As Yotsuba chuckles at her own lapse in judgment, she notices the plate on which the croquettes were sitting, which is now sitting empty on the counter.

"Wait, Uesugi-san, did you eat those...croquettes...?" Yotsuba asks, her words decelerating as she speaks.

"Hm? Oh, yeah, I did. Miku asked me to try them, so I did."

"Er...weren't they...they were burnt, you know?"

"I know."

Yotsuba watches silently as Fuutarou clears the plate and brings it over to the sink to wash it, her face warming up too at the realization of her second indirect kiss with her tutor. By this point, Nino is over laughing like this and waves her hand at her two younger sisters to shoo them away.

"Alright, kitchen's off-limits until I'm done making some lunch for this dumbass, so go hang out in the living room or something," Nino calls to them amidst the sound of running water next to her.

"Who the hell's the _real _dumbass, though, that's the _real _question."

"Just shut up for a damn second when I tell you to, will you!?"

"One...okay, it's been one second."

_"Do you want me to make lunch for you or not!?"_

The growing argument between the two compel Miku and Yotsuba to remove themselves from the scene, lest Nino turn to them as an outlet for her recurring anger, but once she hears them walk away, she leans in next to her tutor and says under her breath,

"They're gone now. Do it."

Setting the newly washed plate on the dish rack next to the sink, Fuutarou silently casts a rune that covers the kitchen, establishing another small Bounded Field that alters their presences in such a way that the rest of the quintuplets in the living room will not notice what Fuutarou and Nino talk about unless they physically enter the Field themselves. When Fuutarou casts it, Nino can clearly sense a small spike of magical energy emitting from Fuutarou's direction.

"So what's this about?" the young mage asks Nino, who consolidates the ingredients that Miku brought out to make croquettes and makes a round of the kitchen to bring over more.

"Nothing much. I just wanted to ask you something that I've been meaning to ask you for some time now, and I figured this'd be the best time."

"When the rest of your sisters are literally right here?" Fuutarou points his thumb in the others' direction.

"That's fine; I figured you'd have spells that would let you do something like this."

"And how would you know?"

"How the hell else are you sleeping all the time through class without our teachers telling you off all the time? Even if Papa's made sure that the school board can't do anything about your so-called delinquent behavior. You're not the type to put up with teachers yelling at you for sleeping in class all the time, so you must be doing something to keep them off your back."

Folding his arms in surprise, Fuutarou lets a wry grin form on his face. "I'm surprised you figured out as much."

"Look, we might be hopeless at taking tests and academics and stuff, but I can assure you that we're much better at real life stuff like this. Even Yotsuba."

The young mage watches his student work her own magic in the kitchen, swiftly preparing Miku's ingredients for another batch of croquettes that won't be completely burned this time.

"You're making croquettes too?" he asks curiously.

"Why not? Miku already brought out the ingredients. And it's been a while since I last made croquettes, so it'll be a good refresher for me." Nino hesitates for a moment. "...you don't mind croquettes, do you? I guess I should've asked you that first..."

"Any food is good food for me. So long as it doesn't outright poison me or kill me."

"Oh, so you're saying that I can burn everything like Miku did and you'll be okay with it?"

"Add 'intentionally bad food' to that list of food I don't think is good."

"Tch."

_"Are you really going to make me lunch or not? _Because I can just go down to Family Mart nearby and grab lunch there if you're gonna threaten me like that, sheesh."

"_I'm working on it right now, are you fucking blind, you brainless idiot?! _Also, check the rice cooker for me and see if there's any rice left in there."

So Fuutarou slaps open the rice cooker lid and peers inside.

"None."

"Shit, then I guess I forgot to cook more rice before leaving today. Do me a favor and cook more rice for me while I'm working on this. You can at least do that, right?"

"My name isn't Yotsuba, so yes, I can..."

The tutor fetches a bowl full of rice, rinses it thoroughly at the sink, pours out the sink water, repeats this process a few times, then draws fresh filtered water from a special faucet on the corner of the sink to pour both the water and the rinsed rice into the rice cooker before closing the lid and punching in the correct settings to get the rice cooker to begin doing its job.

"I set it to speed-cook, if that's alright with you," he informs Nino, who begins frying her own batch of croquettes.

"Obviously. You want rice to go with these croquettes, don't you?"

"I don't mind, no. Mind if I use some of the furikake you bought on the rice, too?"

"No, go ahead."

So Fuutarou grabs the new, unopened salmon furikake jar in one of the cupboards above Nino.

"You don't want me to help you at all with this?" he offers, but Nino shakes her head.

"It's fine. I did force you to carry all those bags in for us when we ran into each other outside, after all."

"Even though we met like ten minutes before we got here? My, my, how generous of you."

"Just shut up already, God you're so annoying sometimes..."

Nino gazes down at the sizzling croquettes sitting in the frying pan, cooking.

"...just out of curiosity," she speaks up again as Fuutarou checks his phone for emails and texts, standing next to his upright black guitar case that he's set down back when he helped sort out the groceries. "Remember when you made onigiri that weekend? When I was...y'know, all holed up in my room and whatnot?"

"Onigiri...yeah, what about them? Were they bad?"

"No, no, they were good..."

"Oh. Good to know, then."

"But that's not what I wanted to ask."

"Then what _did _you want to ask?"

After a moment's hesitation, Nino turns her head a little, her right blue eye barely managing to peek out past her side bangs over at Fuutarou.

"...you didn't make onigiri on purpose that day, did you?"

Narrowing his eyes uncertainly, Fuutarou raises his head up from his phone to gaze back at his student.

"On purpose? I'm not quite sure what you mean by that."

"As in...remember what you said to me when you were outside my door? About how...you'd bring me lunch."

Fuutarou blinks back at her.

"Aren't you looking too deep into that? Besides, you told me to forget about bringing you lunch, so I didn't," he simply shrugs, returning to his phone.

"Oh. Yeah...I guess."

Gripping the tongs she's using to flip the croquettes over to make sure that they're evenly cooked, Nino finds herself biting the inside of her lower lip again. The small but sharp pain does little to make her forget, as she hoped it would, the familiar boiling frustration that she feels at herself again. It would appear that there was no point in wasting her time dwelling on something as stupid as this. Yeah, someone like him wouldn't care to think that many steps ahead, even if he's smart enough to do so. Especially not with how she acted towards him that previous night.

"But I'm relieved to know you thought they were good. That's a pretty big weight off my shoulders, not gonna lie."

About to pick up a finished croquette, Nino freezes.

"Honestly, I thought you wouldn't touch them at all, so the fact that you ate them at all is a pretty big relief," Fuutarou admits, looking up to see Nino turn around with a finished croquette held in her pair of chopsticks that have replaced her tongs. Having let the oil drip off as much as possible before pulling it away from the frying pan, Nino, holding out the croquette in her pair of chopsticks while holding her left hand underneath it so that the breadcrumbs don't fall down to the floor, offers it to her tutor with a smile - half cheeky, half teasing, and completely warm.

"Alright, Uesugi-kun, say it," Nino continues grinning up at him as she steps in closer. "Say the thing. You know what it is."

"Goddamn it, Nino, you too? I already have Ichika teasing the shit out of me enough with this..."

"You wanna eat? Do as I say. You were the one who said that I set the rules around here, so you dug your own grave with that."

"Khh...I did say that. Ugh, fine...Aaaaaah."

Relenting, Fuutarou bites off half of the croquette at once.

"Good boy. Wasn't so hard, now, was it?" Nino watches her tutor munch on the food she's made for him. "So? How is it?"

The tutor nods strongly. "It's really good. Didn't you say you hadn't made croquettes in a while?"

"What can I say, I'm just _that _good." Nino puts her left hand on her hip smugly. "Now you know what it feels like dealing with _you _tutor us all day."

"...do I really come off like that to you? I thought I was just tutoring..."

"Oh, you have _no _idea. You're still as annoying as you were three months ago, I'll have you know."

"Uh-huh. So what changed between then and now?"

The second quintuplet once again smiles brightly back up at her tutor.

"You're supposed to be the smart one, aren't you? You figure it out. Say it again."

Another "Aaaaahh" and more crunching noises follow in the kitchen as Nino feeds Fuutarou the rest of the croquette in her chopsticks.

* * *

"Mmmmmm ~ that was a good lunch!" Ichika stretches mightily, having just woken up before Nino sent her sisters to go wake their eldest quintuplet sister up to eat with their visiting tutor. Miku and Yotsuba already ate, so they did not partake in the croquettes that Nino cooked for Fuutarou, but they did still sit with him at the dinner table just to hang out as he ate his belated lunch with the still-groggy Ichika.

"That's all you'll eat?" Fuutarou asks with a little concern, pointing his chopsticks over at Ichika's small plate. She's only eaten three or four croquettes when Fuutarou is already working on his sixth or seventh, with plenty more on the platter that Nino's piled them on. "You should eat more; I'd feel bad for eating more than someone who actually lives here."

"Ahaha, I'm perfectly fine. I don't really like eating too much right after I've woken up, after all," the eldest quint explains shortly. "I'll eat more for dinner, I promise. _You're _the one who should eat up as much as you can."

"Working on it."

Miku, Yotsuba, and Itsuki, all seated at the dinner table, continue watching Fuutarou rip off half a cheesy potato croquette at once with his front teeth and chew swiftly, being the faster eater that he is.

"Don't you feel weirded out by everyone just watching you eat like that?" Nino asks, joining them as well once she's done washing her hands and cleaning up after herself in the kitchen.

"Not really. But now that you point it out..." The young tutor looks around at his small audience. "...I guess it's one of those things where it only feels a bit weird after someone points it out to you."

"Hey, we're just making sure that you're getting enough to eat," Yotsuba points out, and Miku nods in support.

"It's also rare to see you eat so much at once. You usually only eat only as much as we do whenever you stay over for dinner on weekdays," the third quintuplet notes observantly.

Fuutarou nods curtly while reaching for his ninth croquette. "I'll admit that I've been _very _busy lately, a lot more than usual, so I haven't been able to eat regularly. I've had to get by on one meal a day, pretty much."

"Well, then it was good that you stopped by for free food, you hobo," Nino smirks down at him, having stopped behind Ichika's chair at the table to watch him eat as well.

"Isn't it also because you're liking Nino's cooking more and more, though? Nino's cooking is sooooo good, isn't it?" Chuckling lightly, the eldest quintuplet resumes her teasing act that she likes doing towards her tutor.

"I mean, it was always good. I was just especially hungry today."

"Well spoken like the freeloader that you are," Nino interjects.

"Freeloader? Me? That's rich, coming from someone like you." Fuutarou simply stuffs his mouth with another whole croquette to make that ten while staring right back into Nino's blue eyes before diverting his gaze to his left, where next to him sits the youngest quintuplet, who's eyeing the croquettes that her tutor is practically inhaling with how fast he's eating them just like a cat eyeing a fish swimming around in its tank. Following his gaze, Nino also notices Itsuki's hungry look and the telltale trails of saliva that are starting to ooze out of the corners of her mouth and barks lightly at her.

"Itsuki, we _just _ate lunch not that long ago, and you even got the large portion! How the hell are you _still _hungry?!"

"Well, it _is _Itsuki, after all..." Miku shrugs nonchalantly.

"Yep, that's our Itsuki, alright," Ichika agrees.

"Itsuki's cute today as well!" Yotsuba grins widely.

So Fuutarou diverts his eleventh croquette from the big platter and offers it silently to Itsuki, whose face was getting frustrated with the teasing she's receiving from her sisters but does a complete one-eighty and illuminates itself majestically, absolutely thrilled to be offered one of Nino's amazing croquettes. It feels as though smaller versions of the star-shaped hair ornaments that she wears on her sidelocks will begin flying straight out of her wide, happy blue eyes. Fuutarou barely has the time to react to the sheer speed with which the quintuplet with the seemingly bottomless stomach darts her face in to snatch the croquette whole off his chopsticks.

"Ugh...you're spoiling her, Uesugi-kun. Seriously," Nino groans, putting her hands on her hips while frowning at the two of them disapprovingly.

"Ah, don't worry about it." The quintuplets' tutor waves Nino down a little.

Yotsuba suddenly gasps a little, like she's just experienced an epiphany. "Wait, I know! I just thought of this! What if - what if Uesugi-san's trying to feed Itsuki like this so that he can be even _harsher _on us during our lessons later this week?!"

"As in, he's trying to buy us off, starting with Itsuki? Oh my, oh my, how _devious, _Fuutarou-kun," Ichika laughs shortly again. "How do you suppose you'll buy the rest of us off, though?"

"Buy the rest of you off? Uh, let's see..." Fuutarou pauses to shovel some fluffy white rice seasoned with sprinkled salmon furikake into his mouth, which he consumes even _faster _than the croquettes. "Going top down, for you Ichika, that's easy, I'd let you sleep through my lessons for a day."

At this, Ichika gasps.

"Deal!" she says firmly, throwing forward her hand in a handshake.

"You're way too cheap, Ichika! You sleep so goddamn much as it is already!" Nino yowls at her older sister, but Fuutarou turns to her now.

"Nino...what would I do for you..."

Fuutarou leans slightly forward in his seat, narrowing his own eyes to gaze up at the second quintuplet intently. Nino returns it without a blink of her own eyes, and for almost a full minute, the two of them stare at each other like this, as if they're having an impromptu staring contest, with Itsuki munching on some more croquettes in the background. However, Fuutarou concedes this staring contest, sighing lightly.

"...alright, moving on - "

_"Hey, what the shit! You couldn't even think of ONE thing that I'd like?!" _Nino grumpily hisses back at her tutor.

"That's because I don't know what you'd like. Like, you and Ichika are the two I spend the least amount of time with so I don't know you two all that well compared to everyone else, and you usually like going off and doing your own thing at school and such."

"Plus, it doesn't help that you always act like this towards him, too," Miku also adds. "It wouldn't kill you to be a bit nicer to him, right?"

"I'm being plenty nice to him as is, making him all this food for him! Honestly, I should've just made a third of this..."

"Actually, that's a good point you bring up. Why _did _you make so much food? You knew you were basically only cooking for Ichika and Uesugi-san, yet you made enough to feed all of us if Uesugi-san wasn't totally demolishing everything on his own anyway," Yotsuba wonders aloud to her older sister.

"Don't forget Itsuki," Fuutarou nods sideways to Itsuki to his left, who's about to take a big bite out of her fifth croquette, freezes when her name is mentioned by her tutor, and shyly turns away to nibble on her croquette discretely like a hamster nibbling on leaf of lettuce.

"Well, Nino's a pretty materialistic girl, so you could just take her shopping or something at some point. I'm sure she'll let you know what she'd like - you love shopping for phone accessories, don't you? You did that last time with Miku when you lost your phone," Ichika reminds her.

"You think I'd let Uesugi-kun buy me out with just a few phone stickers or something? Might I remind you that Yotsuba bought _him _a whole damn smartwatch, so what're the chances that he's even going to be able to afford something that's more than just a phone case for me?"

"I'm sure there's something," Ichika shrugs again.

"Doesn't Nino really like those fairy tales of handsome princes coming to save the princesses or something like that? What if Uesugi-san gets Nino a white horse?" Yotsuba laughs, causing her sisters except Nino to giggle along with her.

"A white horse, huh? That's pretty specific, but I'm sure I could make something work..." Fuutarou mutters, sounding like he's seriously considering such a ridiculous option.

"Don't you dare, Uesugi-kun. I know we're rich, but where the hell are we even gonna keep a whole damn horse!?"

"But your sisters aren't lying when you said you liked white horses?"

"No! They're just trolling; don't believe them so easily, what the crap!"

"Well, okay, okay, she might not like _white horses _specifically, but she used to go on to us about how she absolutely _adores _fairy tales like that. She even told us about how she dreamed that she'd meet her Prince Charming who'd come by and save her from a terrible enemy by whisking her away on a white horse!" Ichika laughs harder than before, so amused is she just recalling one of Nino's more private moments.

Surprisingly, Nino doesn't seem to react strongly to Ichika revealing one of her more such sensitive moments, instead simply turning away from the table a little with a grumpy blush on her cheeks.

"S-So what? I _do _like stories like that, what's so wrong with them?" She stubbornly defends herself, but her voice is markedly lower than before.

"So something related to fairy tales...? I'm not sure what I should do about that, so I'll think it over..." Fuutarou turns to Miku. "Miku...I could get you a game about Se - "

"Ah! Ah, aaaaah!" In a panic at realizing what he's about to reveal, Miku immediately begins flailing her hands rather cutely in front of her tutor's face to get him to shut up.

"A game about Se...? What does he mean, Miku?" Yotsuba asks innocently, but Itsuki and Ichika incorrectly finish the word in their minds and begin to display vastly differing responses: Ichika starts grinning from ear to ear like a mischievous cat, while Itsuki begins to blush furiously, the hardest Fuutarou has seen her go nuclear in the three months he's known her.

"H-H-H-H-_HOW INDECEEEEEEEEEENT! ! ! ! !" _Itsuki cries, furiously chomping down yet another croquette to get it out of her hands as quickly as possible.

"Heh heh heh...Fuutarou-kun, so _that's _how it is, huh? I figured it'd only be a matter of time before you started making moves on my sisters..." Ichika shakes her head with yet another amused grin.

Nino, Miku, and Yotsuba are all rather confused at why their two sisters are reacting this way in response to what Fuutarou said, but soon Nino gets it, and she, too, begins to go ballistic, starting to fume out of her ears as she silently glares daggers out of her blue eyes back at the boy sitting across the table from her.

**"You put one finger on any of us and I swear to God, Uesugi, I'm going to give you a one-way ticket straight to hell, and I'll _follow you there to make damn sure you stay there...!"_**

Yotsuba and Miku continue to look rather troubled at everyone's weird reactions. "Uhhh...mind filling us in on this? Are we just dummies for not getting it?" Yotsuba wonders aloud with a mentally tired sigh.

"I think they confused me saying that I'm going to give Miku a game about sex," Fuutarou says flatly, and the sound of his teeth crunching into his fourteen and final croquette to clear the platter for good is just about the loudest thing in the house for a few moments.

That brief silence is merely the calm before the storm, because just as expected, the dinner table positively erupts like a dormant volcano suddenly becoming active without warning. Ichika shrieks, beside herself with highly amused disbelief that Fuutarou would be so blunt; Nino starts shrieking like a banshee at the top of her lungs, dashing around the table to charge at her own tutor to seize his neck with both hands to get him to shut up; Miku almost falls out of her chair like she's been knocked over by a sudden tidal wave; Yotsuba can't help but to begin making short and high-pitched little squeals of embarrassment as she hides her face behind her hands; and Itsuki is already shouting **_"INDECENT! INDECENT! INDECEEEEEEEEEEEEENT! ! ! ! !" _**in Fuutarou's general direction.

**"Y-You son of a bitch! Shithead! Harasser! Lowlife! Loser! Creep! Bastard! Horny little dipshit!"**

Hurling all the insults that she can think of with the adrenaline of embarrassment fueling her, the second quintuplet, having successfully wrapped her surprisingly strong hands around her own tutor's neck, shakes him rather violently back and forth. Fuutarou's glad that he managed to swallow his last croquette _before _Nino grabbed him by the neck like this.

"Alright, alright, Nino, stop, stop, you're actually gonna hurt him if you keep doing that," Ichika calls out to her violent sister once she herself has managed to calm herself down enough from the unbelievable bluntness of their tutor. As much as she'd love to continue, Nino very reluctantly heeds her sister's words and lets go of him, but the fierce look she has in her eyes still remains as she takes a step back, tussling her hair angrily.

"Honestly, guys like you with no delicacy are the fucking worst! The _worst_, you hear me?!" she seethes down at Fuutarou, who rubs his neck thoroughly. It would appear that the hidden, monstrous strength she's got and can apply to her punches also translates just as well to choking, too.

"I'd just like to set the record straight and let everyone know that _I _wasn't the one who thought of that first. If anything, it was you three who thought of it first," Fuutarou declares, pointing at Ichika, Nino, and Itsuki. "And since Miku and Yotsuba didn't understand why the three of you were reacting like that, I did my job as a tutor and clarified it for them."

_"That's something you DIDN'T need to tutor us about, you little shit!"_

"Honestly! How could our own tutor say such d-d-dirty things like that!" Itsuki cries, shaking her head in acute disapproval as well.

"Oh, c'mon, calm down, guys. It's not like Fuutarou-kun's wrong either, y'know? We did think of that on our own; Miku interrupted what he was going to say, and he's not the type of person to just say something like that all on his own without being provoked," the first quintuplet points out to bring reason to the dinner table.

"Okay, fine, that might be true, but - but he didn't need to just go off and say something like that in front of all of us!" Nino argues furiously back. "He could at _least _have a sense of _decency!"_

"A sense of decency, coming from a guy like me who sleeps in class and goes around beating people up at night. Out of all the services I offer, being a decent person is probably something I can't provide."

"Oh, shut the hell up with all that business talk already!"

By now, Miku's managed to pull herself back up onto her seat, but she's flattened her face against her arms down on the table, hiding her furiously blushing face from view of her tutor's eyes. Yotsuba isn't faring much better, her own hair ribbon drooping down as if to hide her eyes too, since she doesn't have her own long bangs that can do that for her like her sister next to her does.

"Um - well, m-more to the point, wh-what were you _going _to say, before Miku interrupted you...?" the fourth quintuplet finally manages to spit out.

Fuutarou glances down at the facedesking Miku. "...well, I'd like to say what I was originally going to say so that I can at least clear up this little misunderstand that we've got on our hands, but...I guess it's safe to say that she'd rather have me not say."

Narrowing her eyes down at Miku as well this time, Nino begins to mutter the last word that was about to come out of Fuutarou's mouth.

"Se...se...wait a minute," Nino frowns even more deeply at her headphoned younger sister, "was he...was he about to say 'Sengoku', Miku?"

Miku immediately sits up in alarm quickly, so fast, in fact, that she has to slump a little as her vision goes blurry for a second because of the physiological shock of the blood in her head being subjected to a change of gravity with such quickness. Sensing this, Fuutarou is about to obey his first instinct which is to reach out with his hand to provide a small medical spell that will help Miku's head adjust more quickly so that her temporary loss of vision won't be as uncomfortable, but he stops himself, remembering Nino's words about not putting a finger on her or else. And he'd rather not deal with another one of Nino's outbursts, since that's going to bother everyone anyway.

"Uh oh, are you okay, Miku?" Yotsuba asks, gently propping her upright on her seat as Miku nods.

"Yeah, don't worry. I just...sat up too quickly there." Miku then eyes her older sister with diluted alarm. "And...Nino, h-how did you know...?"

"Oh, I was actually right about that one. Well, you have that Takeda emblem or whatever it is as your phone wallpaper ever since, like, middle school, right?"

The mention of her phone wallpaper causes Miku to jolt in her seat before she once more hides her face behind her hands, whimpering like a sad puppy.

"Miku sounds like we just found out about her dirty little secret or something," Ichika remarks. "I don't really get what's so embarrassing about that, Miku, to be honest. You always did well on your history exams, right? So that would just make sense."

"And remember? Back when Uesugi-san went over our midterms together with us? He mentioned that Miku scored really well on the questions in the Social Studies exam that involved Sengoku warlords and stuff like that," Yotsuba also notes, but this only serves to intensify Miku's embarrassed whimpers, and Yotsuba pats her on the back reassuringly. "Oh, it's okay, Miku, there, there. It's nothing to get embarrassed over."

"Yeah. At least it's better than Yotsuba still wearing underwear that she's worn since elementary school," Ichika giggles.

_"I-ICHIKAAAAAA! ! ! !" _Yotsuba suddenly explodes herself, fretting at her oldest sister who once more cracks up into another round of laughter. "N-Not in front of Uesugi-san, at least, come _ooooon!"_

Fuutarou takes a sip from his glass of water that Nino's provided for him at the beginning of his meal. "What is this, real Candid Camera hours?"

"That's it! That's exactly it! You're under a secret contract with a television agency or whatever and you're filming us in secret to get us to expose our darkest secrets!" Nino yet again jabs her index finger accusingly at Fuutarou. "Ha! Caught'cha now, Uesugi-kun! You can't get away with this!"

"The only dark secret of yours that I bother caring about is your horrible test scores from the beginning of the trimester," Fuutarou says extremely dryly, even though he's just taken a drink of water. "Seriously, without your dad pulling some strings, how the hell were the five of you even _supposed _to get accepted into any high school?"

Sighing along with him, Itsuki, who's gone to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water of her own to calm herself down, sits back down in her seat, sipping her water.

"I ask myself that every day," she mutters emptily.

Meanwhile, the topic of her elementary school underwear still fresh on her mind, Yotsuba desperately searches for a diversionary topic to distract everyone with and manages to remember the guitar case that she saw their tutor walk into their house with earlier.

"Th-That's right! Uesugi-san, you - you came here with a guitar case, right? What's that all about?" she asks quickly, stumbling over several of her words in the process.

But even as she says this, Yotsuba recalls her chance meeting with her tutor yesterday evening at the park.

"Yeah, I meant to ask you about that too, actually. What's with that guitar case? You didn't come here to play a stupid song for us like you did last time, did you?" Nino smirks condescendingly down at her classmate, who looks back up at her with the straightest face she's ever seen him wear and nod matter-of-factly.

"Actually, yes, I've come to make an absolute embarrassment out of myself again like last time. I can do that right now if you'd like just so that I can get it over with sooner rather than later."

"Oooh, another performance? Will it be a Western song like last time? I love listening to English songs, even though I usually don't understand a word they say, aha ~ " Ichika giggles.

"You're in luck; it _is _another English song. Though it might be a bit different to what you girls are probably used to hearing, or like hearing."

"That just gets me even _more _interested, you know!" Ichika calls after her tutor as he and Nino clear their plates away, now that he and Itsuki have devoured the entire batch of croquettes that Nino has made for him.

Uesugi returns from the kitchen with the black guitar case that he's borrowed from his friend, having left it there and forgotten to bring it back earlier.

"Can I bring this chair over? I like sitting while I play," Fuutarou asks Nino.

"I guess...make sure to _lift the chair_, though, don't be like Yotsuba and just drag the chairs all across the floor 'cause doing that'll damage the floors."

"Yeah, yeah."

So the quintuplets follow their tutor into the nearby living room, where Fuutarou sets his chair down in front of the large flatscreen TV as the girls pile onto the long couch directly facing him. Miku is trying to do her best to hide the growing giddiness that she feels in her stomach, having some insider knowledge about what Fuutarou is about to do.

"It feels like we're about to attend a concert or something," Ichika remarks to her sisters as she packs in with Nino.

"Except this concert's gonna suck," the second quintuplet groans with an obvious roll of her eyes.

"Oh c'mon, don't say that."

"At the very least, you should all treat this as an English exercise," Itsuki reminds her sisters.

"Ah, there goes Itsuki again and sounding like Uesugi-san..." Yotsuba calls out.

"I-I am not _trying _to sound like him! I am simply suggesting that you should all take this opportunity to try to pay attention to what he is saying since he will be singing in English!"

"Itsuki's right, actually. The reason why I'm even going along with this whole singing thing is 'cause I feel like maybe it'll help you with your English studies just a little bit, since I know Ichika likes listening to Western songs like this, and maybe Nino does too since she's the best at English out of all of you. Of course, we'll see just how much of a help these are, but...in any case, I'm doing whatever I can to make our lessons more interactive and interesting so that you girls have an easier time retaining everything that you're learning..."

While delivering his rationale, Fuutarou takes the time to tune his guitar, plucking the strings to make sure that they are tuned properly. Itsuki then realizes suddenly that he's doing this purely by ear, without needing another instrument to give him some reference.

"Are you...tuning that guitar by _ear?" _she asks, letting her lower jaw go a little slack.

"Hm? Oh, yeah. It's not that difficult, if that's what you were getting at. And now that I think about it, didn't Ichika say that you used to sing before?"

"She sure did. We all actually took singing lessons, but Itsuki took them for a longer period of time, when the rest of us stopped."

"I take it that she isn't taking those singing lessons anymore, though, right?"

Itsuki shakes her head. "Not anymore, you are correct. My studies eventually took priority..."

"Doesn't seem like that was the smartest move, given how little that's helped."

_"I am well aware of how things have turned out, thank you very much!"_

With a bemused grin, Fuutarou finishes his guitar tuning swiftly, having already done much of it prior to arriving at the Nakano penthouse, and he casts his usual music runes beside him that magically synthesize other instruments that Fuutarou cannot provide on his own. Clearing his throat and taking one more drink of water from the glass that he's brought with him from the dinner table, he seats himself again before the waiting quintuplets, most eager and one indifferent at most, and counts himself down silently this time before beginning to strum the strings of his borrowed guitar.

_"With a piece in my hand and bloodshot eyes  
I walked to the water for a last goodbye  
He begged so much, it clouded my mind  
One thing's clear, the man's gotta die  
_

_Might makes right, so he said  
When he held all the keys over our head  
I lived through that grip but now he'll learn  
At the end with the tables turned_

_Lord forgive me..._

_Take me on -  
Down the river where the guilt can't find a red-handed sinner  
On -  
Where the grave can't cry - out  
'Cause I done wrong -  
Down the river with a hand on a Colt and a finger on the trigger and  
Long -  
Before dawn, they'll try to find - me  
So take me on down  
Take me on down  
_

_Well, I sank that body by the riverbank  
Caught a boat south, took off a hurricane  
With spotlights, dogs, yeah, the whole nine yards  
And breathin' down my neck and breathin' hard_

_Two weeks in a wild chase  
Across the highways, mountains, over seven states  
Found a man at the harbor, said that he could take me  
Across the ocean somewhere far away_

_Lord forgive me..._

_Take me on -  
Down the river where the guilt can't find a red-handed sinner  
On -  
Where the grave can't cry - out  
'Cause I done wrong -  
Down the river with a hand on a Colt and a finger on the trigger and  
Long -  
Before dawn, they'll try to find - me  
So take me on down  
Take me on down_

_I never saw 'em comin' on the boarding plank  
Now I'm starin' down the barrel at point-blank range  
I make for the water, jumpin' off the ledge  
But not before I catch two to the chest_

_Now there's blood and water fillin' up my lungs  
Blood and water fillin' up my lungs  
My heart is beatin' like a fading drum  
Lord, forgive me, here I come..._

__Take me on -  
Down the river where the guilt can't find a red-handed sinner  
On -  
Where the grave can't cry - out  
'Cause I done wrong -  
Down the river with a hand on a Colt and a finger on the trigger and  
Long -  
Before dawn, they'll try to find - me  
So take me on down__

__Lord, take me on down__

__Lord, take me,  
Just take me on down__

__Take me on down, yeah..."__

* * *

Snapping the latches of the guitar case closed after packing the instrument away, Fuutarou sets the guitar case down on the floor in front of the TV and puts the chair that he's used to perform before the girls back where it belongs at the dinner table. Yotsuba is climbing down the stairs as he's doing this.

"I've tucked Miku away in bed," she informs her tutor. She looks a bit pensive saying this.

"Thanks. Nino would kill me if she finds out if I ended up doing that."

Yotsuba quietly trots after Fuutarou as he shuffles back to the living room and eases himself down on the floor in front of the large glass windows that lead out to the veranda. It's mid-afternoon, and by this point the sun's rays are perfectly shining down on Fuutarou's spot on the floor, providing a natural heat source for him to indulge in for a little bit as he lays down on the hard floor, and Yotsuba sits down cross-legged beside him.

While Fuutarou was performing, Miku strangely fell fast asleep in the middle of it. And once he was done, after thanking him for his performance, Ichika said that she'd forgotten about an obligation for her part-time job and headed out quickly after changing. Nino, too, said that she needed to head out for a bit to meet with one of her friends and followed suit after Ichika, and Itsuki's since returned to her room to continue studying, leaving only Yotsuba to be Fuutarou's handler for the rest of the day until he needs to leave.

"...why was everyone acting so strangely today? Did they not like your singing?" Yotsuba murmurs aloud.

Fuutarou shrugs a little. "I guess not. I was unsure of how they'd react to it - I did say before that the song would be a type that you girls wouldn't be used to. I guess it was too much of a different style of music for them to really like."

Yotsuba lets herself gaze down at Fuutarou's face, whose eyes are closed as he silently enjoys the warmth of the sun's rays. Since he's got some more time to kill before he needs to leave to assume his mage's responsibilities for the night, Fuutarou is taking advantage of this spot in the house to soak up some much-needed sun.

"...but I liked this song a lot better than the one you sang for me yesterday," she says quietly, in an attempt to cheer her tutor up. "Because this one...this one, it felt like you really put a lot more effort into it. Even if I couldn't understand anything you were saying, that's...that's what I think."

"So you're admitting that you can't even use that as a way to help you with English, huh. There goes the _rest _of my reason to do anything like this anymore," Fuutarou grimly smirks, mainly at himself.

"Oh c'mon, that's not what I mean..."

Opening his eyes to gaze back up at his student, Fuutarou calmly blinks and paces his breathing, lying on the floor with his hands behind his head to help cushion them against the floor. Yotsuba notices his hands adjusting themselves so that his knuckles don't start getting too sore, and she swiftly pulls over one of the smaller pillows from the long couch and wedges it in underneath his head. She receives a word of thanks from her tutor for this deed.

"But I just don't understand why everyone acted like that. It's like...they didn't recognize how much effort you put into this," Yotsuba finds herself muttering.

"Meh, don't worry about it. You leave that to me to worry about."

Yotsuba starts to nod, but her nod dies even before it really begins.

"...I know that I should just let you worry about it. But..." The fourth quintuplet looks even more uncertain and pensive than before as genuine feelings of dark, brooding indignation are simmering lightly in her chest somewhere. "...it's a bit frustrating, seeing my sisters act like that towards you. I just...want them to see how amazing of a person you are."

"Like I said, it's not worth it. I tried something that may or may not work, and it ended up not working. It's fine, I'll find another way to teach English more efficiently and interactively to everyone." Fuutarou closes his eyes again.

Yotsuba continues to gaze down at him. "...I know my sisters probably asked you this in different ways before, but...why do you go so far to help us like this?"

"...yeah, I've definitely answered that one before. Same reason that I've given everyone else; I make sure to do my absolute best on every and any contract that I get. It doesn't matter what it is; magework, teaching quintuplets, whatever. So long as my clientele isn't too hard to work with or anything unreasonable."

"But we're way different compared to your usual clients, right? It seems like we're the first ones you've had to tutor like this."

"...perceptive as always. Where are you going with this, though?"

"Well...I just..."

Yotsuba has words she wants to say, but she can't find the strength to speak them.

"...never mind. Forget I said anything."

The young mage continues to stare at his student like this for a few more moments with his open right eye before closing it again.

"If there's anything bothering you, Yotsuba, feel free to talk to me about it. Text me if you have to, now that we have each other's numbers," he says softly.

"Ah, it - it's fine! It's not a big deal, I'll get over it! I always do. So don't worry about it, Uesugi-san."

"...if you insist." Fuutarou sighs deeply through his nose. "Feels like back at the very beginning again. Remember our very first day? When you made me that Shirley Temple?"

Yotsuba smiles gently, able to bury her simmering feelings again. "Yes, of course."

"Yeah...feels like that all over again. With no one else around, and it was only you who was willing to work with me."

"Uh-huh, I remember that. Not like I've really made that much progress since then, despite being the first one to be willing to work with you, though. My test scores still suck, and I'm still the dumbest out of everybody, just like usual! Ehehe..."

"Mmm, maybe so. But still, it's worth mentioning for me that you were the very first one who changed out of the five of you. Because, let me tell ya, it was a big help and confidence booster for me that there was at least one of you who was willing to work with me in a type of job I'd never had before...at least one person among you five who was honest and straightforward, someone who would give me a chance to do my job from the get-go."

Yotsuba says nothing.

"And that still holds true even now, three months later, when I'm still trying to figure out the most effective way to be that tutor who's responsible for the five of you graduating school safely. Today, when I tried performing seriously to see if this could be a good way to teach English, everyone basically reacted as if they wanted to straight-up walk out on my ass; at least they were decent enough to let me finish before they did walk out. Miku just flat-out fell asleep, so that's real nice to know, I guess. And yet, again, you were the one who gave me a chance like this, encourage me like this. Of course, you could just be lying just to make me feel better about myself, but..."

"I-I'm not lying...! My sisters always tell you that I'm a terrible liar, don't they...?"

"They do, yeah, so I'll take your word for it. Either way, the fact that you're not like the rest of them and you've supported me while I've been struggling, honestly, to figure out how best to do this job of tutoring you and your sisters is something I deeply appreciate. I'm not sure how else to put that into words, since I'm not the best with them, but...I tried my best."

Rubbing his eyes a little, Fuutarou takes another deep breath through his nose, letting silence fall between the two of them again.

With his eyes closed, the young tutor hears Yotsuba quietly get up and take a few steps around him, near his head, so that she seats herself behind his head.

"Do you know why I'm always supporting you, Uesugi-san?"

"To improve your grades, I'd hope."

"Well, that _is _one reason, but...there's another reason."

Feeling Yotsuba draw her face near his, Fuutarou opens his black eyes to peer directly into Yotsuba's blue pearls floating directly over him, her peachy-red locks of hair flowing all around her head with the rays of sunlight drifting through the window next to them into the living room to give the young mage a truly one-of-a-kind perspective on the fourth quintuplet.

Reaching forward a little to gently press her palms against his cheeks upside-down, Yotsuba gives Fuutarou the gentlest smile he's had the pleasure of seeing on another human being.

"It's because...I like you."

The two classmates remain like this for a few moments, a few still moments shared only by them and will be remembered only by them. Sunlight dances in the air about them, and the two freshmen can hear nothing but their own soft breathing.

"...juuuuust kidding." Yotsuba's gentle smile swiftly morphs into that of mischief and trickery. "See? I'm lying to you. I _can_ lie when I want to ~ !"

Just before she's about to pull her face away from being so close to her tutor's, however, Yotsuba watches Fuutarou's eyes close slowly.

"...would be nice if you weren't."

* * *

"...hello? Yeah, it's me. Took your sweet time fuckin' callin' me after all these weeks of radio silence, huh? Fucking shitter."

A tall man in a red leather jacket, roughened jeans, and blonde hair stands on the corner of a relatively empty indoor parking garage. Tossing and catching a knife up and down in the air with his right hand, his other hand is occupied with holding a phone up to his ear that's broadcasting another man's gruff voice into it.

_"Yes, yes, you'll excuse me for that. Busy schedule and all that."_

"Busy schedule my fuckin' ass, you don't do _shit _for that job over there, and it ain't even a secret among us drug runners either."

_"Hahaha! So I see my reputation precedes me. But I do have to at least keep up appearances, so let's make this snappy. What's your progress looking like so far?"_

The man in the red leather jacket spits suddenly onto the garage floor in front of him, not caring for politeness or decency.

"That other mage...Uesugi's his name, I got a guy named Maeda who attends the same school as him to gather some intel on him wherever he can...he's a real fuckin' pain in the ass. Kills my boys, jacks my drugs, keeps those quints safe..."

_"You can't just track him down and kill him? What's stopping the likes of you?"_

"He and I fought before. I hate to admit it, but that kid's fuckin' good. The first time we met, I figured I could just go apeshit on him but I found out the hard way that that ain't the case with him, he ain't no pushover. He's not like most mages who fight just to feel like they're swinging a big dick that they don't got around; he actually uses his fuckin' brain too. Fuckin' hate people like him, but that's how it is. In any case, the first time we met in person, he cut me up good, and I had to stay back for a bit to recover."

_"But you ARE better now, right?"_

"That I am."

_"Then go find him again and kill him this time, now that you have a better idea of what he's like."_

"That's the fuckin' plan, bitch."

_"When I say kill, I mean kill. Don't be like the other fucking idiots who just stab the people I want dead a couple times and call it a day. Make absolute goddamn sure that that kid isn't breathing when you're done with him."_

"Yeah, thanks for the refresher course in Homicide 101." The man in the leather jacket turns around to survey the mess he's made: an alarmingly big pool of blood gathered near one of the turns in the middle of the indoor parking garage, and inside the pool are torn human limbs like arms and legs; there's even a decapitated head of a human female staring with missing eyeballs resting on its right side in the middle of it. Licking his chops to clean some of the blood that's smeared against his lower face off, the man with the bloody knife begins to smile insanely. "I'm lookin' forward to eatin' those quints, lemme tell ya. I know for a _fact _they're gonna be _delicious."_

_"This more of your fucking cannibalism talk? Spare me of it, I'm not as batshit insane as you are."  
_

"Not yet you aren't, but given what _you're _tryin'a do, you can't sit there and tell me that you're not gonna be even worse when the time comes."

_"Ha! I'll be the judge of that at the end of the day. By the way, if in case you can't seem to defeat Uesugi, how do you suppose you'll go about going after the quints?"_

"Don't worry, I got an ace in the hole that I got a while back. One of my boys found someone who was selling phones that he picked up off the streets because they were dropped or because he pickpockets them, and luckily enough, that phone ended up being one of the quints', so now I have every quint's contact number. All I need to do is send them a group text posing as Nino and plan around that. Those girls'll be my direct ticket to Uesugi to kill him once and for all."

The man in the red leather jacket produces another phone from his back pocket, a phone with an old, scratchy-looking rabbit ear phone case, holding it together with his sharp knife.

"Took a while to get it hacked so we could access its info, but we got it now."

_"Oh, and just in case you somehow forgot because you're a lunatic, remember that you can't eat the quints until AFTER they're sent to me and I'm done with them. Understood? Otherwise I'll see to it that you don't leave this city alive."_

"Uh huh, is that a fucking threat I hear? What's the likes of some pencil-pusher like _you _gonna do to stop a goddamn mage like _me?"_

_"You best not be challengin' me, Shirazumi. I don't care what your rep is, I don't care how batshit crazy you are. You break our contract, and I'm going to make you suffer. So cut it with the big words and get to fucking work already."  
_

The call cuts, and the man in the red leather jacket lowers the phone with his left hand. He's quite tempted to chuck it at the nearest support pillar on this floor of the parking garage, but he refrains from doing so - he still needs to keep in contact with his own employeer for the time being.

Even if he has the Nakano quintuplets' contact information thanks to the phone that once belonged to the one named Nino, the quintuplets should know that something is afoot if they receive a text from a phone that their sister named Nino no longer has, especially if Nino ended up getting a new SIM card when she got her new phone. Especially risky is sending that group text that he mentioned earlier, because if the sisters are together at the time that he sends it, they'll also know that something is wrong.

He'll need to rely on his Maeda contact at Asahiyama High, the quintuplets' and Uesugi's school, to direct him on a proper timing to send that text that will draw them out. Working all sneaky-beaky-like like this is not his thing at all; he'd much rather start rampaging through their school in order to get to the quints, if only to get this job over with and continue with his own obligations. But his own boss would terminate their contract, so no point in doing that.

Pulling out a small orange kit from his back pocket that contain a small number of small syringes, all of which contains a familiar white liquid, the man in the red leather jacket pulls one out and swiftly injects himself with it.

* * *

**A/N**

**I'll be taking that break that I mentioned in an earlier chapter, my other responsibilities are starting to ramp up so I'll need to handle them now. Expect a longer break, anywhere from two weeks to a month, even.**

**However, during this time I will be going through the whole story over for real this time to do that editing that I also mentioned I'd do earlier but didn't because writing new chapters was more fun, lol.  
**

**5 months, 50 Chapters, 500k words; funny how things work out sometimes. H******ere's to another 50 to hit a million words - t**hanks for being with me for this, and I sincerely hope you've been enjoying the story so far.  
**


	51. Marriage

**A/N**

**I wouldn't call the past month and a half an actual break for me necessarily, but I did want to write a chapter just to let you guys know that I'm still trucking along fine, given the times we're in right now. That, and I've been itching to get back into this.**

**Unfortunately I can't fully commit myself back into writing just yet; IRL and other internet responsibilities demand my attention still. I haven't even managed to do the whole story-wide editing I'd intended to do, and this time I can't blame it on my own laziness. Expect me to continue taking it slow going into July; realistically I won't resume full-time writing until August by the earliest.  
**

* * *

Clicking a few times as its owner's thumb presses against its bottom, Miku's lead pencil hovers slightly over her worksheet as she herself pores quietly over a question that she's found herself stuck on for a few minutes. She and her oldest sister Ichika are studying for today after school in the school library at their tutor's instruction, since today is the Friday going into their first trimester's finals week, and their tutor intended for today to be a solid tutoring session. At the moment, however, he is unable to join them since he's busy tracking down their sisters to get their excuses as to why they're not able to join them today, so Ichika and Miku are awaiting his return for the time being.

Also mulling over her own work quietly, working out of a supplementary mathematics textbook, Ichika prints her formulas on her notebook in her usual nonchalantly messy handwriting. She's starting to crave another frappuccino from Starbucks, and she's tempted to just get up and head out for one, since they don't know when their tutor will return, but following her better judgment, the eldest quintuplet decides to hold off on that idea.

That, and all of the quintuplets have noticed by now just how hard Fuutarou has been pushing himself. Yotsuba was the first to bring it up to them at dinner one night earlier in the week, how he was sleeping longer than usual in class and his reduced tutoring hours and number of tutoring days as of late. Fuutarou is a normally quiet person when he's not dealing with them quintuplets, and he hasn't been hanging out with them as much as he normally would; the banter that he'd usually have with them has been drying up, too, which was a big part of why Ichika enjoyed his company, and she's sure her sisters do too, to varying degrees of course. So Ichika would feel uncomfortable if she decides to walk out now and be unlucky enough to have Fuutarou come back while she's gone and be upset with her upon her own return.

That, and she remembers that this is the school library that they're studying in; drinks aren't even allowed here except for bottled water. Looks like she'll just have to wait off on that frappuccino until they're done with today's tutoring session.

The thought of the frappuccino's knocked her mental state off its balance, and now Ichika finds it suddenly difficult to return to concentrating on her work, so she glances over at her phone, which is sitting next to her on silent mode on the desk at which she and her sister are studying. It's been almost an hour and a half since they started studying here. That's quite surprising - it certainly doesn't _feel _like they've been here for that long already. Flipping over the freshly written pages of her notebook, Ichika realizes that she's filled up quite a number of pages with her practice problems, way more than she thought she'd done. Perhaps this is one of the signs of their hard work, both on the quintuplets' part and on their tutor's? Ichika begins to smile, but she stops herself quickly - she mustn't let something as trivial as this get her hopes up. After all, as nice as it is to know that their studying stamina has improved noticeably, none of it will matter if they still can't deliver results with their actual finals scores, and Fuutarou's been kind enough to remind the five sisters of this consistently over the past couple of weeks.

Speaking of Fuutarou, Ichika's somewhat fatigued mind wanders over to him, as if it's taking a quick mental detour to distract itself from the weight of the math problems before her. It's been about half an hour since he'd left them to their own devices to check in on their sisters; she and Miku pointed out to him before he left that now that he's got their numbers, he could just text the others to find out what they're up to, but Fuutarou said that would be the lazy way out and would track them down himself. For Yotsuba, everyone could guess what she'd be up to, but that wouldn't be the case for Nino and Itsuki.

Even still, this is another piece of evidence under the quintuplets' figurative and collective belt that they have to prove that their tutor has been pushing himself way too much lately. Couldn't it have been just easier and more convenient to text them to know what they're up to? If Uesugi's concern was that they wouldn't respond to him, then he could simply get either her or Miku to text them instead, and they'd be a lot more likely to tell their sisters what they're up to, though admittedly they could simply figure out on their own that Ichika is asking on their tutor's behalf anyway. And since he left an hour into their studying session, the other three could be anywhere in school, even off-campus, and Fuutarou would have to track them all down anyway.

Why? Why would he go so far to do that? Now that Ichika thinks about it, she should have questioned his motive for going out to find them physically like that. Because ordinary people don't just go find others in person like that when all they'd need to do is send them a text, right? Assuming they have the numbers of the people they want to contact. Even someone like Fuutarou should follow that same protocol, since he's all about being efficient and stuff like that, almost like a robot or personal computer. And yet he opted to head out and find them in person. Is it because he felt like they'd be in danger? Probably not; he would've acted with a lot more urgency if that were the case. Then was it just because of his whole obsession with taking his job as seriously as possible? Maybe, but...it doesn't quite feel that way.

It's weird; Ichika _feels _like there'd be a reason, but she can't seem to put her finger on what it might be for the life of her when normally she's pretty good at reading people. And now that she's dwelling on it, she silently realizes that she doesn't really know all that much about her own tutor; none of her sisters do. The sheer amount of time that they've spent with him in the past couple of months is having the unintended side-effect of making the quintuplets feel like they know their tutor very well, but that's absolutely not the case. Uesugi Fuutarou is just as enigmatic a person as he was when they first met; they've simply become more comfortable with him around because of his responsibilities as both their tutor and guardian.

The eldest quintuplet has to acknowledge that this fact puts a bit of uncertainty in her mind. All the things that Nino said against Fuutarou in the past, warning about the dangers of having someone like him around them for too long...it's not that she'll suddenly begin subscribing to them, but perhaps there really was some solid ground on which Nino made those accusations. And as the oldest quint, Ichika feels a responsibility of her own to get to know Fuutarou more, just to make absolute certain that it's safe for them to have him around - but she knows she can't do that, since Fuutarou will see right through her if she tries. That, and with all the days she's missed because of her part-time job, he certainly won't give her any wiggle room to get away with her own share of shenanigans. She hasn't even shared with him what her part-time job is, let alone with the rest of her family.

"...Ichika?"

Hearing her younger sister call out her name, the eldest quintuplet turns her head slightly, finding Miku gazing back at her calmly.

"...are you okay? You were kind of...spacing out there," the middle quintuplet asks in a soft voice to meet library regulations. Ichika sits up a little in her seat.

"Yeah, I was, sorry about that. We've been studying a lot recently, even without Fuutarou-kun being here as much as he normally is, so..." she sighs quickly a little.

"Even you've been studying a lot lately. _And _you're still going to your part-time job recently."

_"'Even'? _What exactly do you mean by that, Miku-chan ~ ?"

"E-Eh...?" Confused, Miku backs away slowly when she finds her oldest sister smiling menacingly back at her. "Did I...say something bad...?"

"Well, not really. The way you sounded, you sounded like I don't normally study on my own."

"I mean, come on...seeing you study is about as rare as me and Nino actually getting along."

Snorting with amusement, Ichika rolls her eyes a little. "I didn't think you'd use _that _kind of an analogy, but I guess it works."

"But you _have _been going to your part-time still, right?"

"Well, yeah, obviously. In fact, Fuutarou-kun not tutoring us as much this week and the last meant that I've been free to commit to more of my part-time job obligations."

"And you're still studying on top of it...I just hope you're not pushing yourself too hard."

Ichika chuckles weakly in response to Miku's expressed concern. Just as she herself was worrying about the same thing in regards to someone else who's rather close to them...

"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. I take it that you've been handling this just fine?"

Miku nods shortly. "Yep. Business as usual for me...but..."

Setting down her own lead pencil, Miku pulls off her blue Audio-Technica headphones that she's been using to listen to a soothing lofi playlist that Fuutarou shared with her recently, letting the headphones hang around her neck like usual.

"...I _am_ worried about Fuutarou, after all," she mumbles quietly.

"Haha...what a coincidence, I was just thinking about him too," Ichika smiles back at her younger sister. "I guess we really _are _quintuplets."

"We don't have any of that telepathy nonsense, you know."

"Not with that attitude, we don't!"

"C'mon, Ichika..."

Giggling a bit back at Miku, Ichika glances momentarily back down at her own notebook.

"What _isn't _a joke, though, is Fuutarou-kun's health. Like, it's no secret that he's been working harder than usual lately, and we still have this weekend to go too, and the last few days next week before our actual finals."

Out of the corner of her left eye, Ichika notices Miku's hand on the table slowly tighten up into a fist as she's talking.

"...I know there's probably nothing we can do for him, and even if we could, he'd refuse to let us help in any way, but..." Miku leans forward slowly and rests her head against her crossed arms on the library table, turning her head so that she can still face Ichika. "...a part of me still wishes that there could be _something _we could do to give him a hand. You know...make him...not _as _tired as he's been lately. Like...we're the reason why he's so busy, right? So - "

"Eh, I don't know, that's a dangerous way of thinking about it, in my opinion," Ichika interrupts Miku swiftly, raising her hand a little for emphasis. "Like, don't get me wrong, I feel for him too with how much he's been working his other job as of late. But it's not good if you think that you're to blame for why he's so busy. I'm sure he's the type of guy to tell you not to worry about him too."

"I know. But like...it's one of those things where...even if I do know all that, I still can't help but want to help out somehow, you know...?"

"Well, just studying like we are is helping him out. Honestly, the best way for us to 'help him out' is to keep doing what we're doing...studying and getting our grades up. The faster we get better at studying and raise our grades, the less Fuutarou-kun needs to worry about actually tutoring us."

Miku's blue eyes droop slowly down to the tabletop. "...but if we do that, then...if we get better at studying...if we raise our grades...then won't that mean that Fuutarou spends less time with us...? Because he wouldn't need to be with us as much anymore. Heck, if we get good enough grades and get good enough at studying ourselves...wouldn't that mean that Fuutarou doesn't have a need to tutor us anymore?"

Smiling weakly, Ichika nods slowly. "I guess so...funny how that works, huh."

"...I don't quite find it funny."

"Sorry, that was a bad way to put it." The eldest quint crosses her arms slowly across her ample chest. "I think 'ironic' is a better way to put it, yeah?"

"...sure, I guess so."

Gazing down at Miku next to her, Ichika decides to imitate her and rests her head against her crossed arms on the table, but she turns her head to the left to face her sibling.

"How much of what you said just now was because you care for Fuutarou-kun as more than just a friend, Miku?" she asks softly.

The thick blush that appears on Miku's cheeks is a sight for sore eyes, Ichika thinks to herself while she herself smiles with amusement at her younger sister's reaction.

"...you've been teasing me about this a lot these days, haven't you?" Miku grumbles back at her, but she still keeps her head facing the same direction, back at her sister.

"Sorry again, it's just a low-hanging fruit to tease you with. But that is the case for you, right? At least partially?"

After a whole minute, Miku finally responds with a tiny nod, with her blue eyes averted away from Ichika's own gaze.

"...it's not like I can hide that from you of all people," the third quint sighs softly. "You're the only one out of us right now...about how I feel about Fuutarou."

"Well, I'm sure Nino probably has an idea. The others, on the other hand, they're probably still oblivious, considering it's Yotsuba and Itsuki..."

Miku, having suppressed much of the initial blush from earlier, resumes her gaze with her oldest sister.

"Is it bad that I'm...starting to have feelings for him, Ichika?" she consults. "Since...this's the first time I've felt this way about a guy."

"Hey, I haven't ever had a boyfriend myself either, if that's what you're asking."

"Well, that wasn't what I was trying to get at exactly. And even if you haven't had a boyfriend yet, I figured you'd know more about something like this, just on the account of how different our lifestyles are..."

"Hm, I'll give you that one at least. But, hm...is it _bad _that you're starting to have feelings for him..."

Ichika scoots her chair a bit closer to Miku's, since their conversation is becoming a bit of a private one.

"I don't think it's _bad_, per se, it's just that our circumstances are..._unique_, let's just say. Should those circumstances stop you from having those feelings for him, or should they dictate that those feelings you have for him are ones you shouldn't have? I don't think so. I can't tell you firsthand, but...just from what little I know, I'm not sure if hiding those feelings you have for him is the best idea. But should they dictate everything about your behavior towards him from now on? Probably not either, especially not at a time like this when Fuutarou-kun is super busy with his own stuff outside of our tutoring."

"...so keep doing what I've been doing, basically."

"If that's what you want, sure. But are you okay with just sitting on your feelings like that? I did just say that I don't think that's a good idea."

"But you also just said that I shouldn't act on them."

"Yeah, not _now_. But at a better time, when he's not as busy and he can invest more time into hanging out with us like he used to. As a matter of fact..."

A light bulb goes off in Ichika's head as she's speaking, and she grins another one of her mischievous grins that Miku recognizes, which means Ichika's thinking of something no good.

"Remember that one weekend back before midterms when we got Fuutarou-kun to stay the night with us? I think it was for midterms, right? I can ask him to stay the night with us again, to make up for all the missed sessions that I skipped out on. And if he agrees, I can get him to spend the night in your room again. How about it?"

"E-Ehhhh...!? N-No, that - that first time was an _accident_, I even said so...!" Miku hisses quietly, the blush hitting her cheeks again with a sharp vengeance. "Remember? I said that I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night that night and I accidentally went straight back to my own room because I was so sleepy!"

Giggling, Ichika waves Miku down a little to get her to compose herself.

"I know, I know. But do you remember what happened afterwards? Fuutarou-kun seemed really refreshed, you know. Like he actually had a good night's sleep. And it could have been _because _you slept with him. Nothing lewd or inappropriate, of course. We keep things family-friendly in the household."

"That can't've been because of me, though. Fuutarou always sleeps at his desk in homeroom; he probably was only like that because he was able to sleep in an actual bed for once."

"Either way, whatever the real reason, he had a good night's sleep following that one sleepover we had. So why not let him do the same thing? It'd be weird for him to do that with anyone else."

"It'd be weird if that same thing happened _again_, you know!"

"Hahaha, that's also true. It's okay, you can just, y'know...make it an _accident_. Oh, I know! Make it so that Fuutarou-kun joins you in your bedroom late at night or something, and then Fuutarou-kun wakes up on his own early in the morning and leaves your room before anyone realizes what he's been up to."

"Y-You're making him sound like some kind of interloper, Ichika."

"Well, the others'll certainly think of him as one if he gets caught. But he's a mage; he won't get caught or anything, right? He's too good for that, surely."

Miku closes and opens her eyes slowly in unison.

"...but why try to go so far for me like this, Ichika?" she murmurs back. "Do you actually want me to hook up with Fuutarou or something? Or are you just suggesting this because you think it's funny?"

"Ah...haha..." Ichika pulls her head off the table to scratch her right sideburns. "I know I can act that way sometimes, but not for this. I genuinely do support you going for him, as long as that's what you want."

Miku's pensive blue eyes track her older sister as she sits back up. "Is that all, though? Don't you have any other thoughts besides just 'oh I think that's great'? You _are _the oldest, after all. And we all treat you as such whenever we get into arguments with each other."

Ichika's small but cheerful smile fades a little in response.

"Obviously I do, Miku, because the more I think about it, the more of a problem I have with it."

Running a hand up through her short, straight peachy-red hair, the first quintuplet slowly eyes her mathematics textbook while the third quint also slowly sits up in her own seat, sitting at attention now that Ichika is about to voice her discontent.

"Because when we take a step back from this whole situation, right..." Ichika raises her hands somewhat to gesticulate alongside her words. "At the risk of sounding like Nino, we have to realize that we're talking about a guy who wasn't a part of our lives until a little over three months ago. A guy who...basically just came out of nowhere for us with a tutoring job that was covering up his other job that we now know to be a safekeeping job, with us as his clients. Well, technically Dad is his client, but that's being pedantic."

She clears her throat briefly, wondering if she should've just taken that trip to Starbucks for that frappuccino after all.

"At the end of the day that doesn't really matter; we _have _spent a lot of time with him, and he's not a bad guy by any means, so _when _we met him or for how long we've known him isn't that important. What I'm more concerned about, naturally, is what happens when you do decide to, you know, commit to these feelings you've got for him."

"I mean, I've been thinking about it too on my end. About...what might happen if I do want to pursue them...my feelings for Fuutarou, that is," Miku says quietly. "But after thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that...it's not like much is going to change, right? He's already working himself to the bone tutoring us and he's already putting himself on the line to keep us safe. Heck, he was already doing that before he even got to know us all that well. So - "

But Miku stops when Ichika raises a finger towards her slowly.

"I know where you're going with that. I get it, and I actually agree, it's not like our situation at large is going to suddenly change much depending on whether or not you start gunning for him. But that's not what I'm worried about."

"...then what _are _you worried about?"

"What'll happen to you if something bad happens to Fuutarou-kun."

The combination of Ichika's somber, mature voice and the weight of those words hits Miku hard enough to vocally stun her for a few moments, which Ichika uses to continue her thoughts on the matter.

"We all know that Fuutarou-kun leads a dangerous life. We've seen him injured and _get _injured for our sake, even if it was something as mundane as getting us to school on time for our midterms. So there's always a chance that one day, something _really _bad will happen to him and, to put it bluntly, he dies. What will you do then?"

Miku manages to turn her eyes away from her sister after their eyes meet for a split second.

"...I _have _thought about that, I really have," she mumbles weakly, sinking her head back down into her crossed arms again. "And the more I think about it, the more it worries me sick, especially these days with him working so hard. Ever since midterms and ever since Itsuki told us about that night when he fought off a bad guy for her or something, I've been more and more conscious of the fact that every tutoring session we have with him could be the last."

The middle quint raises her head slightly to peek her eyes out from her arms.

"That's why I'm so torn. On one hand, I don't want to be a nuisance to him and be a distraction to his work. But on the other hand, we don't know how much more time we have with him before, like you said, something bad happens to him."

"No, Miku, I...I don't think you get it. What I'm trying to say is that I'm worried about how you'll react to a situation where Fuutarou-kun isn't with us anymore after you decide to follow your feelings for him. Like, we've already lost someone close to us in our family in the past; what's going to happen if you lose another?"

"I know we have. And...you're right, I don't know how badly I'll react if Fuutarou does end up dying. That's why I wanted to ask you what you felt about all this...because maybe you could point me in the right direction."

Now that she's feeling the pressure of Miku's request weighing down on her conscience, Ichika forces herself to chuckle a little to help alleviate the mental weight.

"Geez, you're really putting me on the spot with this one, aren't you. I'd just like to remind you that we're quintuplets here, and we're basically the same exact age."

"Doesn't matter, you're the oldest. Our birth certificates even say so."

"Well obviously..."

Grunting a little as she pulls in her chair that's been slowly scooting back with how many times Ichika has been sitting and slouching in her chair, the eldest quintuplet turns ninety degrees left in her seat towards her younger sister.

"I'll say this much, Miku. As your older sister - no, just as your sister, period, it doesn't feel right for me to tell you that you shouldn't act on the feelings you have for a boy you like. Of course, as long as that boy is a good person and we know he's the kind of person who can both take care of you and be someone you can take care of. That's what I'd like for all of us eventually at some point, right? And even in a situation like this where Fuutarou-kun isn't exactly an ordinary guy and there's someone or some people out there who have their eyes on us, I still don't know if it's right for me to tell you that you shouldn't go for him, to eventually let him know that you have feelings for him. The smart thing to do would be for you to not get more involved with him than what's necessary, like our tutoring stuff. But I don't know what kind of a position I'm in right now to be able to tell you that. I just don't know at all, if I'm gonna be honest."

Listening to her oldest sister's uncertain advice, Miku lets her expression become increasingly pensive before it culminates in a small pout at Ichika.

"Hmph. I thought you were supposed to give us solid counsel as the oldest among us," she declares softly, also sitting back up for good in her seat.

"Heh...reality is oftentimes disappointing. But really, what can I say? I'm...I'm not really in that kind of a situation, you know? Like I said earlier, I've never really had a boyfriend or a guy I've had feelings for. Maybe if we didn't have anything else to worry about and we were all just normal high schoolers, I'd be able to point you in a more solid direction, but..."

"I can give you a more solid direction to follow: are you two done with your work yet?"

Hearing a familiar voice speak out suddenly to them that admittedly brings a subconscious degree of relief to the two quints, Ichika and Miku turn in their seats to find their tutor, Uesugi Fuutarou, step past them to slip into the seat he was previously occupying before he'd gotten up to go track down the other quints, seating himself again across from his two current students.

"I've gotten most of my work for today done, if that counts," Ichika declares while spinning her notebook around to show him her progress for today. "I don't know about Miku, though."

"Same here. I just have a few more questions left on my worksheet," Miku nods, raising her worksheet up for her tutor to see.

"Oh, good job. When I came back into the library and saw you two chatting it up, I thought you two weren't getting any work done, but I guess I didn't need to worry," Fuutaoru nods curtly, peering at the work the two quints are showing him. "Ichika, you might wanna check your formulas for questions 74 and 77. Miku, oxygen has two bonds, not three."

Upon receiving some verbal corrections, the two quintuplets pull back their work to see where they've been wrong.

"It'll never cease to amaze me how fast you grade our work," Ichika chuckles helplessly as she gets to work correcting her formulas. "Actually, it feels like you've been getting _faster_ at it, somehow..."

Fuutarou snorts a little under his breath. "It's nothing impressive, I assure you. You girls all have a tendency to make certain types of mistakes, and even if I tell you to take note of them, it's hard for you girls to break your habits. So an easy way for me to grade your work is by looking for those certain categories of mistakes first if I need to grade your work at a glance."

"So how did it go with the others?" Miku asks.

"As well as I expected. Yotsuba's committed to helping out the track team, since school protocol forces club activities to shut down for midterms and finals weeks, and today's basically the last official day they have to practice as a team. Nino and Itsuki had tickets to go see a movie that Nino got from a friend, and it's not like they could choose when to go see it and Nino didn't want them to go to waste, so they're off to the movies right now."

Miku gazes at Fuutarou, who pulls out a half-drunk bottle of water from his messenger bag that's been waiting for his return on the seat next to his to take a drink.

"It'll be alright, Fuutarou," she says softly, subconsciously trying to reassure him. "We have this weekend to catch up, and we'll make sure everyone's at home to study."

"Yeah, that'd be nice. I guess it makes sense that you girls will listen to each other more than your tutor..."

"That's a family for ya, alright," Ichika grins. The mention of a movie causes her to remember that she's got movie tickets of her own, and she produces them from her skirt pocket to wave in front of her companions, one for each of them. "Aaaah, what're these? I suddenly have two tickets for a movie that I got from a friend of my own that they didn't want! You two should go see it together, ha, ha!"

Blinking with subdued surprise, Fuutarou awkwardly takes it from the eldest quint, as does Miku.

"...a movie, huh...? When was the last time I watched a movie, I wonder..." he grumbles under his breath, gazing down at the ticket with narrowed eyes that, to Ichika, almost looks as though he's glaring at it.

"If that was meant to be some kind of pity-mongering attempt, I don't buy it," Ichika says flatly.

"It wasn't, I was genuinely trying to remember what the last movie I saw was." Fuutarou looks back up at Ichika. "And there're only two tickets..."

"Obviously Miku's gonna go with you!" the eldest quintuplet gestures to her sister next to her, who turns to her sharply, questioning her with her own set of narrowed eyes.

"What, we're not all gonna go watch this together or something? Why's it gotta be just me and Miku?"

Rolling her eyes incredulously at Fuutarou's denseness, Ichika sighs exasperatedly as her younger sister lets out an awkward chuckle of her own.

"You _sure _he's the one...?" Ichika mutters over to Miku. Fuutarou, meanwhile, is scanning the movie ticket he's obtained from her.

"...some kinda zombie movie, I guess," the young tutor says, raising his ticket so that the girls can see. "I feel like Yotsuba would be down to watch it, but I don't know how much Miku cares for zombie movies."

Upon getting a second look at the movie ticket, Ichika's eyes snap open with alarm, and she swiftly yanks it out of Fuutarou's hand - at least, that's the plan, if Fuutarou's practiced reflexes didn't pull his hand back in time before she can.

"...s-sorry, but...I'm gonna have to ask you to return that," Ichika says a bit breathlessly, still lurched over the table at her tutor who peers deeply into her blue eyes, as if contemplating whether or not he ought to question her motives, but he says nothing and slowly returns the ticket to her.

"...eh? Wait, why're you taking it back now?" Miku asks as her oldest sister retracts her ticket too.

"I forgot that, uh, I actually promised these to these other friends I know!" Ichika smiles widely. "I just had a, uh, lapse in judgment, yeah, let's go with that!"

"Speaking of a lapse in judgment, I should've just stayed with you two so that you did all your work today...though to be fair, you two've done most of it while I was away anyway. That being said, Ichika, didn't you say you had something to do soon? It's about to be four," Fuutarou reminds the eldest quint, raising his phone out of his pocket to show her the time.

Seeing the time, Ichika gasps a little, having failed to realize just how much time had passed even though she had her own phone sitting on the table in front of her.

"Oh my gosh, it's - it's almost four already!? Ugh...sorry about this, Fuutarou-kun, I really am, but I gotta go take care of that right now!"

"It's something to do with your part-time, right?"

"Yeah, it is..." Hurriedly packing her things into her own messenger bag, Ichika pauses in the middle of it. "Well...I guess...it's not actually _that _urgent, but...it is kinda urgent at the same time..."

"...the hell's _that _supposed to mean," Fuutarou tilts his head in confusion.

"Let me explain..." Ichika pockets her phone and clasps her messenger bag shut before she straightens up next to the table. "So my boss at work had to go on an urgent business trip that came up last-minute. He has a young daughter, but since he'll be out of town tonight, he asked if I'd like to look after him since he couldn't find a babysitter on such a short notice. He said that he'll take a taxi with her to drop her off at our place, and she'll be staying the night with us for tonight. I'm actually supposed to meet them at 4:30, and I can still make it if I go right now..."

"Oh, it's just babysitting? In that case, why don't we go together," the young tutor suggests, also getting up from his seat. "You two've been studying here for the past hour or so, and we were gonna leave at some point soon anyway."

"Er...well...?" Ichika hesitates, glancing down at Miku because she was intending for just the two of them to hang out in the school library for a bit, and Miku glances back emptily for a moment, herself unsure of what to do.

"I can take you girls home 'quickly'," their tutor adds, using air quotes to let them know that he intends to teleport them all directly to the luxury high-rise. "It's probably better not to rush that kind of thing too. Unless you insist on still going on your own?"

"Uh...well, now that I think about it, it's not like there's anything wrong with having you two come along, it's just...are you sure you wanna deal with her?" Ichika asks. "She, uh..._can _be a bit of a handful."

"As if I don't know what it's like dealing with the five of you."

"Hey, that's a low blow!"

"Can't be enough of a low blow if it's the truth. Besides, I'd rather tutor you girls all together, so just having the two of you here admittedly kinda kills my vibe, and not to mention today was already basically a self-study day for you two so far anyway. Miku, get your stuff together and let's go."

"O-Okay..."

* * *

About an hour later, after teleporting the girls and himself directly to the rooftop of the Pentagon so that they can put away their school bags and receive Ichika's boss's young daughter, the four of them now hang around in the sunny living room of the late afternoon.

"So she really _does _exist..." Uesugi remarks nonchalantly, at the risk of sounding like a complete jerk. Indeed, this remark nets him a quick eye-roll from the oldest quintuplet.

"What, did you think I was trying to get out of studying by lying to you about this? Why would I lie about something like this?" she questions him a bit indignantly.

"I wasn't necessarily _doubting _you..."

"Either way, Kiku-chan is amazing since she listens to everyone so well," Miku says with a small smile, watching Ichika's boss's small daughter sit on the living room floor drawing on a wide sheet of drawing paper while gripping a red crayon tightly with her tiny right fist.

Noticing that the high schoolers are talking about her, Kiku, a small girl with her hair tied in two large braids, gets up from her small little drawing desk and marches over to them with a surprisingly adult-like gait before planting her socked feet near the corner of the low glass table, pointing her right index finger up at the boy almost twice her height, and demanding in a shrill voice:

"You - play with me!"

Fuutarou blankly blinks down at her for a few moments before turning to the girls next to him, swinging his view from one quintuplet to the other.

"...she's talking about me, right?" he asks, as if for confirmation.

"It looks like she's pointing at you, so...yeah, it must be you," Ichika says, again in a flat voice.

"Well, I'll admit that babysitting isn't in my job description, but...I dunno, you got any dolls or something? We could borrow a few from Nino's room - "

**"NO! **Don't treat me like a kid!" Kiku shrieks suddenly, as if she were a firecracker going off in front of the high school students. "Don't you idiots know? Playing with dolls was _soooo _last year! The trend right now is playing house!"

Fuutarou is about to question why an elementary schooler like Kiku who's even younger than his own sister has any business knowing about trends and such, but perhaps he's not the best person to be asking such a question, so he keeps his lips shut. He definitely knows now what Ichika meant from earlier about how Kiku could be a handful.

Kiku doesn't give them a chance to argue, as if she already knows how to manipulate people much older than herself. Again she points back up at the high school first-years, back at Fuutarou again.

"You! You're gonna be the papa, and I'm gonna be me," she orders with as much imperative as a young girl like herself can wield with her voice alone.

"Ah, then in that case, I'll be the mama!" Miku volunteers quickly, raising her hand as if she's in class.

"Well, hold on. I don't have much parenting experience outside of my own little sister, so I'm not sure if I've got the qualifications to assume a Papa role here..." Fuutarou alerts Kiku. He figures that if the kid's going to have the guts to talk to him about trends and such, she shouldn't have an issue if he himself goes on about job qualifications.

"I already know that; just one look at your delinquent face is all I need to know that you're going to grow up to be a terrible papa, so this right now is the only time in your life when you'll actually be something of a responsible parent," Kiku spits back with a kind of savagery Fuutarou hasn't heard in quite some time, coming from an elementary schooler of all people.

"N-Now, now, Kiku-chan, let's - let's not outright _insult _people like that, your _actual _daddy won't be happy that you're talking to people like that..." Ichika intervenes as well now that the kid she's supposed to be looking after for the day is starting to go off her rails.

"Hmph. Besides that, we don't have anyone else who'd fit the job description of 'papa', so you'll have to do either way," Kiku scowls back up at the high school tutor with crossed arms that could earn her a cover page on the Time magazine if she were posing with a suit and tie. She turns to Miku now this time. "And there is no 'mama' job role here, since my cheating mama left our house a long time ago with her lover."

The incredibly sassy and bossy attitude of the small child almost succeeds in distracting the high school students away from the humbling content of her words, but they continue to play along, opting not to press the matter.

"So you're going for reality TV here, huh..." Ichika murmurs thoughtfully while rubbing her chin thoughtfully.

"More importantly, you should tell us a bit about yourself, Kiku, so that we can play house more effectively," Fuutarou suggests. "What grade are you in right now?"

"Grade? Kindergarten."

Maybe this is one of those child prodigies that Fuutarou has heard a bit about.

"Such a young age and you already know how to speak like this? Impressive, in ways more than one."

"Yeah, so is your inability to talk to a kindergartner."

"Yikes, you went there, huh? Hmm...okay, how about this, then: you must have friends at kindergarten, right? Why don't you tell Papa about them?"

Kiku looks like she's about to vomit at the mention of friends.

"No freakin' way. They're all just snobby little brats, after all, no way I can make friends with kids like _them."_

Perhaps she doesn't really see herself as a kid. Then again, Kiku said as much when Fuutarou brought up the idea of giving her dolls to play with.

"The fact that you talk like a snobby little brat yourself aside, how about your studies, then?" he suggests as an alternative. Fuutarou isn't much for conversational topics, admittedly, especially not with kids, so studying is the next most convenient topic he can mentally grab, given that he and the two quints beside him have just come from school following what was essentially a self-study session today. "Is there anything Papa can help you with? Papa tutors his classmates on the side, after all."

While she doesn't look _as _disgusted, Kiku still sticks her tongue out in muted repulsion at the mention of studying.

"Nuh-uh, I'll just forget it all in the end. School teaches you a whole bunch of nonsense that you aren't even going to remember or carry with you into your professional life after school," Kiku snorts.

Fuutarou curtly turns to Ichika. "You're _sure _she's in kindergarten, right?" he asks bluntly.

"Er...she's..._supposed _to be..." the eldest quint chuckles awkwardly, looking away from her tutor. Fuutarou promptly turns back to Kiku, since his question to Ichika wasn't meant to be serious.

"Well, even if that's the case, Kiku, you shouldn't be like that. Hmm, how should I put this...if you don't want to study because, let's say, you're scared of getting bad test scores or something, just know that that shouldn't be the case at all. You shouldn't be afraid of failure - as long as you don't give up and keep trying, then surely there'll be a day when all the hard work you put in will pay off. Don't say they that failure of the mother of success or something like that?"

The kindergartner merely squints back up at the young tutor, who isn't sure if going for the idealistic approach was the right play to make, and sure enough, Kiku flatly responds with,

"...tch. Another idealistic idiot."

Fuutarou simply throws his hands up into the air. "Well, great. At least I tried."

"D-Don't give up so easily yourself, Fuutarou," Miku reassures him, coming to her tutor's defense. "If nothing else, I...I do think it was a great motivational speech."

"You think so? I'm not very good at those, just for the record; I figured I'd give it a shot, though."

"Anyways! Enough of this boring idle talk, let's play house already!" Kiku stamps her foot once against the floor that grabs the high schoolers' attention like paperclips to a magnet. "I'm going to start off, okay? Follow my lead."

The three first-years watch the kindergartner take a few steps back and clear her throat, like an actress about to perform her part in a scene. With a commanding gait, she strides slowly across the living room, pretending to open a door when she reaches the side of the glass table and making appropriate rattling noises for the onomatopoeia.

"Hmph. so this is where Papa works, huh?" Kiku says, looking around.

"Looks like she's trying to go for some kind of...office scene?" Miku guesses.

Kiku, hearing Miku talk, glances back at her and quickly points up at her and Ichika.

"By the way, you two are gonna be the two office workers here," she declares, as if the two quints have no say in the matter.

"Office worker, huh...?" Ichika sighs with relief.

"Oh, we're actually gonna be part of this..." Miku blinks down at Kiku, who nods back curtly.

"Right. And you two are in love with Papa."

Both Ichika and Miku almost jump out of their socks at Kiku's bold directive out of left field.

"...what's with _that _kind of a setting? You're kinda putting these girls on the spot here, Ki - " Fuutarou says, but he's interrupted by someone who turns the corner in front of him and leans her fists against her tutor's chest.

"Kaichou, when are you going to take me out to dinner like you said you would?" Miku gazes up at Fuutarou with her usual listless blue eyes, but the boy spies something of a small sparkle in them that normally isn't there. "How about tonight? I'm free tonight. You're free tonight too, right? Please...?"

Suddenly becoming self-conscious of her own acting and the conversation she had with her sister earlier at school, the middle quint turns around discretely to glance past the side of her shoulder to Ichika nearby, who simply grins in acknowledgment before walking out next to Kiku. Getting down on her knees next to the kindergartner to be level with her, Ichika leans in with a motherly front before asking,

"Kiku-chan, don't you want a new mama, dear?" she asks rather seductively, seduction that goes way over Kiku's head but not over her peers'.

"Aaaah, I-Ichika, that's - that's not fair...!" Miku pouts a little, realizing what kind of tactic her oldest sister is trying to go for. "I'm gonna be Kiku-chan's new mama!"

"Hahaha ~ are you sure you're up to it?" Ichika returns with a bit of playful competitiveness, getting back up on her feet to face her younger sister properly.

Again crossing her arms emphatically, Kiku then points a third time, this time at the girls only. "At least you two seem like you're taking this seriously. Then both of you, tell me what part of Papa you love."

Again, the two quintuplets almost jump out of their socks at another one of Kiku's unexpected questions, but they regain more quickly this time to take the kindergartner's question seriously.

"Uh...er, wh-what part about him, you say..." both Ichika and Miku mutter in different variations with their eyes averted, coincidentally in the same direction, before they both turn around shortly to take a cursory glance at their tutor, who blankly stares back at them.

Ichika is the first to respond, which is perhaps to be expected, but unlike how she is usually, her words don't come out smoothly. "Well...uh...what was it again...? I'm not quite sure at the moment, but...if I had to say, it might be because...he's...he's got a bit of a...m...manly side...to him...I guess? Even if he does look like a delinquent..."

"Very encouraging, thanks," Fuutarou says flatly, just as flatly as the kindergartner giving them orders.

The person who _is _encouraged by the others talking first is Miku, who's able to deliver her answer more confidently with, "He's smart...reliable...tall...cool..." Then, after a slight pause, she adds, "...and strong."

"Ehhh...my papa isn't tall. And he _definitely _isn't strong either," Kiku drawls, almost in a bored voice.

"Ah, that's right, haha..." Ichika lightly facepalms. "I totally forgot...we were supposed to be talking about my boss, weren't we..."

"Well...if you _had _to choose, Kiku-chan, which one of us do you think is better?" Wanting an answer from the small child before them, Miku leans towards Kiku gently.

The expression on Kiku's face distorts curiously. She appears annoyed, but there's much less of the sass and attitude that she had previously.

"...I don't need a mama. I don't care to have one anymore," she declares. The volume of her voice has adjusted as well, and it's shed much of its shrillness since the beginning of their house act.

"Aw, c'mon, don't be like that, Kiku-chan. Why not...?" Ichika asks in return. She senses that Kiku is starting to let the details of her and her papa's personal lives bleed into their play-acting now, but Kiku continues.

"Because I just don't need one! I won't get lonely even if I don't have one! I've been managing just fine on my own, anyway!" she defends herself as assertively as she can, but much of her young hardass facade has bled off with her eyes glued down to the floor now as they are. "And not only that, but it's because of Mama that Papa's had such a hard time...and I won't let another woman do Papa dirty like that again! So I'm happy enough just to have him with me!"

The sudden heaviness of Kiku's words once more take control of the living room, though in a much different way than before. Both Ichika and Miku are left reaching for words, unable to find anything appropriate that they could say - at least, not in the moment's time that it takes their tutor to commit to his response.

Stepping over to Kiku's side as well, Fuutarou reaches down to put his right hand gently but firmly against the top of the kid's head.

"It's better if you don't force it," he says simply while Kiku tries to duck out of the way, but too late for her, she can't get away since Fuutarou already has a firm grip on her head.

"H-Hey - ! Leggo 'a me - just what are you - stoppit, geez!" Her voice becomes shrill again, but it isn't a good enough deterrent against the boy whose hand is now on her head.

"I don't know anything about what it means to be a parent. So you might be right, I might actually grow up to be a terrible dad one day," he continues, "but if there _is _one thing I can say, it's that there's no way a kid like you _isn't _lonely without your mom or dad with you."

Miku and Ichika watch the scene unfold before them, their two sets of blue eyes flickering back and forth from the boy they're supposed to be in love with and the kid who's made it that way. And as they watch, Fuutarou turns Kiku around with a slow turn of his wrist to make her face him so that he can kneel down, put his hands underneath the kindergartner's armpits, and almost effortlessly pull her up into the air. The quintuplets' eyes track Fuutarou's arms; with the sun beginning its descent in the late afternoon sky, its bright rays shine warmly through the large glass doors, past the young man and the small child.

"So try not to push yourself into being an adult a decade and a half too early, alright? You're much better off being a snotty little brat with the rest of your friends."

Kiku's eyes, having been tearing up against her will, once more pin themselves down at the floor, at the feet of the boy who holds her on high.

And speaking of eyes, Miku's, having taken note of the kindergartner's, decide to slide to the right a little, over at her tutor. His eyes are closed - and perhaps this is on purpose, because the clearly brighter feature on his face is the small smile on his lips, far brighter and warmer than any of the rays of the sun trying to obscure her view of it.

That's it, right there.

For all the blunt things he says, as dense as he can be sometimes, and as dark as his life must get at points, ever since Miku has gotten to know him, Uesugi Fuutarou has always had an atmosphere of reassurance, of...comfort. There isn't really a good word that she can use to describe the exact kind of presence Fuutarou provides when he's with them...it's akin to a house building built on a solid, sturdy foundation that can resist whatever adverse weather or environmental conditions that it must face, that no matter what happens, even if he doesn't say it explicitly himself, Fuutarou will be there to make and keep things right.

For as cold and brooding of a person he can be, he possesses a kind of warmth that can organically fill the gaps left in people's hearts...a warmth that Miku has never felt anyone outside of her family exhibit. And he probably isn't even aware of this himself...well, course he isn't. After all, a flame can't see how bright it is until it's about to die.

More importantly, Fuutarou can't see how the warmth he radiates managed to melt the coat of ice that's been building over Miku's own heart for the past several years.

As the young mage sets Ichika's boss's daughter back down on the floor after a few moments, Miku finds herself right back next to his side again. She doesn't know how she got there, and neither does Ichika, apparently, given her growing look of confusion.

Reaching out and tugging lightly on the left sleeve of Fuutarou's plain white school dress shirt, the third quintuplet, her heart spurred into action to take advantage of the opportunity created by this warmth she feels, looks up at him straight in the eyes as they turn to see what she's up to and speaks,

"Go out with me, Fuutarou."

Inhaling sharply, Ichika barely manages to stifle her surprise at the sheer degree of guts Miku is demonstrating right now as Kiku, too, backs away over towards Ichika's direction, her adult senses telling her that the moment between Fuutarou and Miku is something she ought not to get in between. This is about the most out-of-character thing Miku's ever done, yet somehow -

"Go out?" Fuutarou narrows his eyes down at Miku, somewhat puzzled. "What're you on about?"

His words drag Miku down from cloud nine like a bunch of anchors, as they tend to do. "Ah...! Er, well, I mean, uhhh..." The middle quintuplet, having been stripped of the courage that she was imbued with just a moment ago, finds herself at an embarrassing loss for words as she takes a step back in a feeble attempt to escape this pitfall she's built for herself. But Fuutarou doesn't let her off so easily.

"I think you mean..." he leans in slightly towards Miku, _"Let's get married."_

Miku's mind shuts off completely for a millisecond as soon as her eardrums register these words into it. Uesugi Fuutarou, the last person on earth who'd say such a thing, the boy for whom she has feelings, the first boy for whom she's ever had such feelings, saying those words to her? And with such a serious look in his eyes?

The screaming in her head doesn't let itself be contained in the confines of her skull; within another couple dozens of milliseconds, Miku's lips part to give way to a shrill cry of embarrassment of her own as Ichika subconsciously pulls Kiku close at this dramatic development, with Kiku's cheek being pressed against the side of Ichika's left breast - but Kiku isn't complaining for the moment.

"W-W-W-Wait, wait wait wait!" Finally catching herself mentally, but only just, Miku stumbles backwards a little, having covered her burning face with both hands. "That's - that's just so - this's so sudden, I don't - I - wha - "

Perhaps as expected, though, Fuutarou himself completely ignores Miku's embarrassed reaction to strut over to Ichika, who releases Kiku when he gestures to her, and Fuutarou proceeds to give the kindergartner a bit of a noogie after taking a knee next to her.

"And there you have it, we've got you a new mom. Just while we're playing house, though," the young tutor grins in amusement as the front door to the Nakano penthouse opens in the background.

"We're home earlyyyyy ~ !" Yotsuba's immediately recognizable tone tumbles into the first floor of the penthouse as she, flanked by Nino and Itsuki, hops into view to find the others in the sunny living room. "Whoa, wait, she's so cute ~ ! What're you guys doing with a cute little girl at our place?"

"Wait, _what's _going on exactly...?" Nino barks shortly as she, too, hurries into the living room after hearing Yotsuba report what she sees. "And I thought today was supposed to be just a self-study for Ichika and Miku, why're you back here, Uesugi-kun?"

"It was, but Ichika said that she had an obligation of sorts to look after this kid who's the daughter of her boss at her part-time," Fuutarou explains swiftly and concisely, patting Kiku's head one last time before getting back up to his feet. "Her name's Kiku."

"So what were you all doing just now?" Itsuki asks, gesturing about the living room with how they were all positioned at the time she, Nino, and Yotsuba arrived.

"Playing house at Kiku's request, which was more like a demand but that's besides the point. Kiku's looking for a new mom, so I decided to marry Miku to give her one."

"No, like, _seriously, _what the f - what the heck were you doing?" Nino holds her tongue just in time to replace her usually foul language with something more kid-friendly.

"That sounds super fun, actually! It's been forever since we last played house, right?" Yotsuba laughs as cheerfully as ever, hopping over to the rest of the occupants of the living room to join in.

"Yeah, no wonder, since we're not kids anymore, Yotsuba. Unless you find it fun because you've still got those kiddie panties like Ichika says you do?"

"Aaaaaaaaaah! W-We don't talk about those, c'mon, Nino - !" The fourth quintuplet swiftly pivots over to Kiku beside her in an attempt to change the subject. "A-Anyways, Kiku-chan, was it? What kind of role should I have?"

"A dog. You're the family dog!" Kiku orders, pointing up at Yotsuba, who immediately begins to bark like one. Having secured that role, Kiku moves on to the rest of the quintuplets to assign them roles too. "And you two can be my two grandmas."

Nino's right eye twitches hard upon hearing this. "Oh ho? That's so kind of you to let us play too, Kiku-chan ~ "

Kneeling down before Kiku with a smile false enough to break a lie detector, the second quintuplet reaches over and takes hold of Kiku's cheeks to begin tugging on them lightly.

"So what kind of a role should I have again? Care to repeat that for me?" she asks nonchalantly while slowly pulling and retracting the kindergartner's cheeks like a slinky.

"G...gran...gramma..." Kiku struggles to speak, but obviously she can't say much with her cheeks being played with as they are.

"I can't hear youuuuu ~ "

Having retired to the long couch nearby, Ichika and Miku, slouched into its seats while watching the newcomers playing around with Kiku in their stead, let out deep sighs of mixed feelings as Fuutarou joins the others in more of Kiku's house shenanigans.

"Talk about one hell of an unexpected development, huh?" Ichika chuckles to her younger sister by her side, who wipes off one last nervous sweat from her brow.

"You're telling me...I panicked so hard that I literally didn't know what to do..." Miku whimpers helplessly, her cheeks still refusing to let go of a few last blotches of embarrassed warmth. "Then again, I should've known that he was just acting that out...of course he's not the type of person to say that with actual seriousness..."

"Yeah, I guess not, huh..."

"You're Kiku's maternal grandma, huh? Well, nice to meet'cha, mom," Fuutarou sighs to Nino, who frowns back up at him.

"I don't even _wanna _be your mom, that's weird!"

Ichika and Miku continue to watch the rest of their family mess around with each other and Kiku amidst laughs and banter for a few minutes.

"...but a good thing about what happened just now is...it's helped me decide that I want to act on these feelings I have for Fuutarou," Miku smiles over to her oldest sister, then towards the rest of her family and her tutor in the living room. "Even if it ended up kind of falling flat, I'm going to be serious about him in the future."

Observing the look on her younger sister's face this time, Ichika remains quiet for a moment. There can be no doubt that Miku is dead serious about this; she's clearly made up her mind. And unlike some of her other sisters, once she's made up her mind, Miku won't be easily convinced to stop. Ichika doesn't even have the option to convince her to stop either, given what she said to her earlier at school while Fuutarou was out.

Then why does she feel a slight twinge in her chest when she ought to be giving Miku her full support?

Miku begins to speak again, which comes as a welcome and timely distraction for Ichika to focus on other than the pang of discomfort in her own heart.

"But...even if I ought to start going for him right away...I still want the six of us to go on like this for as long as possible," Miku says quietly. "I still want to enjoy as much of this as I can. You always told us that we've only got so much time as middle school students, and then as high school students...so I want all of us to stay just the way we are."

Noticing that her oldest sister hasn't said a word in a little while, the third quintuplet glances shyly to her left at Ichika.

"...I'm not weird for thinking that now, am I...?" she asks under her breath.

Ichika finally manages a smile of her own as she leans forward in her seat on the couch, shaking her head.

"Nope...not at all," she replies calmly. "I don't mind if things keep going on like this for a bit longer, like you said. And despite what I've told you girls before...it would be nice if things went on like this for more than just a little bit."

* * *

**A/N part 2:**

**In regards to the editing that I mentioned in the first Author's Note of this chapter, I actually plan to do it live - I'll be reading over the entirety of this fanfic on stream over on my Twitch channel, TouhouSniper98, beginning on Friday, July 10, 2020 at 8pm PST. I hope this sort of self-advertising isn't frowned upon, and if it is, I hope it's not something I can get monkaTOS'd for, since I don't know how else to get this information out there to people who actually read this fic.  
**

**In any case, this rereading of Five Equal Angels on stream will not only help me refresh my memory of everything that's happened in the story so far but also force me to do my intended editing and revisions to fix grammatical errors, potential plotholes, and inconsistencies in the story, though it's obviously not something I can do in just one stream; it'll have to be a long-term project of sorts. If you decide to join me, you can pass me your feedback about the story directly and ask me questions about the fic in ways that story reviews perhaps can't.**


	52. Fallout

**A/N**

**I've got the month of October cleared to do nothing but write fanfics. Let's make the most of it.**

* * *

Uesugi Fuutarou looks down at himself suddenly.

He's not sure why he must, but he does. This feeling of strangeness, this feeling of helplessness - Fuutarou knows it well, for it's an immediate giveaway that just like that one night a few weeks prior, he is dreaming.

He has to be, because the ground is much closer to his source of vision than it is nowadays.

His vision flickers. He's now walking through what appears to be an empty indoor parking lot. Fuutarou's senses are clouded by haziness, the sort of mental blurriness that only dreams can inflict, and despite knowing that he's in another one of his weird dreams, the boy can't do much to snap himself out of it. He's tried - not just a few times, but many times - but to no avail.

His vision flickers again. He's now in the hospital, the very same hospital he now works at in the present day. The hospital lobby looks quite different than it does now - it's almost nostalgic, seeing the hospital lobby like this.

His vision flickers again. He's breathing heavily, resting his back against the side of a barren tree. The air feels cold, though his skin feels numb as though his entire body has been injected with anesthesia, so while he knows the cold is biting and brutal, Fuutarou can't feel it very well.

His vision flickers again - Fuutarou isn't getting much time to sit back and relax to take in each of these scenes. Now, he's back inside the hospital, in one particular room of the structure - the room that, if possible, he would rather not have to enter ever again in his life. The ticking of the clock on the wall is the most distinct thing Fuutarou remembers back then, and so that ticking is the loudest thing he hears as he sits on a chair, waiting for the door to open.

His vision flickers one last time - he never hears that door open. Instead, he's standing on the sidewalk in the middle of the day. A policeman is escorting what appears to be an indignant young lady away from him, while a young girl with long, peachy-red hair approaches him by carefully climbing down the flight of stairs to his left. He watches her approach him, and once she's level with him, she gives him a cheeky smile.

Fuutarou knows what that smile means, so he squeezes his eyes and braces for the imminent -

_**BANG!**_

* * *

The real Uesugi Fuutarou's eyes snap open, the immense volume of a jump-scare-inducing gunshot still ringing in his ears.

As if to taunt him, the darkness of the house is occupied with the usual ticking of a clock on the wall nearby. Fuutarou has gotten used to the incessant ticking of his clock, but sometimes, especially on nights like these, he feels an unreasonable urge to throw something at it, but he refrains. It's not like he's got neighbors to worry about nearby that would be bothered by it, but still, he refrains.

To distract himself from his waking thoughts and tribulations, the young mage pushes himself off his futon and walks with his back somewhat hunched over to a nearby desk, where a tall stack of papers sits, and he sits down at this desk and takes the top few pages to browse through them steadily. Today is Monday - the beginning of the week whose end is marked by their finals day. This is the last stretch before then - and Fuutarou, having gotten as much of his magework and other responsibilities out of the way so that this last week is as free as possible for him to dedicate to tutoring the girls, intends to make full use of it.

However, intentions aren't enough to leave him with clear mind, as his own occasional nightmares prove. Because those aside, this is legitimately the first time he himself feels nervous about their progress and their future results on their finals. The girls have actually been slowly improving - so unlike before, when Fuutarou didn't really have much faith in them to score well on their exams, now, the girls really do have a real shot at passing their finals. And not just for the subjects that they normally excel at, _all _of them.

It's rather strange, actually - either Fuutarou has been so busy with his other non-tutoring obligations or he's simply been too negligent towards the quints that he hasn't noticed their academic improvement lately. It's almost as if he's still stuck two months in the past, when he mentally prepared himself by considering the girls a bit too stupid to get their grades up anytime soon. But in fact, he possesses the evidence of their improvement in the form of mock exams and worksheets that he's been assigning to the girls as auxiliary homework on top of their usual homework from school, and if he compares them with the kinds of scores they all got a month ago or so, their scores have in fact been getting better like upwards trends on stock market graphs. Slow, incremental improvement, to be sure, but for five girls who could be considered failing just eight weeks ago, such improvement is almost staggering.

Fuutarou raises one hand up to his eyes and cups them with the palm, rubbing the top half of his face slowly. Just when did they actually start getting serious about their academics like this? Even though this is what he wants as their tutor, the young mage feels like he hasn't even done all that much, not with all the times he himself has neglected their tutoring in favor of stalking the night in the city like a DC character. So to him, the logical conclusion is that the girls' improvement is not so much the result of his own efforts but more so the girls' own collective efforts. All he's done is help steer them in the right direction.

Setting down his currently held sheet of paper briefly before rotating it out for another one, Fuutarou sighs softly. This is good - maybe this'll mean that eventually, the girls will become capable of studying and learning all by themselves, which then means he can stop being their tutor.

Tutoring, huh...it's been two, no, three months since he first became the quintuplets' tutor. It feels like it's been much longer than that.

After reviewing a few of these papers on his desk, Fuutarou leaves them where they've been sitting on the desk and proceeds to get ready for the rest of the day.

* * *

"Up here should be fine, yeah."

Opening the door to the rooftop of one of the school's main classroom buildings, away from the building that contains the school cafeteria in search of some privacy, Nakano Nino leads two of her sisters, Miku and Itsuki, in tow and shuts the door securely after the two of them step out onto the roof.

"H-How did you know that this rooftop is accessible by students?" Itsuki asks a bit nervously - understandable, as it was against school rules at their previous academy for students to be on any rooftop on campus unless they had expressed permission by a member of the faculty. She, Miku, and Nino all hold their lunches of hot, freshly made beef bowls that they've procured early from the cafeteria at Nino's urgency.

"Yotsuba blabbed about it to me the other day. Said that she ate lunch with Uesugi-kun at one point here," Nino explains, sighing somewhat and relaxing on a bench, the same bench that Yotsuba sat on with their tutor during said prior engagement. "You know Yotsuba, you let her go on and on and eventually she'll spill something that she didn't mean to."

"When did she tell you?" Miku asks, also taking a seat down next to Nino while Itsuki sits on Miku's right, sandwiching her.

"I said the other day. Like, over the weekend? I think Saturday..."

"So...what was it that you wanted to talk to us about?" Itsuki leans a little forward in her seat to glance over at the older of her two older sisters as the three of them begin to dig into their beef bowls. Her voice is still hesitant and timid. "You sounded so urgent when you told the two of us to come follow you for lunch today."

"Yeah, because today's like the perfect day we have to just talk among ourselves," Nino points out. "Ichika's hanging out with some of the friends she's made here at this school, and Yotsuba's helping out our homeroom teacher at the faculty room since they need someone to carry some new projectors to some of the classrooms."

"Then this is about Ichika," Miku deduces quietly before closing her lips over a chopstick-ful of steaming rice and slices of beef.

"Sure is. Who else would it be about..."

"What is the matter with Ichika, though? I do not recall her doing anything out of the ordinary recently," Itsuki points out.

"No, it's not that. It's just...I've been thinking ever since the last time the three of us talked that one night."

The two younger quintuplet sisters first slowly glance at each other, then over at Nino together.

"Nino, I don't think there's any reason for us to, like...be suspicious of Ichika or anything," Miku says calmly. "...at least, not at this moment."

"That's right...we have finals at the end of the week; we cannot be wasting our efforts worrying about what one of our sisters is up to," Itsuki agrees wholeheartedly. "We have been doing so well to get our grades up, and it's only been recently that we've all finally improved to the point where passing our finals is no longer just a pitiful shot in the dark."

"Then let's talk about it here so that we don't need to later," Nino simply shrugs - her social skills give her a distinct edge in her ability to commandeer the conversation over her two younger sisters, the two quintuplets who don't have as much social experience as the rest. "But it's not just about Ichika - this is about Uesugi-kun too."

The direct mention of their tutor's name swiftly changes the other quints' attitudes towards the topic at hand, and the two younger sisters sit up, rapt at attention now.

"H-How so...?" Miku murmurs seriously.

Nino lets her back hunch a little as she collects her thoughts. "Like I said, I've been thinking: you told us that night that Uesugi-kun told you about how Ichika's a mage, right? And not only does she have Mystic Eyes like us, but she's able to use it like how she used it on Uesugi-kun himself once. I've been thinking - what if Ichika's been working with him all this time?"

"Working with him? As like, mages...?" Itsuki says in a hushed voice.

"No, that's...that can't be right. Nino, you're going too far with this," Miku objects quickly, the rapt attention on her face quickly degrading into disagreement.

"Am I, though? Think about it." The second quintuplet points at her younger sister with her wooden chopsticks. "We're all mages, right? On the account of us having Mystic Eyes. And it seems like we're all discovering our magical bullshit or whatever earlier or later than others. Naturally, there's gotta be someone among us who realizes that she's a mage first out of all of us - and as far as we're concerned, the first one is Ichika for reasons we've already mentioned."

Nakano Nino turns her waist to face her sisters in full.

"The fact that Uesugi-kun is a mage shouldn't be a coincidence. As in, it shouldn't be a coincidence that Papa had him become our tutor; that much should be obvious to us now. We know that Ichika's been out doing her own thing for a while now - for the last couple of years or something. As a matter of fact, she's been off doing her own thing ever since Mama passed away, right? Going to this part-time job of hers that none of us know really anything about and such? And it's likely that Mama herself might have been a mage with how busy she was when she was still alive. What if Ichika's intending to go down that same route, the same route that Mama took, whatever it was, exactly? And what if she's having Uesugi-kun help her do it?"

"But the fact still stands that we did not know Uesugi-kun beyond three months ago - " Itsuki begins to debate, but Nino cuts her off.

"Maybe _we _didn't, but Ichika's had God knows how many chances to be by herself doing her own thing, like I said, over these past couple of years. Don't you think there's a good chance that maybe she's gotten to know Uesugi-kun first? Like, the two of them met or something around the city somewhere, and they started working together or something, I don't know."

"So you think they're collaborating, or that they have been for all this time," Miku determines. "Then...the implications of this are..."

Miku falls quiet. Itsuki's eyes glance to her for a second, and for that second, she thinks she sees a strange look in her older sister's eyes, but that look is fleeting and evaporates before Itsuki can really make heads of tails of it.

"Well, first of all, it's obvious that they've known each other for all this time, right? Like, think about it, Ichika's always been pretty nice to him, and she's never been against him tutoring us," Nino continues.

"But she was against it at first. Remember the night before we met Uesugi-kun?" Itsuki points out. "The original plan that we had to deal with the tutor before we found out that it was Uesugi-kun?"

"Yeah, but then, as soon as she realized who it was, she stopped being against it. That doesn't strike you as weird in hindsight?" Nino counters. "And so ever since then, she's always been super supportive of his tutoring. _And_, not only that, but Uesugi-kun lets her go to her part-time job whenever it conflicts with his tutoring. He usually chews Yotsuba out for skipping out on tutoring to go help out people at school, yet all he does is just sigh at Ichika and let her go out to her part-time whenever she says she needs to go?"

Nino's arguments begin to weigh down on both Itsuki and Miku, and Itsuki's joined her fellow quintuplet sister in being silent.

"B...But..." Miku finally lets her voice eek out of her throat, "...that one time...when they met at Starbucks...Fuutarou said that they had a bit of a fight, and...and that Ichika used her Mystic Eye on him. And...and from what he's told us about mages, it doesn't seem like...mages are usually friendly towards each other. So...so can we really be sure that Ichika and Fuutarou are good friends...?"

"Oh c'mon, that just means that they've had a bit of an argument. Who says you can't be good friends and still have arguments every once in a while? I mean, for fuck's sake, just look at us! Look at all the arguments that I've had with the two of you!"

"Yes, but...to the point where Ichika would use _magic _on Uesugi-kun...?" Itsuki shakes her head a little. "I...I do not claim to know much about mages - none, in fact. But just from what we have seen in the incidents that we have been involved in, and certainly _you _can attest to this better than we can, Nino, but...I cannot say that using magic in a hostile manner like Ichika seemed to have done to Uesugi-kun at Starbucks is something that...that _friends _would consider doing to one another...?"

"But you can't say that for sure. The world of mages or whatever can be super different from just normies like us, right? Before we found out that we were mages, anyway," Nino shrugs. "Like, they can behave super differently from us. Maybe it's acceptable for them, because it's not like Ichika or Uesugi-kun's ever brought it up since then, right? So they must've made up or something."

"Okay, then...what are you trying to say, Nino?" Miku asks, putting strength behind her voice to wrest control of the conversation away from Nino and towards herself and Itsuki. "What's the point you're trying to make here? Because as odd as all this is, admittedly, now that you've brought it up, right now we ought to be focusing on our finals. What's any of this got to do with that? Because if you really wanted to talk about this, shouldn't you save this for later, _after _finals when summer vacation starts and we actually have time to do whatever we want?"

"Well, first of all, I wanted to get out of the way now because I feel like I'll forget some of the stuff I wanted to talk about," Nino talks back, "but more importantly, I'm bringing this up because Uesugi-kun's so damn tired all the time!"

Both Miku and Itsuki blink exactly once at their older sister.

"...come again?" the youngest quint asks blankly.

"It's because Uesugi-kun's so fucking exhausted all the time!" Nino gripes angrily, repeating herself for her sisters' convenience. "I know he's taken some time off from tutoring us recently, but he hasn't even been using that time to rest up so that he can tutor us better! Not to mention, it's always embarrassing as hell seeing him knocked out cold in class every damn day!"

Miku and Itsuki slowly exchange glances, as if they're at a loss for words.

"That's why I'm bringing up Ichika being a mage to you two right now, because I feel like Ichika's dragging him around all the time and making him feel more and more exhausted over time!" Nino sighs heavily. "Or at least, maybe not _dragging around_, but getting him to do stuff for her constantly!"

Hearing one of her sisters clearing her throat, Nino snaps her indignant gaze up at the source, which seems to be Miku.

"What, Miku? Shouldn't you be on _my _side on this? _You're _the one who would care about something like this the most, right?"

"Well, yes, if you put it that way, but more importantly..." Miku sets her locks directly back at her sister's. "...Nino, are you perhaps..._concerned_...about Fuutarou?"

Nino's face for a few moments is locked in an incredulous gaze back at her younger sister, but of course it doesn't stay this way for long, for it gets dropped in favor of a face full of enlightened embarrassment and fuming words.

_"I-I-I'm not CONCERNED about him! _I'm j-just bringing this up because - because we need him to do his job as a tutor, for all of our sakes! We can't have him do his job badly because he's too busy with all the other stuff that he's got! I'm just - just trying to point out that Ichika might be one source that's giving Uesugi-kun more work that's making him underperform at his job as our tutor!" Nino bellows hotly.

"But...Nino, up until recently, did you not always state that you did not care for his tutoring?" Itsuki tilts her head a little in confusion as Miku begins to snort under her breath. "If I may ask, whatever happened to the staunch resistance that you had for Uesugi-kun and his tutorship? And we should have asked you this before, but...you did not stop attending Uesugi-kun's lessons when you said that after our midterms, you would stop, and yet - "

_"IT'S BECAUSE I REALIZED THAT HE'S A GOOD TUTOR, ALRIGHT? _I said it, fucking goddamn it!" Nino bawls. "More than that, though, it fucking _sucks _studying alone! I tried doing it for the past couple of weeks after midterms - it fucking _sucks!_ I wanna study with everyone too, like, c'mon, you know me! And the most reliable way I have to be able to study with everyone is to join everyone when Uesugi-kun's tutoring!"

"Ah...she finally admitted it..." Miku covers her mouth a little with her hand that isn't holding her chopsticks to hide a cheeky smirk.

"H-Hey, _I'm_ not the only one who's like this! You've got another quint right next to you, Miku! Itsuki was the _exact _same way, fucking change my mind!"

"W-Well, it is...it is true that I was against Uesugi-kun's tutoring at first, but at least I came to the conclusion that I required his assistance on my own eventually! That, and who was it that dragged me into receiving tutoring lessons from Uesugi-kun in the first place, might I _kindly _remind you?" Itsuki barks back at Nino, her cheeks also becoming hot with emotion.

As Nino and Itsuki start bickering, Miku sighs loudly. "All this fuss and getting worked up about Ichika and Fuutarou, only to find out it's because you're worried about Fuutarou's health..." Miku groans a little. "Why can't you be more honest with yourself, Nino? Otherwise, it'll cause misunderstandings like this..."

"I _AM _being honest with myself!" Nino argues hotly.

"That's exactly the kind of thing someone who _isn't _being honest with themselves would say."

_"No it's not!"_

Sighing much like Miku before her, Itsuki resumes eating her lunch. "At least it is good to know that we are all now on more or less favorable terms with Uesugi-kun," the youngest quint declares lightly, raising another pair of chopsticks' worth of rice, diced spring onions, and beef to eat after she's done talking. "Certainly, he was correct in stating that having all of us study with him willingly was his highest priority."

"We did waste a good ten weeks getting to this point, though," Miku mumbles before also partaking in more of her own beef bowl.

"I _know _you're trying to pin the blame on me right now, Miku," Nino hisses, following suit after her younger sisters.

"Who else..."

"Hey, it's not like _I _was the only one who was against it in the beginning! Again, look at who's sitting next to you!"

"Yes, I'm hearing her talk to me right now."

"Your _other _side, damn it!" Nino begins to rapidly shovel the rest of her food into her mouth in her dominant anger and embarrassment that gives her the ability to consume food twice as fast as she usually does. "God, I _hate _him, I fucking _hate _him! Making me embarrass myself in front of my own sisters like this..."

"You _sure _about that...?" Miku murmurs to her side nonchalantly.

"_YES! _Because at the end of the day, I still maintain that he's still an outsider and he always will be!" Bolting up to her feet quickly, Nino holds onto her now-empty beef bowl to dispose of it properly. "You want me to _prove_ it? Fine! I'll fucking prove it!"

And before either of her sisters can stop her, Nino storms off the roof and slams the rooftop access door behind her.

"I hope you did not tease her too much," Itsuki sighs heavily in her wake, somewhat amazed that Nino even has it in her to eat faster than she can. "You know how Nino is - for as much as she loves to tease us, she has never been one to take teasing well when it is done to her."

"I know. Even still, she needs it every once in a while, if only as a vibe check," Miku remarks. "In any case, let's just finish eating quickly, lunch is about to end soon."

* * *

After school, the youngest quintuplet is seated politely at the shoe lobby of the Nakano penthouse, patiently waiting for their tutor to arrive to begin their scheduled lesson for today. She's not the only quintuplet waiting for his arrival; as a matter of fact, all five quintuplets are now gathered in the living room waiting for Uesugi Fuutarou to show up, as they have done for their past several tutoring lessons. Itsuki just happens to be the one who's taken it upon herself to wait for their tutor at the shoe lobby. The young tutor was due to arrive half an hour ago, but he has yet to make his entrance, which is strange given his usual punctuality, despite the social deviance he usually displays at school. He has at least texted Ichika to inform the girls of his tardiness, so it's not as if they need to worry about his safety, but still, Itsuki can't help but feel a tad bit nervous about the situation.

That, and the conversation she's had with Miku and Nino earlier at school during lunch has put her mentally in a strange spot. Ichika collaborating with Uesugi-kun, and possibly for longer than they could have imagined? Itsuki wants to banish the notion as preposterous, but she can't fully pry it from her mind now that Nino's sowed it so adamantly. Could Nino actually be onto something with that? That Ichika has a direct hand in Uesugi-kun's work as a mage because she herself is one? That perhaps...perhaps, just maybe, all this...mage business has intertwined everyone's fates? That it truly was no coincidence, as Nino stated, that Uesugi Fuutarou was the boy chosen to not only tutor them, but to protect them from danger as well?

Itsuki tries to shake her head to clear her thoughts but to no avail; the preoccupying thoughts cannot be shaken off and stick to her mind like drops of rapidly drying glue. The youngest quint knows that it is dangerous for her to entertain such thoughts this close to finals, as was discussed earlier at school when Nino started going off on this tangent, but she can't help herself: could Ichika really be a fully-fledged mage like Uesugi-kun himself? That she, too, like Uesugi-kun, is stalking the night just like he is, performing nightly vigilantism, in the shadows where the rest of her family can't see, with perhaps the exception of their father? Certainly in years past, there would be nights when she would return home late at night for reasons she did not want to share and those that could not be explained by her sisters when they tried to figure out why, though to be fair, Ichika has not been demonstrating such behavior lately. Perhaps she stopped her own nightly escapades _because _she met Uesugi-kun, and now she's entrusted him with whatever her nighttime responsibilities were before they met?

So many possibilities, no little answers - given Itsuki's frustrations with her own lack of ability to self-study, this kind of situation, too, is starting to get on her nerves, now that she can't get the thoughts out of her head. Also, now that she's on the topic, why has Ichika decided to keep her identity as a mage a secret from the rest of her sisters? Given that it's Ichika, it's safe to assume that she did so in order to protect the rest of the quintuplets; just from what little they know of the magic world from Uesugi-kun, that explaination seems the likeliest. Then what of that fateful weekend night at the warehouse, when the quintuplets were taken hostage at Nino's blunder? Ichika could have probably done something about the situation there, but she didn't, which means that either she isn't anywhere near the practiced mage as Uesugi-kun or she deliberately chose not to act in order to keep her double-identity a secret from the others.

Gripping her skirt more tightly on her lap, Itsuki purses her lips tightly. If only she could simply go straight up to Ichika and ask her these questions directly, but she knows she can't do that. But, then again, since they're all quintuplets, won't Ichika also know that eventually the rest of her sisters will also awaken their own latent magical powers sooner or later, like what's been happening to Miku and Nino? Those two can't keep their Mystic Eyes and their magical powers, should they have any, secret forever; eventually Ichika will find out about them, especially given that it's Ichika, who, being the eldest quintuplet among them, can figure out what's going on with her sisters faster than any of her sisters can. Honestly, all Itsuki probably needs to do is just wait, and the opportunities that she seeks will show themselves in due time.

A sudden, somewhat loud thump against the wall just outside the Nakano penthouse's front door rudely drags Itsuki out of her own deep thoughts and causes her to spring back up to her feet. The thump is loud to her, but not so loud that her sisters would hear from behind her in the living room, so the youngest quint opens the door to find -

"U-Uesugi-kun...?!"

The Nakano quintuplets' classmate and tutor has his face pressed against the wall next to their front door, down on his knees that somehow continue to support his weight as he remains with his face planted against the cold, air-conditioned wall. Alarmed, Itsuki reaches out to push her tutor to the side so that she can get a look at his face, and what she sees makes her gasp with a hushed voice.

"He's...dead!"

Uesugi Fuutarou snores loudly with both of his eyes wide open.

"...tired," Itsuki finishes, her face relaxing into a look of incredulity. "Uesugi-kun, what did we say about getting some proper rest today?"

Fuutarou shakes his head like a dog being awoken from a nap once Itsuki's shaken him enough to wake him up.

"Mmmmph? Sorry, come again?" he asks, getting quickly back up to his feet. "Oh, I actually made it to your house. Good, good."

"Don't make it sound like getting here in itself was a gamble!" Itsuki reprimands him. "And I said that we told you to get some decent rest at some point, didn't we? You'll need it to tutor us properly this week before our finals!"

"Right, right. I mean, yeah, I _did _get some decent rest, I actually went back home to sleep this time," Fuutarou says, rubbing his right eye with his right hand while giving Itsuki a thumbs-up gesture with his left."

"...just being able to sleep at home constitutes good rest to you? Then how long did you sleep tonight?"

"A whopping three hours. What a steal!"

"Uesugi-kun!" Itsuki growls his name again, this time sounding legitimately angry with him while putting her fists against her hips. "If you feel that you must rest some more, you can do so here. I will make sure that you leave this place well-rested if you cannot keep yourself awake for our lesson!"

"But then how're you girls gonna learn?"

"Well, since you have not been by for a few days recently, we have all been studying together in your absence whenever possible. We have been taking your advice on teaching each other whenever you are not here, and it appears to be very helpful."

"That's good to hear, but I'm afraid that won't quite be enough, not when you girls all are just barely starting to get passing scores on all your subjects. We gotta finish strong, and I gotta be there for it as your tutor. That's why I went ahead and prepared..._this."_

Itsuki watches as Fuutarou pulls his messenger bag in front of himself and rummages through it briefly before, to her downright horror, pulling out a, unbelievably thick stack of papers; he may as well have ripped open a full ream of printer paper and pulled out all of the contents.

"I've curated these sample questions myself, either by taking them from reference and study books or just straight up making them myself," Fuutarou beams with satisfaction while Itsuki begins to tremble and sweat on the spot; Fuutarou has been inflicting a sort of trauma on the quintuplets and forcing them to develop a phobia of worksheets with how often he's been assigning them to the girls lately. "At least twenty unique worksheets, and copies for each of the five of you. If you can go through all of these before finals, you'll have an even better shot at passing all your finals - or at least I hope that's the case."

Fuutarou looks up from his ream of papers only to find the front door closing right in his face.

"O-On second thought, Uesugi-kun, l-let us just - just cancel today's lesson. Your, uh, your health is, um, very important after all, and - and I would prefer if you took today off to take b-better care of yourself, so - "

"Itsuki, my health is not an excuse for you to not study. Also, don't shut the door in my face after I basically sleepwalked my ass over here from home."

With the most reluctance Fuutarou has seen come out of Itsuki, the youngest quintuplet slowly reopens the door and, with her ahoge bobbing dejectedly, slowly accepts the ream of worksheets from her tutor as the latter lets himself inside the penthouse and closes the door behind him.

"Ugh...so much work here..." Itsuki sighs uncomfortably as she begins to peruse the worksheets, but then she stops in her tracks as she steps back onto the floor out of the shoe lobby while Fuutarou pulls his own off to enter the house properly. "Wait a minute...Uesugi-kun..."

"Hai, Uesugi dess," the tutor answers crisply, but his voice is still quite groggy.

Itsuki's hands grow a bit slack as she takes another sigh, this time much deeper and sincere than her first.

"...unbelievable. Consider me astounded," Itsuki shakes her head with a weak smile. "Do not tell me that these were the reason why you got so little sleep last night?"

The tutor simply shrugs as he steps past the youngest quint to head to the living room where the rest of his students await.

"I'll leave that to your imagination, but...what I will say is, I can't slack off myself when you girls have been putting in work lately."

Itsuki lowers her stack of papers given to her by her tutor, watching him disappear around the corner and begin greeting the rest of her sisters. Slack off? If only _that _were true, and if only just for his sake...

"I'm not studying with you anymore!"

Nino's signature loud voice grabs Itsuki's attention this time, and the youngest quint gasps a little, having forgotten to warn her tutor of Nino's potentially disagreeable attitude that she's got in store for him today, so she rushes into the living room herself to find Nino and Fuutarou in the middle of a stand-off in the living room with the rest of their sisters looking on with mixed reactions.

"Mhm. What brought this on, exactly?" Fuutarou asks calmly, groaning a little as he eases himself down onto the floor on his usual side of the glass table.

"I intend to make good on my promise that I'd only study with everyone for our midterms and that's it! So from now on, I won't be studying with you anymore!" Nino declares even more fervently, pointing a finger down at the seated tutor, who lays his head down on the table.

"Fuutarou, are you...are you alright?" Miku asks with heightened concern, seeing their tutor put his head down like this with worry splashed on her face, as this is the first time Fuutarou has acted like this. Usually their tutor would get the rest he needs just from sleeping in class at school, but for him to need even more rest on top of what he gets at school is a sight that the girls have never seen before.

"Yeah, Uesugi-san, you don't look so hot right now. You should get some more sleep right now if that's what you need, we'll be fine on our own," Yotsuba says to Fuutarou, already by his side with her hands on his shoulders.

"_You're _the last person I wanna hear that from, Yotsuba," Fuutarou grumbles sleepily. "Maybe if that came from one of your sisters I'd believe it, but not from you."

"H-Hey, what's _that _supposed to mean!? I'm being bullied right now! No bully!" Yotsuba pouts annoyedly, feeling miffed that her extension of goodwill has not been reciprocated.

"Yeah, these aren't quite real bully hours yet, Fuutarou-kun. But Yotsuba's still right; if you need to get some more sleep, you should probably do that. Even if you are Fuutarou-kun, I can't imagine how on earth you'll be able to tutor effectively when you're half asleep," Ichika agrees, taking Fuutarou's other side and putting her hands underneath his left armpit. "Yotsuba, get his other arm. On the count of three - one, two, three!"

Synchronizing their strength, the two sisters manage to raise Fuutarou up off the table and drag him over to the long couch, where they dump him and Ichika pulls his left leg up so that he's lying on the sofa properly at least.

"Shit...not gonna lie, this feels pretty embarrassing when I'm supposed to be tutoring you all right now..." the young tutor sighs feebly, forced to accept his situation to get at least a bit more rest.

"At least it's not as embarrassing as failing all your exams like we do every time we get them," Miku shrugs, pulling off her cardigan after setting her headphones aside on the corner of the glass table and draping it over her tutor like it's a blanket.

"Uh, hello!? Are you all just gonna ignore me here or what?!" Nino barks at everyone in the living room while Itsuki finally sets down the stack of worksheets that Fuutarou has bestowed upon her upon his arrival. Her sisters merely glance over at her, and the looks on their faces for the most part convey the same message.

"...well, if you wanna go back to studying by yourself that badly, then be our guest," Ichika shrugs lightly, but the sound of Fuutarou's snores grabs her attention again. "Sheesh, for him to fall asleep that fast...just how much has he been beating himself up lately?"

"When he first arrived, he faceplanted into the wall next to the door and that was how I found him," Itsuki sighs with her oldest sister. "I did tell him to cancel our lesson today half-jokingly, but...seeing him like this, maybe I ought to have been more serious about that notion..."

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't mind him staying longer than usual tonight to teach us once he wakes up," Miku says to her sisters. "Of course, I'll be studying in the meantime while we're waiting for him to wake back up. I'm assuming those are worksheets Fuutarou got for us to do today?" She points over at the stack of papers on the glass table.

"Yes. Twenty unique worksheets, one for the each of us," Itsuki explains curtly.

Snorting weakly, Ichika puts a single hand on her hip as she takes a glance down at the worksheets procured for them by their tutor. "I can't help but feel like I'm looking at more effort done by one person than all the effort that I've put into anything in my own life."

"Well...that actually wouldn't be too far from the tru - " Itsuki begins to say, but she's interrupted by Nino turning after she's had enough of being with her sisters to head for the stairs. " - wait, Nino, where are you going?"

Nino glares back hard at Itsuki. "Like I said, to go back to my room to study on my own. Did you not listen to me just now or what?"

"Wait, wait..." Nino's youngest sister hurries around the glass table to catch up to Nino. "You - are you being serious right now?"

Inhaling sharply with anger, the second quintuplet then turns fully to Itsuki to aggressively confront her. "Your ears full of earwax or something or what? I even told you _that _too, about how I was going to prove that I fucking _hate _Uesugi-kun!"

"Wait, what on earth even happened? Did something happen between you two earlier at school or something?" Sensing the situation intensify, Ichika looks on sharply with alertness to her two sisters at the base of the stairs.

"Nino's been like this since lunch. We were, uh, talking about a few things, and...I teased her about what's been happening with Fuutarou, how we've all been studying with him and stuff, and...she took it badly, so ever since then she's been like this," Miku shakes her head with a sigh of her own. "I thought she'd cool off when we got home, but it looks like she hasn't..."

"But Nino, our finals are at the end of this week! We have been making so much progress getting our scores up together for the past week or so; for you to just ditch us like this now, is that not going to put all of our efforts to waste?" Itsuki tells Nino.

"What's me leaving to go study on our own go anything to do with our scores? If anything, I'm only hurting my own scores; the rest of you can keep studying together like you have been," Nino hisses sharply back at her youngest sister.

"Then at least study with us until Uesugi-kun wakes up if you insist on being this way!" Itsuki pleads.

"No! Ugh, God, just _seeing _him here's enough to make me fucking puke!"

Finally realizing that there's no way she's getting through to her sister at this rate, Itsuki suddenly steels her resolve and develops a hard look of her own to equip herself adequately to deal with her older sister's bullshit.

"Nino, Uesugi-kun has been working hard to get us to the point we are at now. For you to suddenly leave like this would mean not only wasting our efforts, but _his _efforts as well!" Itsuki points over at the sofa, though neither Itsuki nor Nino have a good angle of their snoozing, lightly snoring tutor who's fast asleep.

Nino, who follows Itsuki's finger in the direction that it's pointing, clenches her teeth with closed lips, and Itsuki can see the look in her eyes sharpen intensely to the point where she gives truth to the phrase "if looks could kill".

"Shut the fuck up, Itsuki, you dumb bitch," Nino spits down at her sister, as she's standing on a slightly elevated position over Itsuki. "He's just a hired tutor at the end of the day. An outsider. If anything, he's meddling with affairs that should've stayed within our own family. Don't you fucking dare try to make him out to be anything more than that, because he's not."

"Itsuki, there's no point arguing with her right now."

Joining her youngest sister at the base of the stairs, Miku, having pulled out a smaller stack of worksheets from the original stack that Itsuki brought in with her, hands the twenty sheets up at Nino. "Here, at the very least, take these with you. If you're going to study on your own today, you might as well do it with the best study material we can get our hands on easily."

"I don't fucking need these."

Before anyone can object, Nino, with surprisingly crisp accuracy, throws her left hand out and slaps the stack of worksheets being offered to her out of her hand, causing them to get scattered all over the floor and the base of the stairs.

Watching the papers fly in every conceivable direction, Nino, blinking awkwardly at what she's done, watches the last piece of paper flutter and come to a rest next to one of the dinner table chair's legs. It may have been her intention to slap the papers away, but seeing the stack of papers basically explode into individual sheets gives her a better scope of what she's done; that, and she kind of expected Miku to have a better grip on those sheets. But there's nothing that she can do about it; she has to stand her ground despite her actions, since it's not as though she can really apologize for them now.

**"Pick them up."**

The eerie amplification of Miku's soft-spoken voice instantly demands Nino's attention, and her eyes can't help but flick down to Miku's, whose eyes have not yet gone Mystic, but Nino can sense magical energy emanating from them without a doubt, not unlike the last time Miku gave her a very similar look. However, having felt this once before, the older quintuplet is better able to resist its oppressive nature and remains steadfast, failing completely to notice the look on the quintuplet standing next to Miku.

"You're seriously letting yourselves get conned by these stupid fucking scraps of paper?" Nino growls back strongly, stooping down to pick up one such worksheet and looking at it in utmost disgust. "He was even late today when usually he always comes on time, and now he's fucking sleeping when he's supposed to be teaching. I don't care if he's tired or not, that's his damn problem and not ours. As far as I'm concerned, he's getting worse and worse at his job, which means the fact that we've been improving our scores despite that is more because of our own efforts and not his!"

Nino then holds the worksheet in her current hand with both hands this time.

"If you think Uesugi-kun just handing us some worksheets and calling that tutoring should be considered teaching, then you're fucking wrong!" she asserts angrily, and she emphatically tears the worksheet in half. The hair-raising sound of ripping paper slices through the air of the first floor of the Nakano penthouse. "Fuck these worksheets, and fuck Uesugi-kun, that bast - "

Before she can finish her sentence, however, Nino feels a sudden surge of magical energy. Two of them, actually - one of them is from Miku, naturally, but...it's the second magical energy surge that is foreign to her that really sets off Nino's mental alarm bells.

And before she can turn to this new source of magical energy, Nino suddenly feels something wrap around her neck for a split second. The sensation is too short for her to identify exactly, but if she had to guess what it was, it was almost as though an invisible hand, for a few milliseconds, had grabbed her neck to choke her.

The second quintuplet doesn't have time to dwell on it, though, for another hand sails through the air at her, much like her own, and slaps her left cheek perfectly and produces the crispest _SMACK _that also reverberates through the first floor after the torn piece of paper before it.

Yotsuba yelps at the sound of the loud slap, so surprised is she to even hear it in the first place. To every onlooking quintuplet's surprise, including Nino, Nakano Itsuki now stands on the elevated base of the stairs of their home, with her right hand still outstretched from the follow-through of her perfectly executed slap. As Nino recoils back from the slap she's just taken, her eyes meet with Itsuki's.

A pair of neon red lights glares back at Nino. In each eye, there floats a nebulous red haze that fills the iris, encapsulating a smaller circle of dim blue light that further houses a condensed circle of darkness at the very center. With how bloated Itsuki's pupils got, it is physically impossible for Nino to have missed them.

**"Apologize. _Now."_**

The sheer amount of conviction and command in her voice...Itsuki has never sounded like this before in Nino's memory. As such, after she blinks her own eyes to suppress her own Mystic Eyes from surfacing in response, Nino can't stop herself from reacting on instinct.

_**PUNCH.**_

Before Itsuki can react, and it doesn't help that she has some of the slowest reactions among the quintuplets, Nakano Nino sinks the knuckles of her right fist square into the center of Itsuki's face. Whether it was to get payback for Itsuki slapping her in the first place or to get rid of the strange eyes she's seeing that she doesn't feel comfortable staring back into, Nino isn't quite sure - but just like how she slapped Fuutarou's worksheets out of Miku's hands, she can't take that punch back now. Itsuki is forced to stumble backwards, and thankfully the wall is there to stop her momentum before she can fall over completely.

_"NINO!_ What did you just - " Ichika starts to shriek, beginning to lurch forward in alarm that there's a fight that's about to go physical on the verge of breaking out between her sisters which has never happened before, but to her shock, Itsuki momentarily darts her eyes over in her oldest sister's direction after getting slapped once she's regained herself.

**"Please do not interrupt us, Ichika."**

"Th-The fuck was _that _for...?!" Nino whispers fiercely through her teeth that have been kept clenched this whole time, and she keeps her punching fist clenched. "Why did you fucking - "

"Allow me to reiterate the hard work that Uesugi-kun has put into being our tutor," Itsuki talks right over Nino with no concern for what she has to say as she takes a few steps back towards Nino to where she was originally standing before she got punched in the face. Blood is slowly beginning to drip down Itsuki's right nostril, much to the rest of the quintuplets' alarm save for Nino. "He has put in so much effort into tutoring us. Never mind his other line of work he maintains as a mage, just his efforts of being a tutor alone are more than commendable for reasons I need not explain. Our personal opinions of his character are not relevant in this matter, and as such, I will not tolerate you speaking ill of them, and I will not have you wasting such effort, especially when we are the intended beneficiaries in the first place. You **_will_ **apologize to Uesugi-kun when he wakes up later today, Nino."

Baring her clenched teeth down at Itsuki, Nino also clenches her other fist along with her jaws.

"And to think that you were just as against him as I was until right before midterms...you really let yourself fall for his sweet-talk or whatever, huh...?" Nino scowls irately.

"Says the one who admitted that Uesugi-kun was a good tutor earlier today at lunch, but that, too, is besides the point," Itsuki immediately fires back - any sort of retort of this level from Itsuki is highly unusual and a clear indicator of how genuinely pissed off she is right now.

"Well, clearly it's not, given how heated you're getting just because I called these worksheets nothing but scraps of paper!" Nino responds antagonistically.

"And that would be because they are not. Look at these worksheets again, Nino. Perhaps telling you to take a second look at them will get this across to you."

Itsuki, stooping down and grabbing another of the scattered worksheets, stands back up again and practically shoves it right in front of Nino's face so that it's impossible for the elder quint to ignore what the younger is trying to relay.

"I could not believe it either when I received the stack of worksheets from him when he arrived, but the truth cannot be denied. _These are all handwritten - every last one of them."_

Nino's eyes widen against her will when her own eyes behold the truth that Itsuki is currently shoving in her face. Indeed, every single problem on this side of paper in her face is, in fact, Uesugi Fuutarou's handwriting. As if in disbelief, Nino also glances down at the rest of the worksheets on the floor; sure enough, from her angle, all of the dropped sheets have the exact same style of handwriting as the one before her.

Even still, she doesn't waver. "Again, that's not our fucking problem. And if anything, that's totally stupid for someone like him to do - why the shit would someone like _him _ever think that _handwriting _a hundred individual worksheets was a good fucking idea? How the fuck does that make _any _sense to _anyone _here? Besides, you told us that his dad has an office in their house, right? Why didn't he think to just use the copy machine or printer in his dad's office? There _must _be a printer or _something _in there that he could've used instead!"

Itsuki, in her anger, admittedly did not think that far, and the question at first puts her in an awkward spot of her own, but like Nino, Itsuki refuses to back down and let Nino's question stump her for long.

"Regardless of his reason not to, the fact remains that he chose to write these by hand. That alone should be proof enough of the commitment he has made to tutoring us."

"Yeah, more like a commitment to brag to us about how he doesn't need a printer, I bet!" Nino crosses her arms strongly. "He's just trying to flex, that's all this is! You can't convince me otherwise!"

But Itsuki need not speak again for the atmosphere to grow slowly but surely anti-Nakano Nino; Nino herself quickly realizes that all eyes are on her, not on Itsuki, which more than likely means that she's being perceived as the one at fault here. Fuutarou's soft snores can be heard in this brief moment of silence, but no one's really paying attention to that right now.

"...just calm down and stay here to study with us, Nino," Miku whispers, almost underneath her breath. "You're not going to get anything done trying to study by yourself and we all know it. You certainly aren't getting anything done punching one of your own sisters in the face and giving her a nosebleed, either."

"Yeah, Nino, that was - that was going too far. I get that fights like this can happen from time to time, but there was just no need to be throwing punches like that," Ichika also adds, hoping that her subconscious authority as the eldest quintuplet will do something to finally put a lid over this boiling situation.

Surveying the rest of her family, Nino gradually drops her gaze down to the base of the stairs at her feet, between her and Itsuki.

"...fine. I see how it is. Seems like you all eventually came to prefer that bastard rather than me, your own sister. Yeah, I see how it is...I figured things would turn out this way."

Miku and Itsuki, the two closest quints to Nino, now begin to sense the air about Nino slowly begin to heat up as Nino herself recalibrates the tightness of her clenched fists by clenching them even harder than before.

"Fine! If this's how it's turned out, if this's how much you all don't like me now, then I'm out! I'll just get myself the fuck out of this shithole!"

"Huh? Wait, Nino, hold on, that's - you're not being serious right now, are you?!" Yotsuba yelps again, having felt the pressure in her chest build up for the last ten or so tense minutes as the situation between her sisters unfolded.

"I am!" Nino swiftly turns to Yotsuba with her furious blue eyes. "As a matter of fact, I've been thinking about it for a while now, but I've realized that this house's been making me sick! It's making me fucking sick to my stomach, and now I've had enough!"

Turning around sharply to head back up to her room, Nino begins to climb the stairs, but Itsuki, sensing that her older sister is being downright serious about leaving the house, barks back up at her in an effort to stop her.

"Father will not like it when he hears of this, Nino! Please reconsider your actions at once!"

_"That negligent fuckface hardly ever comes home anyway!"_ Spinning around a hundred and eighty degrees to unleash her emotions on Itsuki, Nino roars down the stairs at her youngest sister. "How the fuck are you going to live a life like that and still have the - the _audacity_ to call yourself _anyone's _father, for fuck's sake?! Fuck that asshole, I don't give a fuck whether he feels disappointed in me or not, because it sure doesn't fucking matter what we feel about _him!"_

"Regardless, you cannot deny all the things that he _has _done for us. Without him, none of us would even _be _here in the first place! Being able to live lives of luxury like this would have forever remained a pipe dream!" Itsuki furrows her eyebrows harder, doing her best to ignore the chilling sensation of blood slowly creeping down her face and lips. "If Father's sentiments will not sway you, then think about Mother! How would she feel about this right now, Nino? Mother was the one who told us to stick together no matter what! I will apologize to you as well, for I admit I went too far myself. You cannot leave, not now of all times!"

Nino simply sneers down at Itsuki.

"And _you _should drop that dead-Mama-substitute attitude of yours. You won't _ever _be half the mom Mama was, you fucking whore."

The second quintuplet turns to continue up the stairs, and once more she's stopped. But she's not stopped by a voice this time - rather, as Nino turns around to see what's grabbed her by back of her blouse, Itsuki yanks her backwards so that her own right fist can connect with Nino's face to return the favor in full.


	53. A Family Divided

**A/N**

**Molomar: Oh, it's a problem with my pacing you have? Tell me, are you the type of reader who lacks the ability to read stories longer than a hundred thousand words? Or do you prefer other fanfic writers on this site who put out one chapter of two thousand words every week or every other week and call that good pacing? Maybe you should stick to some of those "one-shot collection" fanfics that I've seen here; I've written one of my own, if you'd like to go read that instead.  
**

**Sarcastic remarks aside, my style of writing has typically led to me writing very long stories; worldbuilding, details, and conversation flow are all things I focus on in my repertoire, and they're things that typically add to the length of a story, which my other fanfics that I had heavily invested into in the past are proof of. If you want an example of truly egregiously bad pacing, go attempt to read Ambience: A Fleet Symphony and try to wrap your mind around the fact in 4.5 million words, only 3 - 4 months elapsed in the story itself.**

**So I'd daresay that this story is a significant improvement over what I used to write - because _unlike_ A:AFS, Five Equal Angels is well within completion. At this point, it's not my own ability or my motivation that stands in its way, but my life outside of the internet. So you'll excuse me for giving you some harsh words here, since I was finally able to reserve this month of October to dedicate mainly to fanfic writing, and one of the first reviews I get for what I personally consider my best fanfic to date after finally posting a chapter for the first time in three months is a complaint about its _pacing,_ especially in light of my previous works.**

**So please spare me the flattery of being a "really good writer"; for what little effort you made in prefacing your critique with some laughably meager praise, you sure spent a lot more effort complaining about what you didn't like than what you did like. At the end of the day, writing a story that _I _like writing is more important to me than cutting a story short just to pretend to be a better writer than I am.  
**

**derethl2: rather than chewing you out like I did to the guy above, I'll let this chapter answer your review.**

* * *

Once again, the ticking of a clock on the wall eventually drags the consciousness of Uesugi Fuutarou back to the proverbial surface. At least it's a different clock than what he's normally used to.

But it's not just a clock's ticking that haunts him during his waking moments as he sits up at attention, regaining his senses rapidly thanks to the long and refreshing nap. As he rubs the top of the bridge of his nose to eject what's left of the sleepiness in his head, the young mage senses, much to his alarm, slight traces of residual magical energy in his immediate vicinity. Once he's quickly finished rubbing his face, he looks up to turn around to survey his surroundings to spot where he senses these slight traces of leftover magical energy.

"Good morning, Fuutarou. Or...maybe good _evening _should be better."

Before he can turn around in his seat on the long couch, Fuutarou is stopped by Nakano Miku, who appears to be the sole quintuplet left on this floor. Not just this floor, either - when Fuutarou silently scans magically for any other presence in the house, it appears that he is alone in the Nakano penthouse with the third quintuplet sitting in the single-seat couch to his left.

"What happened when I was out?" the young mage asks, clearing his throat to get rid of its "morning" voice even though the clock on the wall over the TV displays 8:32 PM.

Miku's blue eyes, at first fixed on her tutor, slides slowly off his image and down onto the corner of the glass table in front of both of them.

"...long story short, right after you fell asleep, Itsuki and I got into a fight with Nino. Well, more accurately, I sort of started it, but Itsuki got involved and it just went to shit as soon as she did."

"How so? For something like this, I'd like the full story instead of the abridged version."

Miku sighs shortly, nodding understandingly.

"So...Nino insisted that she'd go off to study on her own after you showed up. Do you remember Nino yelling at you about how she wouldn't study with us anymore?"

"Yeah...that much I remember."

"You fell asleep pretty quickly, so Nino was able to go full Nino mode. She tried going up to her room to leave us, but Itsuki stopped her to argue with her, but then I told her that it was pointless to try to convince her otherwise, so I gave her some of the worksheets you made for us for this week so that she could work on them on her own, but she slapped them out of my hand. I told her to pick them back up, so she picked one up, but she tore it in half instead. That really pissed off Itsuki when she saw that, and so she slapped Nino in the face. Nino then punched her in the face back and gave her a bloody nose, and after some more arguing, Nino called Itsuki a whore, and Itsuki had enough of it and punched her in the face back."

Fuutarou does nothing but stare down at the edge of the glass table in front of him as he silently listens to Miku's testimony of her sisters beginning to punch each other in the face...suppressing a sudden, sharp, almost unexplained surge of anger.

"I can see her slapping someone, but..._punching _someone? Especially her own sister?" Fuutarou runs a slow hand up and over his black hair after his few moments of silence. "Yikes...maybe Nino was onto something when she kept saying that she didn't want me in this house anymore."

"You're seriously believing her _now _of all times?"

"No, obviously not. So what happened next?"

"Well, you can kind of imagine it for yourself, right? Nino and Itsuki got into an actual fight right on the spot at the bottom of the stairs." Miku nods slightly over in the direction of the scene that unfolded a few hours ago. "Ichika, Yotsuba, and I all had to hurry over to break up the fight. Thank God Yotsuba's strong, so she could hold Nino back on her own; it took everything Ichika and I had to hold Itsuki back."

Letting her head hang for a moment, Miku straightens up her back to look back at her classmate.

"Needless to say, that's the first time we've ever seen Itsuki like that," the third quintuplet murmurs. "Never mind her punching Nino in the face too...the moment she slapped Nino, it was almost as if...Itsuki wasn't Itsuki."

With Miku's recounting and the lingering traces of magical energy, Fuutarou is swiftly able to put two and two together as Miku lets out another heavy sigh and rests her face briefly into the fronts of her knees, as her legs are once again held up with her feet resting on the edge of her couch.

"I guess that's how I was like to Nino in the alley that one time..." she mumbles to herself so softly that Fuutarou can't quite catch what she's saying.

"...Itsuki's magic potential activated, huh?" Fuutarou groans under his breath, hunching his back forward to hold the side of his face with his right hand, his right elbow resting on his right knee in order to do so. "That would explain this new magic signature that I'm sensing right now that I haven't sensed yet..."

Miku nods slowly. "Since we're alone right now, I think it's for the best if I told you that Itsuki's Mystic Eyes...they're active now, too."

"Yeah, I figured. Given that that's how you and Nino first discovered your own magical potentials, it's no surprise that Itsuki's the same way." Fuutarou begins to let his right index finger tap slowly against his temple, not unlike an active metronome.

"You wanna know what the _real _surprise is, though?" Miku nods over at Fuutarou this time. "You slept like a log through the whole thing. Even when the others started raising their voices and yelling and punching each other, you didn't wake up the whole time. I almost wanted to wake you up so that you'd step in to stop them, but I didn't want to, well, bother you when you really needed this nap. So I was just kind of...hoping that you'd wake up on your own, but you never did."

Fuutarou shrugs simply with a cheeky grin on his face. "Eh...it happens."

"Don't just 'meh, it happens' me!" Miku pouts indignantly over at her tutor. "I'm serious, you know! If you'd been there, you could've stopped it all and calmed everyone down."

"You've got _way _too much confidence in my ability to keep order in this household."

"I'm serious about _that _too! You would've done a lot better of a job than the rest of us, at least. More to the point, though, how the heck did you even manage to sleep through all that? Even Itsuki herself would've woken up if people were literally punching each other in the face. You've usually been able to wake up whenever it's time for lunch at school, right?"

"Yeah, but you'll notice that these days I haven't even been able to do that either," Fuutarou rolls his eyes a little, though it's mainly at himself. "Yes, I'm normally able to wake up whenever I sense something happening in my immediate area; doesn't need to be loud noises or anything physical because blah blah, bullshit mage powers, blah blah. The only problem is that I can do that when I've been maintaining a healthy - or in my case, a 'good enough' - sleep schedule. But when my sleep schedule starts having multiple two-hours-of-sleep nights in a row, and for repeated weeks on top of that, eventually my body just has enough and forces me to at least get a night of 'better' sleep so that I don't literally drop dead one of these days from sheer exhaustion."

Narrowing her eyes in disbelief at her tutor, Miku scowls the hardest she's ever scowled at Uesugi Fuutarou.

"You look like you don't believe me. You should; I'm quite experienced in the field of working yourself into utter exhaustion. This isn't even my final form!"

"...dumb memes aside, it's not that I don't _believe _you, but it's just...before these last few weeks, you're always so punctual and...efficient, if that's the right word. Whether you realize it yourself or not, but...by this point, you've become that person in our lives whom we can turn to and rely on, and that extends to stuff even beyond tutoring." Miku tilts her head a little while it's still resting against the front of her knees. "So the fact that you didn't wake up to intervene when we probably really needed you...well, not _probably_...we were at a loss for what to do, you know...?"

Fuutarou scratches his head a little. "Well, I understand that I've kinda become a big part of your lives and all, even if it wasn't in the most organic way, but that's pretty dangerous, relying on someone else to get involved in your family affairs, right? Never mind Nino blasting me for doing that already, but if I'm not here at all and another fight breaks out among you, _then _what'll you do? You need to learn how to deal with these kinds of situations just among yourselves first."

"We _have_, Fuutarou. What, you don't think we haven't had fights like this break out before? It's the fact that it got violent like it did today that was a first - _and _Itsuki's Mystic Eyes activated on top of everything else. Didn't I already say that this fight was unlike any other we'd seen up until this point?"

The young mage and tutor raises an apologetic hand up to his student. "Alright, alright, I get it. And sorry for sleeping through this; I've been pushing myself so hard these days that today turned out to be the day where I just _had _to get at least some decent sleep so that I don't end up pushing myself off the brink. For what it's worth, I don't expect you to understand what this feels like, and for your sake I hope you never do, so let's just leave it at this, that I've been making too many bad decisions that've led to things turning out like this."

Any amount of irritation that Miku has been accruing towards her tutor gets disintegrated when she hears Fuutarou's apology, so all she can do is give a soft sigh as she adjusts her headphones a little to make it more comfortable as it sits idly around her neck.

"I get that you're busy and all, but _literally working yourself to death _doesn't sound like the best work schedule you could have, even if you _are _a mage," she criticizes quietly.

"Well, if I had to work myself to death, it's either doing so as a mage or as a corporate wageslave downtown, so..." Again, Fuutarou shrugs, but Miku isn't having any of Fuutarou's dry and dark humor.

"Take better care of yourself, Fuutarou. And that's not a suggestion."

"Understood, Nakano-sensei. Could you also tutor the rest of your sisters too, while you're at it? You're the smartest among your sisters, after all."

"Not if our midterms are any indication, with Itsuki scoring better than me."

"Hm, got a point there. Then maybe I'll ask Itsuki to tutor everyone instead. Speaking of Itsuki, actually, where is everyone else?"

Miku tussles her hair a little as she lowers her legs so that her feet can properly rest against the cold floor. "So after we managed to break up the fight between her and Nino, Nino ran out of the house after she had one last argument with Itsuki, saying that she wouldn't come back home until Itsuki apologized to her for today, and so Yotsuba chased after her, saying that she'll make sure to keep tabs on her and call us in case more bad guys show up to come after them like that last time. Ichika said that she got a text from her part-time saying that they needed her, which is probably fake since she said that she'd managed to clear this week with her job so that she could study with us for finals, so she probably didn't like the vibes in the house or something, I guess. Itsuki also left, saying that if Nino was going to act like this, she might as well do the same until Nino came back home first."

"So basically, they think that whoever comes back here first is basically saying that they were the one at fault for the fight today..."

The third quint nods, watching her tutor slowly lean backwards against the couch and place his right hand over his face tiredly.

"Ugh...we'd _just _managed to get everyone together, and then this shit happens at pretty much the _worst _possible time..." Fuutarou lethargically peeks out from between the cracks in his fingers, up at the clock on the wall over the TV across from him. "...I feel worse about it given that it wasn't even me who brought everyone together, since that was thanks to Ichika and her little blackmailing scheme that helped me out in that regard."

"I know this isn't any of my business, but...it is _really _necessary for you to work _this _hard?" Miku asks. Her voice has grown soft and rather timid, now that she sees Fuutarou begin to take this situation seriously.

Miku watches Fuutarou's black eye roll a little over in her direction in between his fingers, look in to her eyes for a few seconds, and then roll back to how they were before.

"...no, I don't mind you asking. Normally I'd agree that yeah, this isn't any of your business, but now, it's very clearly affecting my performance as your tutor, so it's starting to become your business too," he concedes, nodding slowly. "Long story short, yes, it's actually necessary. It's just that...it's one of those things that I can't really explain right now...and maybe I'll never be able to, depending on how things turn out in the future."

"Hmph. Secretive now, aren't we," Miku pouts again, but this time she doesn't pout as hard.

"Sorry. It's not exactly my intention, but...that's how we mages gotta be sometimes." Fuutarou pulls himself up to sit up properly on the couch again. "In any case, you _are _correct that it's now my responsibility to bring everyone back again, given that I was the one who slept in what was supposed to be one of my own lessons, and so the first thing I gotta do is find who's missing. Do you happen to know where Nino and Itsuki are? You said that Yotsuba's tailing Nino, right?"

"I did. Itsuki said that she'd be staying at the Marriott Hotel downtown, so you should be able to find her there. As for Yotsuba, let me call her real quick..."

Miku pulls out her phone and dials Yotsuba's number to connect to her, and Fuutarou gets up from the couch to pick up his messenger bag and survey his surroundings. The fact that Itsuki's also activated her Mystic Eyes right here and now...was the fight that she had with Nino that bad that it somehow triggered her latent magic talent to emerge from dormancy? And Ichika probably witnessed it too, though what that means exactly he's not entirely sure of either just yet. At least he's been on good terms with Itsuki lately, so meeting with her to work things out might not be so bad, but her newly acquired Mystic Eyes could prove to be a spanner in the works for the diplomacy that he must conduct with her. He doesn't even want to know how bad things will get with Nino, though...

However, he doesn't let the inevitable conflict with Nino stop him from mentally getting back to work, now that he's gotten the precious few hours of good rest that he's needed. First, he needs to find Itsuki and work things out with her. Given the situation, with two discontent quintuplets that he's got to track down and account for, Fuutarou figures that dealing with Itsuki first is the play to make, given their good terms with each other for now - this means that he has a decent chance of convincing Itsuki to come back home so that they can resume their studies with time to spare. Once Itsuki is secured, Nino is next; while he's nowhere near as confident that negotiations with her will go anywhere near as smoothly, he's got no choice but to dive into it if he's to do his job as their tutor. That, and since they're adamant about not returning home before the other, he needs to synchronize their returns back home; the easiest way to do that is to deceive them by telling one quint that the other agreed to return home first. However, naturally that runs the risk of the quints simply not believing him, and even if they did, they would both realize that Fuutarou lied to them in order to convince the two of them to come back home, and they'd more than likely get angry at him and consequently become unwilling to study. Which means that the best way to go about this situation is to be earnest with them...but again, how would that go with Nino?

Well, actually, on second thought...he needn't worry about what he's going to do about Nino - he knows _exactly _how he'll approach that.

As the young mage is formulating his course of action in his head, he hears Miku's soft voice croak out nervously,

"...Fuutarou...Yotsuba isn't...picking up."

The words are enough to make Fuutarou's heart sink like a rock dropped into a pond in his chest.

"I know I asked Yotsuba if she had her phone with her and if it was good on battery, and she said it was. Yotsuba always picks up the phone no matter what as long as she has it on her."

While Miku is talking, Fuutarou quickly whips out his own phone and unlocks it, opening up his custom app that gives him a map of the city in order to quickly track Yotsuba's and Nino's locations. His rune history is able to give him a detailed footprint of both quintuplets' progress throughout the city, and the map pinpoints the fourth quintuplet's position, located nearby their high school, about half a klick to its west. Nino's coordinates are nearby, further north, near a manmade lake where people can row small two-seater boats for recreation.

"Found 'em; thankfully they seem to be okay," the young mage mutters, watching their statuses carefully to ascertain their conditions. "But just in case, since it's nighttime now, I'm gonna go bring 'em back home. Miku, call Ichika and have her come back home ASAP, preferably by getting a ride from one of her coworkers or something."

Miku nods. "Okay. Will you be leaving now?"

Fuutarou answers by getting up and heading over to the glass door to his right.

"Stay here, just in case. And again, sorry that things went to shit like this. I'll do my best to not have such a shitty sleep schedule moving forward."

"That doesn't sound very convincing when you're literally about to head out to do more mage stuff in the middle of the night," Miku retorts, lowering her phone, and Fuutarou smirks a little with self-degradation.

"Yeah, life's kinda cruel like that, isn't it. I'll let you know if anything happens, but hopefully I don't need to."

Opening the glass door to the veranda, the high school mage steps out, closes the sliding glass door behind him, and once again leaps over the railing to plummet down the side of the skyscraper.

Getting up and heading over slowly to the glass door to lock it after her tutor has dived out of view, Nakano Miku just as slowly returns to the single-seat couch to resume her seat. The course of events that have elapsed today have rendered her unwilling to do much of anything, much less study, as much as she knows that she ought to for her finals at the end of the week. As she once more pulls her legs back up and buries her face against her elevated knees, Miku sinks once again into the pensieve that is her accumulating thoughts that have been weighing down on her mind for the day.

Ever since Nino brought up the possibility that Ichika could be in cahoots with their tutor, Miku hasn't been able to stop thinking about it, even though Miku knows that more likely than not, Nino probably wasn't getting anywhere with it. But what if it's true? What if Ichika_ has _known Fuutarou before they met him as their tutor and classmate upon transferring to Asahiyama High School? And if so, for how long? And what would be the implications?

Miku begins searching her memory carefully, trying her best to dig up any relevant detail that she can recall regarding her oldest quintuplet sister. Even when they were younger, when they were truly identical quintuplets, once they learned the order of their ages, typically it was Ichika who was their de facto leader, and appropriately she was the one who started growing out of their collective quintuplet shell first. Well, technically, that would be Yotsuba, who one day decided to wear a hair ribbon so that she would "stand out" from the rest, but in Miku's opinion, Ichika was the first to take such a drastic step that was cutting her hair, for the quintuplets' long hair was such an integral part of their collective identity that cutting it was, for that time in their lives, out of the question.

But the third quintuplet is unable to find on her own any evidence or any particular memory that would pinpoint the start of Ichika's own magical career, if that's accurate. Obviously the biggest piece of information about Ichika that would point to such a direction is the mystery of her part-time job, which the rest of the quintuplets have almost no idea about. All they know is that she has one and that she's been working for about two years now, starting in the middle of junior high while they were still attending Black Rose, so the lack of information they have about it and Ichika's corresponding lack of communication with her sisters about it is more than suspicious enough to warrant a possible connection between Ichika and the her involvement in the magic world.

But even if Ichika's part-time job is magically involved, that by itself doesn't prove her connection to Uesugi Fuutarou; they would need further evidence to prove that. The two of them certainly haven't really shown much behavior suggesting that they have a prior relationship before their current one as tutor and student; even if they did, the two of them are impeccable actors/actresses to be able to keep up this behavior of theirs for the past three months, which is plenty of time for one of them to slip up and betray a hint or two about it, and given that Nino's been with them for much of their tutoring for the last several months, ironically enough, she would have eventually been able to catch on.

But that hasn't happened, so there's no point in contemplating this for now. As a matter of fact, there's no need for her to think about this; there are more pressing matters at hand, so why is Miku sitting here in the living room thinking about whether or not one of her sisters has had a deeper relationship with their classmate than the rest of them?

Jealousy, that's why.

The young headphones enthusiast pulls her legs more tightly in towards her own chest as she comes face to face with the ugly truth of her feelings. Miku has never felt jealous before, not to this magnitude. Of course, when she was younger, if her sisters got something she didn't or if they beat her at a game, then she got upset, yes, but that can be chalked up to childish tendencies and competitiveness, and at the end of the day she was able to let those feelings go and it would be as though they never existed. This, however, was different - _this _is legitimate, full-blown jealousy, and it's been eating away at her mind like a nigh-irremovable parasite all day today.

If it's true that Ichika has indeed known Fuutarou the longest out of the quintuplets under whatever circumstances are relevant, then Miku feels bitter about it, about how Ichika has spent more time with him. Miku would love to have known Fuutarou for the past several years - given her feelings for him at this stage and her decision to pursue them despite his situation as a full-time mage, she feels that if she'd've had more time spent with him, then she'd be more comfortable being with him, being more casual and friendly towards him than she is now - maybe, just maybe, she'd've been able to build up the courage to confess her feelings to him, too.

Come to think of it, now that Miku's been pulling up old memories, there _was _that one time when the quints were younger, when Yotsuba told the others about how she met this really interesting boy during a school trip they took to visit Kyoto. How many years ago was that again? Six? Something like that. The other quints didn't really show that much of an interest in him, though, so whoever that boy was exactly, he's remained a mere conversation topic for the girls and nothing more, and his identity Miku would never know.

...what if that boy turned out to be Uesugi Fuutarou?

Miku shakes her head sadly. No way _that _could be true...real life isn't a fairy tale where the love of her life turned out to conveniently be a boy who was mentioned in passing in their youth. And certainly Fuutarou himself has never acted like he'd known them before their high school days, either. Not worth delving further into, lest she feel even worse about this whole situation.

Closing her eyes to help herself calm down before her accelerating emotions can begin rocketing out of control, the third quintuplet slowly pulls her headphones up and reopens her eyes briefly to put on a playlist on her phone so that she can banish the oppression of silence that holds domain in their penthouse. It's been a long while since the house has felt truly too big for any one of them - and for as quiet as a girl she herself is, Miku can't tolerate the silence that she's currently surrounded by, not this kind. Fuutarou shared with her some music playlists about two weeks ago during one of their walks together back home from school, saying that she might enjoy them, and to her surprise, despite thinking that he'd recommend some rap to her or something, he actually gave her some chillstep and soothing future bass mixes, and she's been listening to nothing but those playlists ever since.

As her world becomes occupied by soft and calming beats, Miku resumes her seated fetal position. She doesn't want to feel this way - she knows that feeling jealous about Fuutarou is wrong, because it'll only lead to more conflicts breaking out among the Nakano sisters. She loves her sisters; she always has. Despite all the trials and tribulations that they've been through, the sisters have been able to overcome or adapt to every single one, because their mother made it clear to them before her death that no matter what happens, they must always stick together - blood is thicker than water, that sort of thing. That was one of Itsuki's arguments, in fact, when she was trying to dissuade Nino from leaving the house.

But the fact that Nino, the one who made her sisters the promise that she would be the one who keep them all together moving forward after their mother's death, is now the first to leave the house like this, and on bad terms too, forces Miku to realize that Nino perhaps may be onto something with her claims that she didn't want Uesugi Fuutarou to become so heavily involved with them. This on its own wouldn't have affected Miku so much as it does, but in light of her own growing jealousy over Ichika's "relationship" with Fuutarou, jealousy that is, by the way, completely unfounded because it's stemmed from mere conjecture from Nino and not based on any concrete evidence, the third quintuplet is compelled to recognize the potential truth behind her older sister's preaching. Obviously it's not like just because of this, she'll all of a sudden lose her feelings for her classmate and see him in an unfavorable light, but...she still can't help but feel shitty about it all.

And then there's the topic of Itsuki's newly formed Mystic Eyes that takes things from already bad to even worse.

Whatever kind of secrecy Nino, Miku, and Itsuki had going among them in regards to their own latent magical traits is now completely nullified by this incident today, since the whole point of it was to keep their Mystic Eyes a secret from Ichika. The eldest quintuplet, as Miku recalls, didn't act like she recognized what was going on magically, but since Fuutarou has already informed her about her oldest sister's hidden identity as a mage, Miku is willing to bet that Ichika is merely acting like she didn't know what was going on; it's just safer to assume that she knows for certain that Itsuki's Mystic Eyes are now active.

What makes the situation scary is that when Itsuki's Mystic Eyes awakened, the magical energy resonating from them affected Miku and Nino as well, as they were the closest to her in proximity at the time. Much like how Miku's own Mystic Eyes forced Nino's to surface when they met face to face, Miku in turn experienced the same thing as collateral when she was standing next to Itsuki, despite the fact that her younger sister wasn't looking at her when her Eyes surfaced; Miku had to exert herself to keep her own Eyes submerged, and she's sure that Nino had to do something similar as well.

As she'd told Fuutarou earlier before he left, Miku was able to have a front-row view of Itsuki at the time of her ocular activation. That really was the first time that anyone had seen the youngest quintuplet like that - _murderous _is too extreme, but...whatever word that has the same intensity as the word "murderous" but without the implication of wanting to kill, that would be what Itsuki became at that moment. Serious to a fault, unwilling to yield, fiercely determined. Itsuki oftentimes talked about wanting to be the quintuplets' surrogate mother in the past; honestly, that might be the first time that Itsuki can now say she's lived up to her own little promise.

That notion, to Miku, is chilling - because that means that Itsuki had to become someone she normally isn't for her to fulfill her own promise to her sisters. And from her perspective, it almost feels as though what gave Itsuki the power to do so was her Mystic Eyes.

Even behind closed eyelids, Miku can feel her own Eyes bubble up slowly, like a concerned pet dog that's sensed something wrong with its owner and is slowly walking up to them to investigate. She knows she herself must have been the same way that day when Nino confronted her, when she dragged Nino into that alleyway. She's been her normal self ever since then so thankfully she hasn't needlessly tortured herself over this, but now that she's seen it happen to one of her sisters, Miku can't help but to audit herself introspectively as well. She hoped that even with these bumps and disturbances in their daily lives, she and her quintuplet sisters could live out their lives as normally as possible, and perhaps they needn't worry about them at all.

Miku wanted to be the only one with Mystic Eyes in her family not because she wanted to be special, but merely so that her sisters wouldn't have their own daily lives slowly but surely dismantled by them. And now, before her very eyes, she's watching it happen to her sisters, one by one - and there's nothing she can do about it.

* * *

Striding swiftly, Uesugi Fuutarou keeps a watchful eye out on his surroundings as he hurries through the large community park northwest of his high school. During its major expansion years, the city planned several of these community parks, but only one of them ended up being built due to their relative sizes in their respective sectors of the city. The park features plenty of avian wildlife, fountains, recreational paths for both walking and jogging, multiple children's playgrounds, and even a huge man-made lake with water spouts and community boats that be rowed and ridden free of charge under the supervision of a park custodian. Fuutarou has only been by this park a few times, as the nature of his work doesn't usually require him to be in this area, but that doesn't stop him from knowing the place well enough to narrow down Yotsuba's and Nino's last known coordinates.

The evening makes it easy for him to track individual targets, since there's no one else out and about at this hour at the park today, though it does have its share of nighttime visitors, mainly nearby residents who fancy going for walks in the night on occasion. This allows the high school mage to head straight for the first presence of human life he senses, which is located in the unceremonious location of the park's centralized public bathrooms.

Thankfully he doesn't need to wait for the presence, because as he approaches, he spies Yotsuba emerging from the ladies' restrooms, stretching her arms out tiredly in front of them now that she'd done with her business. He waves her down to signify his arrival, and Yotsuba lightens up at the sight of her tutor, illuminated by the nearby lampposts that line the walkways of the park.

"Uesugi-san!" Yotsuba hops over to him, elated to see him come to fetch her. "Did Miku tell you to come get us?"

"No, but she did try to call you to see where you're at right now, but you didn't pick up, so I rushed over in case anything happened," Fuutarou explains quickly, sighing a breath of relief that the fourth quintuplet is fine. "Why didn't you pick up? Did something happen to your phone?"

"Ah, yeah, I have it!" the fourth quintuplet pulls out her phone to show her tutor. "But, uh...yeah, it's...it's out of battery. Haha."

Rolling his eyes heavily, the young tutor reaches over and rubs his knuckles lightly against the top of her head, causing her to whine a little and go "Owie owie owie ~ "

"Then why did you tell Miku that your phone was good on battery? Because Miku was under the impression that it was fully charged or at least good on battery."

"Ehehe...I forgot to check. Teehee." Yotsuba innocently smiles back up at her classmate.

"Don't 'teehee' me, you better say sorry to Miku afterwards...got the two of us getting worried." Fuutarou takes the time to shoot Miku a quick text, informing her that he's found Yotsuba and that she's doing fine, and that her phone was in fact, out of battery.

"Don't worry, I will."

Pocketing his phone again, Fuutarou looks down at his student again. "So what about Nino? I know she should be in the area, but maybe you know where she is right now exactly?"

Yotsuba nods, her bright smile fading in the darkness of the evening now that Nino is brought up. "She's sitting on one of the benches near the side of the lake nearby," she explains, pointing in the general direction of her runaway sister.

"Okay, good, that means she's alright too." Fuutarou then crosses his arms. "So what the fuck happened while I was out? How did things turn out like this?"

Yotsuba tilts her head a little in confusion. "Didn't Miku wake you up? You didn't ask her for what happened? She was there too."

"I mean, she did, yes, but I want to cross-reference so that I know Miku isn't, like, fabricating anything, though I doubt she'd do that. But just in case, though, I wanna hear your side of the story."

Yotsuba's eyes drag themselves downwards to look at the ground.

"...well, after you went to sleep, Nino tried going back up to her own room, but Itsuki stopped her trying to convince her to stay with us. Miku told her not to worry about her and tried giving Nino some of the worksheets you made for us, but she knocked them out of her hand and then tore one of them in half when Miku told her to pick them back up. That was when...Itsuki hit Nino, and then Nino hit Itsuki back, and then they argued for a bit, and then Nino called Itsuki a bad word, and then Itsuki hit Nino back again."

Following along with Yotsuba's abridged testimony, Fuutarou figures it more or less matches what he's heard from Miku.

Yotsuba looks back up again, but she doesn't direct her gaze back to her friend - instead, she turns somewhat to gaze out to the lake underneath the black nighttime sky.

"That's the first time we've ever seen Itsuki like that," she murmurs quietly. "Not only that, but...something felt..._off _about her. You know me, Uesugi-san, I'm just a big dumb-dumb, so I don't know how to describe what I felt other than...something just didn't seem right about the situation, other than Itsuki and Nino actually fighting each other."

Fuutarou nods. "I heard from Miku that this is the first time one of the fights you girls sometimes get into has gone physical."

"Yeah, it is. Like, arguments and stuff like that, those happen from time to time, especially given Nino's standoffish nature and such; it's bound to happen. But they've at least never let their arguments come to blows like that, so...needless to say, it's been a bit of a...a shock to all of us." Yotsuba then turns to briefly look in Nino's general direction. "...I'm sure it is for Nino, too. She's probably the one who's feeling the most, in fact."

Putting a hand on his hip, the young mage raises an eyebrow at Yotsuba slightly. "Not Itsuki? I feel like maybe Itsuki would be the one who'd be most affected by this sort of thing."

But Yotsuba shakes her head. "Itsuki might not have the same kind of daily intensity that Nino's got, but she's stronger than she looks. Nino, on the other hand...she's always been, uh...delicate? I don't know if I have any right to call her that myself, but...she's the most prone to being affected by things like this, let's just say. That's why she's the loudest of all of us, right?"

"Hmmm...since you're the second loudest, does that mean you're the second-most delicate too?" Fuutarou asks, leaning in towards Yotsuba interrogatively.

Yotsuba blinks up back at him for a second, but she just smiles pensively at him.

"Nah, not really...I'm just really stupid, that's all," she answers calmly.

Once again, Fuutarou reaches out and places his hand on Yotsuba's head. He's done this often enough that this time, Yotsuba doesn't wince or act surprised at this - all she does is lower her gaze down at Fuutarou's side as he does this.

"The feeling's mutual," he sighs quietly. "Especially tonight."

"But...you didn't do anything," Yotsuba mutters back, starting to clasp her hands lightly together down by her side.

"Precisely. I didn't do anything because I was out cold at your place when everything happened. That was my mistake." Fuutarou inhales sharply through his teeth, taking in two lungfuls of crisp evening air. "Miku scolded me a little for sleeping through everything today, which is understandable, since I deserved it. You were one of the ones who wanted me to take better care of myself too, right? I should've listened."

"Eh? But...I don't think I told you anything, at least not lately...?" Yotsuba wonders aloud.

"Well, maybe not, but wasn't there that one morning when you helped me go back to sleep in the classroom?" the boy points out. "I have to admit, that was the best pillow I've ever used in my life."

Grinning a little, Fuutarou glances down at Yotsuba, but she doesn't seem to be in the mood to share his humor.

"...that's proof enough for me that you wanted me to take better care of myself," Fuutarou trails off, feeling a little awkward for making an inappropriate joke at a time like this, since he thought that Yotsuba would laugh at it to help lighten the mood. "I'm just saying that, uh...I should've listened so that, y'know...things didn't have to turn out quite like this tonight."

After a moderate pause, with Fuutarou still with his hand on Yotsuba's head since he doesn't know whether to take it off or not, the fourth quintuplet raises her head a little, though not quite up to her tutor's own eye level, not with his hand still on her head.

"...if you think you're the one reason why things ended up like this, Uesugi-san, you're wrong," she says softly, making sure to enunciate her words so that she can't be misunderstood. "It's not your fault. It's ours for not being able to keep this situation under control."

"I disagree, it _is _at least partly my fault," Fuutarou corrects. "Not only was today supposed to be a full tutor day since we got finals at the end of the week, but I slept through it because I wasn't managing my sleep schedule well enough lately. Not only _that_, but since I was so tired I slept through the whole fight, I couldn't do anything about it to settle everyone down and make sure you all were studying like you're supposed to. It _has _to be partly my fault."

"Actually, how _did _you sleep through all that, by the way?"

"Hah, Miku asked me the same exact thing too, but like I said, I was so tired that I _needed _at least a couple more hours of sleep. Just think of it like being so tired that you oversleep your alarm clock or something."

Hearing this from her tutor does no favors for Yotsuba's conscience, which compels her to take a step forward and put her arms around the boy before her.

"...please take care of yourself, Uesugi-san," she whispers into his chest. "My sisters and I fight like this every now and then...even if this one's the worst one we've had so far. But we can sort out our own problems, no matter how bad they get - but we can't do the same for you. The most we can do is ask you to look after yourself and hope that you do."

Uesugi Fuutarou says nothing. He feels like if he says anything here, it wouldn't come off as genuine, so he keeps his peace in the hopes that Yotsuba will understand.

"...as much as I would love to leave this to you girls to sort out, though, I have to take part in this as well," he mutters back. "If that's alright with you."

"It is, don't worry," she nods. "And even if I weren't, you'd still go find Itsuki after this, won't you?"

"That's right. What gave it away?"

"Well, given that Nino and Itsuki were the ones who ran out of the house, even a dummy like me can figure out where you're going to go after this, right?"

"I don't think being a dummy has anything to do with being concerned about your siblings, but I digress." Fuutarou finally pulls his hand off Yotsuba's head, and Yotsuba herself takes this as a cue to let go of her classmate. "We don't have a lot of time; we've already lost a full day today that we could've spent studying, and we're gonna lose more if I don't act fast. How's Nino right now? She in any mood to talk, or no?"

Yotsuba shakes her head. "All the time I've been tailing her today, she's been constantly yelling at me to leave her alone. I doubt she'll act any differently towards you."

"Yeah, figures. I'll try it anyway, just in case, but if she's still in no mood to talk, I'll leave her to you so I can go find Itsuki."

Letting the fourth quintuplet know of his plans, Fuutarou, following his magical senses to locate Nino nearby, heads over to her and finds the bench where she's sitting at to see if he can talk to her, but even before he can get within fifteen meters of her from behind, Nino hoarsely calls out:

"I know that's you, Uesugi-kun. Don't you dare get closer to me; I don't even wanna _look _at you tonight."

Fuutarou figures as much. He quickly scans for any residual magical energy emanating off Nino, but to his surprise he finds none, which means Nino isn't haphazardly letting her Mystic Eyes run rampant, so he doesn't bother wasting his breath and swiftly pivots to leave her be, returning to Yotsuba who's standing in front of a nearby vending machine, which spits out a second drink for her.

"You're leaving now, right? Take this before you go," the quintuplet with the green hair ribbon says, offering her tutor a chilled orange drink, which he accepts.

"Thanks, I'll drink this later. Make sure Nino doesn't stay out here too long, alright? You two've already had one bad experience being out and about late at night, as much as I hate bringing it up." Twisting his lips, Fuutarou throws one last glance over in Nino's direction. "I would really prefer staying until we can convince Nino to come back home, but as it stands, since I need to also get Itsuki back home, and she's probably more willing to listen to me than Nino is right now, I've got to make the most of it and see if Itsuki can return tonight. That, and Itsuki's staying at the Marriott right now, so she'll be easy to find. Will you keep staying with Nino or are you gonna go back home on your own?"

"I'll be staying here. Maybe...maybe Nino won't like that, but...especially after what happened last time, I don't want to leave her alone all by herself out here," she answers with a slight nod.

"Mm, alright then. If you can, try to get Nino to come back home with you. If not, tell her to at least sign into a hotel or something, and then go back home yourself."

Yotsuba nods again. "It's okay, Uesugi-san. Everything will be okay."

"And _you're _the one telling me that?" Snorting under his breath, Fuutarou slips the orange drink that Yotsuba's given him into his storage rune, but his amused grin doesn't last long. "...I do hope everything will be fine, Yotsuba. Because sometimes it's just not that simple..."

Bidding her farewell for now, the young mage bounds out of sight to head downtown for the Marriott Hotel to meet up with Itsuki, and the fourth quintuplet watches him depart, disappearing into the darkness of the night beyond the lights of the park. Once he's out of sight, Yotsuba turns around to slowly make her way over to where Nino is seated.

To Yotsuba's quiet surprise, her older sister doesn't say anything when she approaches her, so she capitalizes on this inch that she's been given and turns it into a mile by seating herself right next to Nino, who is sitting hunched forward on their bench with her face in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees. The two sisters don't exchange any word for a good few minutes, until Yotsuba breaks this silent pact by asking,

"...you didn't mean to turn Uesugi-san away like that, did you?"

And Nino simply responds with, "Shut up, Yotsuba. For the last time, just go back home already."

Yotsuba says nothing in response, but she doesn't budge from her seat next to her sister either. She braces herself in case Nino intends to slap her in the face again like last time - and given what's happened between her and Itsuki today, it's entirely possible that Nino is still in a belligerent mood.

But no such slap comes - and when Yotsuba pays closer attention, she realizes that, with the help of the nearby illumination of a streetlight, there are several tears slowly rolling down Nino's hands where they cover her face and eyes.

Suddenly understanding, Yotsuba scoots over closer to her older sister and gives her a warm hug too, a kind of warmth that isn't meant to ward against the night temperature that's become somewhat chilly by this point.

"...it's not that you didn't want to see him, but that you didn't want him to see you like this, huh?" the younger quintuplet asks softly.

Nino says nothing.


	54. Full Moon

The ticking of a clock and the typing of keys on a laptop's chiclet keyboard fills the room of the head physician of the city hospital. Yet another late night shift...same shit, different day.

The head physician's room is neat and tidy, like always - health reports on various patients currently hospitalized in the rooms below sit neatly stacked on the side of the main table that also holds various books, science magazines, and thesis and dissertation papers from talented young up-and-coming medical students. More health reports are tacked neatly onto a bulletin board on the wall directly over the main table of the head physician's room, complete with pictures of their respective patients so that they give clear, immediate information on their listed patients; these are reports for the more urgent cases the hospital has at the moment, whether hospitalized or not.

Dr. Nakano Maruo pauses his moderate typing to pick up his mug of home-brewed coffee without looking and guides it up to his lips so that he can take a sip - as homemade as this coffee can get. So practiced is he in the art of drinking coffee without having to break eye contact from his work laptop, as he has trained himself in this art over the course of the years he's worked here in this hospital, both before he became head physician and after, that it's as if he _is _using his eyes to guide his cup of coffee. To a bystander, it would be difficult to tell which is the true machine between the doctor and the computer at which he works, as if his constant night shifts weren't enough to go by - though, it could be argued that the head physician has worked so many night shifts by this point that he's used to a nocturnal schedule by now.

Another calm night working the graveyard shift, it would seem - Dr. Nakano finishes the email he has been typing, gives a cursory glance at the email body to see if his email browser has detected any spelling errors for his email that is written in English, and confirms the email address to which this email is being sent before clicking "Send".

The name of the email recipient: "Augustus Il".

Done with the last of his duties for this phase of his graveyard shift, Dr. Nakano picks his mug of coffee back up to savor its taste. Rare is it for him to have a moment of respite like this, as his usual set of circumstances would normally involve him having to make rounds of the hospital grounds, check on the patients in the Emergency Ward to help monitor their statuses with the ER crew on duty, check various hospital equipment and ensure their quality and emergency readiness, take inventory of backup medical equipment and supplies, and write reports for various patients, many of which now either sit stacked up on the side of his table or end up on the bulletin board in front of him.

But tonight it would appear that he finally has some time to himself. All the reports that must be done for the patients tonight have been written, all the emails that he must send have been composed and sent, and lately there has been a gradual increase in the number of graveyard shift hospital staff due to the worrying increase of substance abuse victims, so those extra staff members have been able to handle some of the responsibilities that the head physician usually takes onto himself...though the doctor is still wary of the staff when it comes to certain tasks like taking inventory and checking medical supplies. They've had a few unfortunate incidents before that have occurred due to staff negligence, so the head physician has grown distrustful of anyone else when it comes to those specific responsibilities.

You want to make sure something is done right, you go do it yourself.

But upon the staff's insistence tonight, he's entrusted many of the tasks he would do to them, though again, he makes a mental note to himself to check after them at the end of their shift. So now he's ended up with a few hours of not much to do, so for a few very long moments, he simply sits in his chair, slowly draining his coffee in incremental sips, gazing rather aimlessly at the reports at the bulletin board before him. He's so used to working, doing _something _productive, that even now, when he truly has nothing to do tonight, Dr. Nakano's eyes wander around on their own, searching for something he could do that is at all anything meaningful, and they settle on having him read over the various files on patients currently hospitalized.

The only problem is that these are files he's read over dozens of times already. He already knows all the patients in the hospital right now, their current afflictions, and their estimated periods of hospitalization. He could recite them all from memory if he really wanted.

Sighing quietly, Dr. Maruo lets his eyes fall from the bulletin board - and they descend upon a small framed picture instead. That picture frame has been sitting on that table for as long as he has had this room as a hospital physician, but the physician, for all his diligence and responsibility, can't seem to recall the last time he's specifically given this picture his attention.

For old time's sake, the quintuplets' father reaches over and picks up the picture frame to pull it closer to him so that he can get a better look. The picture depicts a lone woman - a beautiful woman with brilliant sunset-red hair and the most stoic smile that one will find in the entire country. So stoic is her face that she could be mistaken for a statue and the error would be easily excused.

How many years has it been? But the physician swiftly purges the thought from his mind - there is no point in indulging himself in pointless questions like that. Questions such as those should very well be left unasked, for they bring nothing but trouble and distraction even if they can be answered.

Though, if there is one tangential thought that Dr. Nakano will indulge in, it's that he silently wishes that the woman in the picture frame could see how much her five children have grown since she has been gone.

Without warning, the phone also on the left side of his main desk begins to ring. Dr. Nakano is almost thankful for this phone call, for it provides him with something that will continue to tether him down to the earth so that he may continue being one of the many productive human beings on this Earth that the planet needs. So he returns the picture frame to its home on his desk and picks up the receiver.

"Nakano speaking."

_"Dr. Nakano, there's someone here in the lobby who wants to see you; a friend of yours, he calls himself," _the graveyard shift receptionist informs with an awkward tone; clearly she hasn't ever had to deal with a situation like this where someone just waltzes into the hospital lobby not to see a patient, since these are not patient visiting hours, but to see the head physician directly. _"He insists on meeting with you."_

Rolling his eyes somewhat, Dr. Nakano keeps his composure and answers, "While I hesitate to call him a 'friend of mine', he is indeed a long-time acquaintance. Please tell him that I am in my office; he will know where to find me."

_"U-Understood, Doctor."_

Setting the receiver back down, the head physician takes the stack of hospital reports on the right side of his desk to put them away to make some space for his imminent guest, who doesn't even bother knocking on his door to enter and puts up a hand of greeting to the doctor as he closes the door shut behind him.

"Yo!" Uesugi Isanari flashes a wide grin of eagerness over to his high school classmate. "I had some business in the city and was goin' back home, and the hospital was on the way so I decided to stop by with some drinks! Interested?"

In his right hand is a small plastic bag of a half dozen assorted canned drinks ranging from UCC canned coffee to non-alcoholic Suntory White Sour, so he sets them all out on the corner of the table where the reports used to stand so that his ex-high school classmate can pick from them if he's in the mood.

"I do not recall asking you to come over simply to hang out, much less ask you for a beverage," Dr. Nakano says offhandedly, watching his acquaintance pile out the cans and stack them up neatly. "Besides, I just had a cup of coffee."

"Then perfect, you can chase it with this," Isanari chuckles, handing his buddy a can of Suntory White Sour. "Gotta have somethin' refreshin' after your usual. You still drinkin' nothin' but black? I don't know how you do it, man."

Dr. Nakano almost reluctantly accepts the drink, and after which Isanari seats himself before his friend.

"...I do not drink much, but I believe the term 'chasing' is meant to be used only when alcoholic beverages are involved," he squints down at his newly acquired canned drink a little. "...also, I have never seen this particular drink before. Is this a new release?"

"New release? God no, that's been around for years!" Isanari snorts loudly, almost obnoxiously. "Serious question, Nakano, but when was the last time you've actually been out 'n about in the city?"

"Last Wednesday; I had an appointment with the mayor. So I daresay recently."

"Okay, so let me guess, you went straight to the mayor, talked to him for exactly thirty minutes, not a second more or less, and you came straight back to the hospital. Am I right?"

Pulling the tab of his Suntory White Sour open with the familiar metallic click and the nice ensuing hiss of carbonation, the doctor eyes his ex-classmate briefly. "It would appear that you know me well, Uesugi."

"Bitch, we were _classmates _all throughout high school! Fucking _duh_, I'd know you well!" Isanari bellows out in laughter, which he himself douses with a swig of his own drink, a UCC Milk Coffee. "And so? What did the mayor say?"

"...you sound as if you know this business I have with the mayor," the doctor says simply. He now begins to take a cautious sip of his White Sour - and to his surprise, it is actually rather refreshing, true to Isanari's word.

"Yeah, no shit. You think Fuutarou won't tell me about this? It's the mayor we're talking about."

Once he's taken a second sip of the White Sour, Nakano Maruo lowers the can somewhat.

"The mayor agreed to supporting your son's efforts in the city. However, he has stressed that it must be done with utmost confidentiality," the doctor answers.

"Yeah, figured. I mean, given who he's trying to indict, it's gonna be a fucking shitshow if word gets out."

"You believe that your son has what it takes to complete this investigation?"

"Bro, who's the one who hired him to protect the quints again? The fuck are you askin' me for?"

"You are his guardian, no?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

Maruo coolly takes another sip, almost condescendingly, of his White Sour drink. "Not only are you his legal guardian, but I am under the impression that you assist with your son's operations in the city as mission control, no?"

Isanari just snorts again loudly, as if to audibly swat away Maruo's inquiry as if it were an annoying fly. "Yeah, sometimes, but that kid's fuckin' all grown-up now and _has _been for God knows how long. If he's confident that he can pull this shit off, I'm all fucking for it."

"Grown up? He is only fifteen years old, no?"

"Sixteen, motherfucker. You don't even know how old he is? What kinda boss are you?"

The head physician simply ignores his acquaintance's comment by taking yet another deliberate sip of his drink. Knowing that Maruo is prone to doing this whenever he is confronted with a question that he doesn't feel like answering, Isanari continues on.

"Fuutarou is more fuckin' grown-up than the vast majority of adults on this goddamn planet, Nakano. Even if that kid wanted to fight God, I'd be all for that shit," Isanari boasts, though his usual outgoing atmosphere has been replaced with one of resolute determination. "The fact that he's still here, alive 'n kickin', after all these years means that he ain't gonna let anything get in his way now."

"Perhaps. But I do feel somewhat concerned about his target now - especially when he has a previous contract of mine that he must work on first."

"Bullshit, you don't give a _shit _what ends up happening to him and you know it."

"Well...if that is what you insist, then it must be, yes?"

"Oh fuck off..."

Isanari chugs the rest of his coffee immediately, draining the whole can in mere seconds. Once this is done, he crushes the can with his big, bare hands and shoots the empty can into the nearby recycling bin.

"How's the situation with that Shirazumi Rio guy goin', then?" Isanari questions.

"Should you not know as much as I on that situation?"

"Just in case Fuutarou's told you stuff that he hasn't told me. He hasn't been home in a while, actually...last I heard from him, he told me that he'd be running around taking care of shit, but that's usually what he does anyway."

Dr. Maruo slowly begins to swirl his drink, with the fingers on his right hand lightly holding the can by its top rim. "Then leave it to him to decide. This is his responsibility, and he has committed himself fully to it."

"You sure sound like you don't give a shit, given your stake in this situation."

"You believe so? I am merely approaching this as objectively as possible. Becoming emotional over these such things will benefit no one."

Fuutarou's father snorts, though a little less loudly than before. "I guess that's only to be expected, coming from a doc like you. Tell me again, how many people have you seen die in this hospital?"

"Less than your number of chances to become a productive member of society."

"Oh, you think I'm not? I dunno man, in my opinion, what _I _work in doesn't involve people dying left and right like yours does."

"No? Your whole life, you have been directly or indirectly involved in such deaths in every career you have pursued. And yet you are trying to claim otherwise?"

"Hey, bro, not everyone's the fuckin' one percent like you. Not everyone can fuckin' graduate top of their class from high school, university, and grad school like you did and land six-figure digits straight out of school. I certainly wasn't one of them, and at the time once we got outta high school, I didn't have much of a choice."

"We are always the products of our own decisions, Uesugi. Do not forget that I even warned you that the path you planned to take coming out of high school was going to be the wrong one."

"Yeah, well, people make shitty decisions, especially when they're young, a'ight? Don't fuckin' talk like you haven't made a few crappy decisions in your life. I would point 'em out to you, but unlike you, I ain't that much of a bitch."

Isanari looks Maruo dead in the eye.

"If nothing else, at least I try to see my kids as much as I can. Even after all these years, you're still too scared to see yours."

Maruo simply takes another drink of his Suntory.

"And what makes you think it is worth my time to change the mind of a fool?" he asks quietly back. "Think what you will, Uesugi. I look forward to when your son produces results...regardless of what they may be."

"Yeah, well, it takes one to know one." Isanari gets up to leave, flipping the head physician the bird as he does so. "You wanna come over sometime for curry? Raiha's been on a curry spree lately; we've been eating nothing but the Uesugi House Special for the past week."

"I will decline, thank you. You know I am not much of a curry person myself."

"No? But Itsuki absolutely loves it! And you call yourself her father? C'mon, bro!"

"Who said that parents and their children must share the same tastes?" Maruo pauses for a moment. "...on second thought, how do you know Itsuki is partial to curry?"

"Oh, we had her over for dinner one night. She absolutely demolishes Raiha's curry, I'll tell ya fuckin' what!"

As his classmate is laughing heartily while recalling Itsuki's massive appetite, the quintuplet's father wonders quietly to himself if curry is truly Itsuki's favorite food or if this is merely a case of his youngest daughter simply inhaling food like she usually does.

"A'ight, have fun at the hospital. I'm sure you do even without me tellin' ya, given how much you fuckin' stay here in this shithole," Isanari laughs one last time as he opens the door of the office to depart. "And go home to see your kids sometime, eh? That couldn't kill ya every once in a while."

"I would like to kindly repeat myself to you that I do not appreciate those who tell me what to do as a parent," the head doctor rebukes his ex-classmate, though it is more of a passing comment than any firm statement.

"I'm tellin' ya that as a fellow father, motherfucker. Whether or not you appreciate the feedback ain't shit; any fuckin' decent parent would tell you that straight to your face, and it doesn't take an old high school classmate of yours to do that."

"Duly _not _noted."

Isanari groans aloud. "Agh, this fuckin' bastard, playin' hard to get again..."

"Though, you _do _have my permission to treat the girls to a curry night if you wish."

Fuutarou's father is already halfway out the door when he freezes in his tracks to turn his head to glance over his shoulder at his former schoolmate.

"Huh, that's rare, comin' from you. But you do know that Itsuki's just gonna fuckin' eat everything, right?"

"I am aware, yes. But this is not coming out of _my _pocket now, is it?"

"Oh fuck off!"

* * *

"Nakano...Itsuki...you said?"

"Yes."

After another minute of searching, the Marriott Hotel check-in receptionist shakes his head. "I'm sorry, we don't have a guest admitted here under that name. Nothing's coming up in our database."

Scratching his head in genuine confusion, Uesugi Fuutarou nods curtly back at the hotel staffer. "I understand. Thank you for your help, that'll be all for me today."

Bidding the receptionist good night, the young mage exits the hotel and immediately pulls out his phone. Itsuki is not at the hotel as Miku said she was; this means that Fuutarou will have to search for her himself, just like how he needed to for Nino and Yotsuba. Swiftly running his fingers over his phone to pull his map of the city back up again to locate Itsuki this time, Fuutarou quickly begins looking for Itsuki's signature. He does this all with a great sense of urgency, because now that Itsuki is not where she's supposed to be, until he finds her coordinates, Itsuki could be anywhere - and if she's somewhere she's definitely not supposed to be, then that can clearly only mean one thing. And based on his past experiences, a _lot _can happen in the amount of time that's elapsed since the quintuplets began dispersing from home until now.

The silver lining of this whole situation is that Itsuki's latent magic potential is now active; this means that the young mage should be able to locate the youngest quintuplet much more easily than before with the rune network across the city. Tracking non-magical persons with magical means is actually very challenging because sensor runes like the ones Fuutarou uses detects targets by scanning for magical signatures, such as magic energies or abnormal levels of emotional disturbance, and because normal people do not exude such signs, under such normal circumstances, tracking them with Fuutarou's runes, for example, would be out of the question. However, because Fuutarou has spent so much time with the girls, even for someone like Yotsuba, for example, he can track them even if they have no such magic signatures to speak of; it just takes his runes a longer time to ascertain their presences on the map.

Itsuki's magic talent being active now thanks to her newly acquired Mystic Eyes therefore means that it should be extremely easy for his runes to pick up Itsuki's trail, since he already has her ordinary signature down; it's just going to look horribly amplified on his sensor runes. Practiced and seasoned mages who have dealt with other hostile mages before can train themselves to hide their presences and mask their magical footprints to significantly reduce the likeliness of detection; Fuutarou has noticed that Ichika is likely to be capable of this, for example, since her own Mystic Eye took him by such surprise during their run-in at the coffee shop, and ever time he's checked Ichika's signature on his runes, outside of that one incident, they've never detected her with an amplified signature yet. But Itsuki, having just now become a fledgling mage whether she realizes it or not, is not going to know how to hide herself from magical scrutiny.

And sure enough, Fuutarou's magic theory is proven when he finds Itsuki's signature, now bloated by residual magical energy, on his phone. But she's on the other side of the city...

...at Daikazoku Business Park.

Fuutarou stares down at his phone for a moment, his hands having frozen when his brain registers what his eyes are relaying to it. Itsuki is at the office? But...why?

Somehow even _more _confused now than before he entered the Marriott, the mercenary mage shakes his head a little to clear his thoughts and disbelief and decides that for now, he ought to rendezvous with Itsuki to ensure her safety, though by the looks of it, nothing appears to have happened to her, and he knows that Raiha is safe at home...looks like Isanari isn't home yet from his business trip into the city, though. So Fuutarou gets a move on, reactivating his Presence Concealment spell so that he can leap across the rooftops of the city downtown to traverse over to his father's office.

Mid-flight, Fuutarou minimizes his map app but keeps it active in the corner of his screen while he dials Miku's number.

_"Hello? Fuutarou?"_

"Yeah, it's me. So - "

_"Uh, sorry, Fuutarou, it's - it's hard to hear you! There's a lot of wind on your end!"_

Cursing under his breath, having forgotten that not only is tonight quite windy in the city, but he's also roof-jumping his way back home, Fuutarou raises his voice greatly so that he can be heard well enough.

"Yeah, it's pretty windy outside tonight! Itsuki isn't at the Marriott! I checked with their receptionists just now, they said she hadn't checked in at all!"

Having raised the volume of his phone call, Fuutarou can hear Miku gasp shortly in shock.

_"Then - then - "_

"Don't worry, I found her! I'm moving to her location now, it looks like she's fine!"

_"Oh okay, thank goodness. But...if she's not at the hotel right now, where is she?"_

Fuutarou opens his mouth to answer, but then hesitates. Would it be a good idea to tell Miku that Itsuki ended up at his place? This _is _Miku he's talking to, after all. How would she handle that?

"I think she might be at one of her friends from school's house or something, I don't know exactly! I know her coordinates so like I said, I'm moving to her now! I'll let you know if anything else comes up!"

_"Fuutarou, wait, wait! Don't hang up yet!"_

"I'm still here, why?"

_"I - I need to check something here at home - !"_

So Fuutarou holds the call, waiting for Miku to take care of whatever she's up to back at the penthouse as he himself continues to soar discretely across the night sky of the city, now reaching the western suburbs, about to enter the abandoned sector of the city where his family lives.

_"Hello, Fuutarou? So - so I checked Itsuki's room because I thought it was weird for her not to check into a hotel of some kind, and it turns out she forgot her purse! It's still here! She only left with some clothes in a suitcase but she left her purse here! She doesn't have any money or anything with her right now!"_

Rolling his own eyes, Fuutarou groans loudly. "Okay, I'll keep that in mind, thanks, Miku!"

Disconnecting from the call for good this time, the young tutor accelerates to reach Itsuki's coordinates at home faster. Ever since he departed from the Marriott, Fuutarou has been feeling dumber and dumber for fully trusting Miku and merely taking her word that Itsuki was at the Marriott. If he were paying attention, he would have checked for Itsuki's coordinates as well when he scanned for Nino and Yotsuba earlier before he left the penthouse; he simply assumed that Itsuki was secure at the hotel and removed her as an additional variable that he needed to worry about while he went to make sure the other two were okay. Technically speaking, Miku should have made sure that Itsuki had left home with everything she needed at least, but Fuutarou refuses to put any blame on Miku; realistically, in the wake of a family feud like what she'd described, how is anyone going to expect her to make sure that Itsuki was leaving the house with everything she needed? If anything, Miku probably didn't _want _anyone to leave the house in the first place.

Dwelling on his mistakes like this isn't like him, so Fuutarou shuts up mentally and focuses solely on traveling, reaching his home business park quickly and forgoing the stairs to simply leap up to the second floor and ringing the loud and buzzing doorbell to have his little sister answer the front door of the office.

_"Ah, Onii-chan, it's been a while!"_

Even outside the office, the high school mage can smell the delicious, irresistible scent of freshly made Uesugi curry, and immediately his mouth begins to water; it is at this point that Fuutarou realizes that he hasn't eaten shit for the past twelve hours or so. Perhaps Itsuki coming here was a blessing in disguise; he can grab some dinner here before moving on with his usual nighttime duties for tonight.

"Oniiiiiii-chan ~ !" Raiha immediately glomps her older brother as soon as she throws open the door; Fuutarou can't help but feel some of the anxiety and disappointment in himself bleed away from his mind now that his little sister's hugging him, so he stoops down, picks her up, and closes the door behind him so that the two of them can enter the house properly. "Waaaah! I-I'm not a little kid anymore, Onii-chan!"

"To me you still are. I take it that you're having curry tonight?"

"Yeah! Wanna join us for dinner?"

"I haven't eaten in a hot minute, so yeah, I'd love to. And I can see why you said 'we'..."

Setting his younger sister down on the floor so that she can hurry into the kitchen to prepare a serving of curry for her brother, Fuutarou sighs a little through his nose as his target, Nakano Itsuki, turns around from serving herself a portion of Uesugi-Style curry onto a big plate and freezes upon seeing another unexpected guest to the household for tonight.

The two high schoolers lock eye contact as soon as Itsuki turns around. To Fuutarou's relief, his student's eyes are, for now, their usual bright blue.

At a loss for words, Itsuki watches Fuutarou slowly cross his arms as he puts on a questioning, interrogative look to greet her with, and unable to stop her face from reddening up, the youngest quintuplet breaks eye contact and looks away in subdued embarrassment, still holding onto her plate of curry that is to be her own dinner tonight.

"...m...my apologies...for, um...intruding..." she mumbles sheepishly, her ahoge drooping down also in embarrassment.

Fuutarou holds his pose for a few moments, which really puts Itsuki on the spot as she doesn't know what to do in this kind of an awkward situation. Raiha, after scooping her brother a portion, turns around to find the two high schoolers with her having an awkward standoff.

"...um, did something happen between you two?" the elementary schooler asks nervously, unsure of what's going on herself.

Now that his sister's about to get involved, Fuutarou drops his confrontational body language and steps forward to receive his dinner from his sister.

"Nah, just a bit surprised to see her here, that's all," he answers quickly; obviously he doesn't want to get his sister involved in this, especially given what's happened between Itsuki and Nino earlier today, so beckons to the quintuplet at his house to come eat. "Let's just eat for now, I'm actually starving."

"Wow, it's not often I get to hear Onii-chan say that he's actually hungry," Raiha notes, marveling at this rare occurrence, and the three of them sit down one by one at their small foldable dinner table. As soon as Raiha herself is seated, though, she takes one look over at her brother's plate, and her own giant, massively oversized ahoge becomes electrified and sticks right up at her shock upon seeing how fast her brother is eating. "H-Holy cow! Onii-chan, c-calm down, the curry isn't about to run away!"

Fuutarou is already a third through his curry since he is shoving entire spoonfuls into his mouth and is taking the time to chew it all down, and he ignores his sister for the time being as he continues to eat. The three of them eat in relative silence, in fact; the awkward air that was already present between the two older kids continues to persist even here, and the only times that people speak are when they want more helpings of Uesugi curry.

"U-Uh...Onii...chan? That's...that's your fifth helping of curry tonight...you know Dad needs some too, right?" Raiha reminds her older brother as he returns for the fourth time from the kitchen back to the dinner table. Between just the two high school kids, with Itsuki's usual appetite and Fuutarou's suddenly voracious one, they've almost devoured the entire stock of curry that Raiha has made tonight, and given how much Raiha usually makes whenever it's curry night, that is an accomplishment in and of itself.

"Don't worry, there's still enough for a full plate for him when he comes back," the tutor shrugs.

"But you _know _Dad always eats as least two plates' worth!"

"Okay, well, if that's not enough for him, I'll just go out and grab something for him. This'll be my last helping anyways, I'm just about full now."

Itsuki watches her tutor wolf down even more curry as she herself works on her own third serving. "...I do not think I have ever seen you eat so much at once," she marvels as well, taken by such surprise at Fuutarou's hidden appetite that she's able to break through the awkward air that once held dominion between them.

Fuutarou nods curtly. "It's rare, I'll admit. Usually for the human body to operate at maximum efficiency, you actually want to be a little hungry. My problem is that I do that too often for the sake of saving money...so every once in a while I'll pig out like this."

"Will you not put yourself in a food coma after eating so much? Especially when you have not eaten this much recently?"

Her classmate shakes her head. "Nah, not really."

Raiha turns to her older friend. "Uh, Itsuki-san, did something happen recently that made Onii-chan like this? Like, I know Onii-chan can eat a lot sometimes, it's not like this's the first time it's happened, it's just - I've never seen him eat _this _much."

Itsuki chuckles awkwardly. "Uhh...yeah, I don't...I do not know either...haha..."

Suppressing his urge to laugh out loud, Fuutarou settles for a slight smirk instead.

"Itsuki, after we're done with dinner, I need to talk to you outside, if that's alright with you," he informs his student once he's done with his fifth and last plate of Uesugi curry, getting up to wash and rinse his dish at the kitchen sink.

"S-Something _did _happen, didn't it...?!" Fuutarou can hear his sister squeal in a hushed voice to Itsuki, who furiously shakes her head in desperate denial.

"No, I - I swear, Raiha-chan, n-n-nothing happened! I do really do not know what is going on!"

"Uuuu, I don't trust you, Itsuki-san! I think you're hiding something from me!"

"Please believe me, I am not...!"

"That's what someone who's trying to hide something would say...!"

The fact that his little sister is successfully bullying his classmate is quite impressive, and Fuutarou enjoys what he can out of Itsuki being put on the spot by Raiha while he washes and rinses his plate. Once he's done, he waits for a minute or two for the girls to finish so that he can take their plates and wash them as well, to save his sister the trouble of having to wash the dishes herself, which she must do if neither of the boys in the family are around to do it.

"Itsuki, wait outside for me, I'll be done with these in just a moment," Fuutarou calls over to Itsuki as he's giving the two dishes one last good rinse before shutting the water off to dry them with a clean towel.

"O-Okay..."

Not questioning her tutor, the youngest quintuplet opens the front door and steps outside as per Fuutarou's instructions. Once the door closes after Itsuki, the elementary schooler next to him looks up at her older brother.

"Onii-chan, don't scold Itsuki-san _too _much, okay? If this is something tutoring-related that you need to talk to her about..." Raiha asks him feebly, tugging on the side of his shirt.

"I won't. We just need to discuss some things for our finals this week."

"Oh yeah, this week is your finals, isn't it..." Raiha tilts her head a little. "Then...wait a minute, why is...why is Itsuki-san at our house today? I was so happy to see her come back that I forgot to ask her why she showed up in the first place..."

"She was just visiting a friend who lives out in the suburbs south of here. You know, the neighborhood just outside of this sector. I told her to swing by our place if she wanted some dinner before going home."

Raiha raises an eyebrow. "...but that neighborhood isn't exactly close to us..." she thinks aloud suspiciously.

"I told her that you wanted to see her again and so I convinced her to stop by."

"Did you?! Yaaay, thanks, Onii-chan!" Immediately believing her brother, Raiha gives her brother another big hug. "Again, just don't scold her too much, okay?"

"When did I ever say that I was going to scold her..."

"Well, why else were you giving her that look earlier when you arrived? Wait, didn't you say when you came home that you were 'a bit surprised' to see her here? What's going on here?"

"I just didn't expect her to _still _be here. I guess she couldn't resist you making some curry for her, huh? Was it because of her that tonight's curry night?"

"No, I just wanted to make curry tonight!"

"Well, glad it worked out, because it was delicious." Uesugi turns to his sister once the dishes are done. "Alright, Raiha, here's the thing: Itsuki needs to stay the night, maybe even two. There's stuff going on that we can't really explain at the moment; all you need to know is that Itsuki needs to stay here for the time being. I'm gonna go out and talk to her about how we're gonna handle stuff for the next few days, but for right now she needs a place to stay. Is it alright if she stays here?"

Raiha, hearing the seriousness in her brother's voice as he talks to her, nods earnestly.

"Yeah, of course! She can stay with us for as long as she wants!"

"Thanks, Raiha. Did you do your homework for today?"

"Yep! All done!"

Fuutarou ruffles Raiha's hair lightly and pats it, and she giggles lightly at her brother messing with her hair a little. Uesugi then leaves her in the office to meet with his student, who is patiently waiting for him outside the office, looking up at the night sky above. The young mage, following Itsuki's gaze before she turns around to greet him, puts his eyes up at the bright moon in the sky.

"Let's go for a walk. Obviously we're gonna talk about stuff I don't want Raiha is hear about," Fuutarou sighs deeply, nodding towards the stairs, and Itsuki nods with him and takes point, leading the way to ground level so that the two of them can go for a nice walk in the night. This is especially beneficial, considering that the two of them have gorged an incredible amount of curry just between the two of them tonight, so the cool, windy night air is therapeutic for both of them.

The two high schoolers stay quiet until they've left the business park grounds, with Fuutarou leading this time as he knows the area much more intimately than Itsuki does. And as such, he is the first to talk.

"...so, mind explaining to me what happened earlier today while I was out cold?"

Having braced herself for her tutor to interrogate her about this, Itsuki gulps a little, even though she's not eating anymore, before postulating her response.

"...um...well, long...long story short..." she begins nervously, trying her best to compose herself, "...Nino and I got into a fight, and...and it turned physical."

"Yeah, I know, both Miku and Yotsuba confirmed that for me."

"Wait, then...then if both of them already told you what happened..."

"I'm just trying to triangulate everyone's stories so that there isn't any weird discrepancy between everyone's accounts."

Itsuki gives Fuutarou a weak smile. "...my sisters would not fabricate something like this to you, Uesugi-kun."

"I don't know, maybe Nino would."

"Er...well...perhaps..." Itsuki hesitates a little. "...did you get a chance to speak with Nino...? Miku texted me that Yotsuba was going to track Nino so that she does not get herself into even more trouble..."

"I met with her and Yotsuba, yeah, but Nino wasn't in any mood to talk to me, as you might imagine."

"Aha...yeah, I guess that makes sense."

Fuutarou points at his own face. "So did you get seriously hurt anywhere? I don't see any, like, injuries on you or anything, and you seem fine."

"Er...well, Nino and I...we both punched each other in the face. Nino hit me on the nose, so I had a bit of a nosebleed, and...and I hit her in the mouth." Itsuki reaches out with her right hand to show her tutor the slight cut she got on her middle knuckle when it connected with Nino's lower teeth. "I got this when I hit her; it must have been her teeth..."

Fuutarou squints down at Itsuki's outstretched hand. "...I don't see anything, though?"

Narrowing her eyebrows in confusion, the youngest quintuplet pulls her hand back to inspect her cut. "H-Huh? Wait, I thought...I thought there was at least a scar there? I know I cleaned it before leaving the house, but..."

Seeing that Itsuki is having a hard time seeing her own hand in the relative darkness of the night, since there are not very many active streetlights in the abandoned sector of the city, Fuutarou turns on his own shoulder-mounted blue-light rune to illuminate Itsuki's hand so that she can take a better look at it. And sure enough, Itsuki can see that there is no trace of a scar on her middle knuckle.

"The reason why you don't have a scar there anymore is because your Magic Circuits are online now," Fuutarou answers the very confused Itsuki, and at the mention of magic, the ahoge quintuplet immediately dashes her gaze up at her tutor. "Miku told me about how your Mystic Eyes activated during your fight with Nino; when I woke up at your place about an hour and a half ago by this point, I also sensed a magic signature that I hadn't felt before. Mmm...more accurately, I should say that I hadn't felt your signature amplified like that before, which can only mean that your latent magical talent is now finally active and working."

Eyes widening with horror, Nakano Itsuki says nothing at first. Now forced to face this revelation that she has been desperately trying to keep suppressed in the back of her head up until now, the quintuplet grinds her gait to a slow, excruciating halt, and Fuutarou matches her pace, stopping with her on the empty sidewalk of this abandoned commercial sector of the city.

"...so...so it _is _real, then...?" Itsuki finally croaks out, her voice cracking a little due to her self-inflicted horror. "...I...I'm...I am a mage too...just like you, Uesugi-kun...? Just like...my sisters...?"

Fuutarou raises both of his arms slightly. "Rejoice, girl. For your wish will come true at last."

"I did not _wish _for this, though!"

The young tutor quickly drops his arms. "Sorry, that was a joke."

"And what kind of a joke is that for you to make at a time like this...?"

"A bad one. Some priest in another city told me that, but I didn't take him seriously and neither should you. Anyways..."

Raising his right hand up again, the young mage points at Itsuki's eyes.

"You have your Mystic Eyes now, right? Can you show them to me? I assume Miku told you what Mystic Eyes are, right?"

The mention of Mystic Eyes causes Itsuki to turn away from her tutor, though not completely. Fuutarou can still see her eyes that are cast down at the sidewalk on which they stand, extremely reluctant to comply with his request.

"...must I?" she practically whispers into the wind.

"If possible, yes. While I can't say if just knowing what your Eyes look like will be of any relevance in the future, because I've already had Nino and Miku show me theirs, I'd like for you to show me yours. Do you even know _how _to activate them, though? You might not, seeing just how recently you activated them..."

Itsuki doesn't answer him for a good minute or so, but Fuutarou is patient and is willing to give Itsuki as much time as she needs. His patience indeed pays off, for the youngest quintuplet finally relents and closes her eyes.

The moment her eyelids close, the high school mercenary mage-for-hire immediately notices the wind levels in their area die down almost instantly. Any attentive human being in their area would immediately realize that something is wrong, because wind doesn't just die down this fast, this suddenly.

And just as suddenly, Fuutarou senses and immense, extremely alarming spike in magical energy right in front of him. The fact that he's even bothered to make note of this should be evidence enough: out of all the quintuplets whose magical energies he's been able to sense due to their Mystic Eyes, Itsuki possesses, without a doubt, the most potent Eyes among them. It doesn't mean very much overall since Itsuki has no knowledge of how to control and utilize this immense power, but nonetheless, it is still worth noting to Fuutarou.

Itsuki opens her eyes again, shyly displaying them in full view for her tutor and fellow mage to behold. The neon red, nebulous hazes have returned, with their dim blue lights encapsulating black holes of infinite darkness. Like her sisters', Itsuki's Mystic Eyes are their own sources of magically generated light, and as such, Itsuki's eyes glow with mysterious, powerful auras that are sure to mesmerize any onlooker who is uninitiated to the sight of her eyes. The wind, too, has not picked up yet and remains dead, rendering their world silent and still.

"...the truth is that...the fight between me and Nino...I was the one who started it," the youngest quintuplet murmurs quietly, but her voice, despite being small and soft, somehow maintains a stable, firm tone so that in this windless world, Fuutarou can still understand perfectly. "Miku tried to give her the worksheets you made for us to Nino when Nino was trying to leave us to go study alone in her own room. Nino rejected them by slapping them away, and when Miku demanded that she pick them back up, Nino then tore one of them in half. Seeing them slapped out of Miku's hand was one thing...but watching one of the sheets get torn in half was another thing entirely. I..."

Itsuki gulps again; the tension that she's exuding tells Fuutarou that she's doing everything she can to both maintain a stable train of thought while at the same time dealing with the fact that there are now magical eyes that she knows are brimming with power in her own eye sockets.

"...for lack of a better phrase, I lost it. I became...unreasonably angry when I saw that happen. In hindsight, that was just one piece of paper, just one worksheet. There was no reason for me to have gone off the rails like that and instigated an even worse fight than what had been already going on at the time. Yet, I...I..."

"Out of curiosity, why did you get angry? I think I remember you realizing that my worksheets were all handwritten, right? When I first got to your place. Was it because of that?"

Nodding, Itsuki briefly makes eye contact with her tutor, but upon realizing this, she shyly drops her gaze again.

"No matter my own opinion on the matter, no matter what the circumstances, the fact of the matter was that you put in an unbelievable amount of effort making those worksheets for us. That, to me, also told me that you were working just as hard as we were studying for finals this week, if not more, to help us out as much as you could." The quintuplet braces herself and gathers up the courage to look back at her tutor in the eyes. "You are a very efficient person, Uesugi-kun; you do not need me to tell this to you, for you know it very well. Someone like you would never normally spend God knows how many hours crafting worksheets like that by hand, and yet...you did so anyway, because I feel like...you are the kind of person who wants to put in the effort about something you care about very much. Is that the case?"

Fuutarou cracks a tiny grin back at Itsuki, nodding slowly. "A bit embarrassing, but yeah, I tend to go the extra mile for stuff I care about. I know you girls have been working really hard lately, studying for finals. It's all the more impressive when I consider the fact that you girls went from basically not studying at all, well, maybe except for you, Itsuki, to studying diligently every day, whether or not I'm there to tutor you all. Didn't I say before that I like leading by example? I don't like the idea of watching you girls work hard and me just sitting around not doing shit."

Having begun to smile while listening to Fuutarou, Itsuki then forces it to subside as she returns to her own somewhat turbulent thoughts. "...at the end of the day, however, that does not change the fact that I acted out of character, so to speak, and hit my own sister. Not just once, but twice and then some. I...I did not know I was capable of doing such a thing. The thought of me laying a hand on my own siblings before tonight would have been out of the question...preposterous, unbelievable, whatever else you can say to describe this. And yet, it happened."

The quint turns to her classmate again.

"Perhaps...you may know the answer which I seek, but...was my violent behavior the result of my Mystic Eyes, Uesugi-kun? Or...was it because...I was always capable of exhibiting such acts of violence?"

Fuutarou merely shrugs.

"I don't know, in part because I have very little knowledge outside of very basic stuff on Mystic Eyes and how they work and what they do. But the other part is because we live in a world where rarely is it because of one sole reason that something happens; it's usually because of a group of reasons all working together, coincidentally or not, to make something happen. If I'm understanding what happened between you and Nino correctly, you could argue that it was because of your Mystic Eyes activating, that it gave you a surge of magic energy that you didn't know what to do with or knew how to control, so it went rampant in your body and caused you to become much more aggressive than you usually are, but then again we'd have to consider the possibility that you getting angry in the first place was what caused your Mystic Eyes to activate in the first place, which _then _gave you that extra aggression that tipped you over the edge to slap and punch Nino in the face, blah blah blah. I would love to sit here and just feed you an easy answer to make my own life easier, but I'm not going to do that, especially not when I thought it was worth my time writing a hundred worksheets by hand for you and your sisters."

The young mage slowly folds his arms while talking.

"The important thing to know is now, you definitely have Mystic Eyes of your own, and because it seems that you're not very comfortable with the idea of having a pair of your own, you need to learn how to come to terms with it. Nino and Miku seem like they've been able to keep it under control, so if they can do it, so can you. Obviously this all happened at a pretty bad time, but we have to work with what we got, which means you need to get it together and under control sooner rather than later if you want a shot at passing your finals this week. If you need to stay at our place to help you get it together, then you're free to do so. I heard from Miku that you don't plan to go back home anyway, is that right?"

Itsuki nods in confirmation. "That is correct. The fight between me and Nino got bad enough where...we both do not want to return home because whoever does so first is basically admitting defeat in our argument. Nino would rather drop dead than admit defeat in anything, but at the same time I do not want to let her win like I usually do because I actually feel very strongly about this matter."

"But weren't you pretty shocked at yourself for punching her?"

"Yes, that is still the case. But that is irrelevant to the point that I still think it was wrong of Nino to spurn your hard work like that. I still insist that she apologize to you for doing such a thing. So until she has done that and has told me herself in person that she has apologized to you, I cannot return home; this is something I refuse to budge on, and...not even you can convince me otherwise, Uesugi-kun."

Sighing heavily, Fuutarou drops his folded arms and puts them again on his hips for the third time today or so. "...even though you know that by doing this, you're jeopardizing your chances of passing your finals safely?"

Again, Itsuki puts on a guilty face when confronted with this dilemma. "...yes, even knowing that. I just...cannot yield on this. I am sorry."

To her surprise, though, her tutor merely tosses his hands up into the air. "Well shit, then, nothing I can do to change your mind."

"E-Eh? But...but I thought you would be stricter on me for this..." Itsuki stammers a little, taken back by how easily she's been able to convince her tutor to look the other way.

"Normally I would, yes. But given the circumstances and my own failure to mitigate the situation from blowing up this hard because I was fuckin' snoozing at the time, I'll make an exception. That, and..."

"...and?"

Fuutarou closes his eyes while he arches his neck backwards to get some of the stress in his head out.

"...you might not believe me, but...I would prefer that you girls sort out the problems going on between you first before you concentrate on studying, because you girls study better when you're together. It's a bit counterintuitive, since initially before I took this job I was predicting that usually bigger study groups actually mean less efficient studying since people tend to talk a lot and stuff and get distracted constantly, but for you girls, your quintuplet power is real; your scores have been better and better starting from when all five of you began to study together, regardless of whether or not I'm there to tutor you all. Because of that, I don't want you all to go back to studying alone because clearly that hasn't worked at all, and because of _that_, I'm willing to take the risk of sacking the first couple of days this week in trying to get everyone back together in the hopes that you girls can study hard for whatever remaining amount of time we have left to pass finals."

Blinking at her tutor and listening to him with subdued amazement, Itsuki looks back down at the sidewalk near Fuutarou's feet.

"I will be honest, um...I did not expect you to prioritize our family cohesion over our studies like this."

"Totally understandable, given what I'm usually like. But no...for as much as I make you all study hard and get on your asses about studying so that you don't flunk out of school since graduating high school at least is important, what's more important is family. And there isn't much else in the world that's more important than that. Even I know that."

Itsuki's red Mystic Eyes widen slowly.

Then, the ambient wind returns. Just as slowly as Itsuki's widening Eyes, but they return gently, caressing the two high schoolers on the empty sidewalk in the middle of the night like silk curtains. Fuutarou glances around briefly, noting that the winds have returned, and he looks back in Itsuki's direction, only to find that she's now right in front of him, pressing her head lightly against his chest. He didn't even sense her moving at all, so he has no idea how she got right in front of him so fast, even if she was standing close by to begin with.

Monitoring Itsuki's magical status, Fuutarou notes, to his own quiet surprise, that the tension he's been sensing from her is rapidly subsiding, and the turbulent magic signature that he's been reading from her ever since she resurfaced her Mystic Eyes is also stabilizing quickly.

"...everything alright, Itsuki?" he asks quietly. He carefully reaches his right arm around Itsuki's left shoulder and puts his hand behind her head, patting it softly, making sure to keep his left eye closed so that the wind that's carefully blowing her ahoge doesn't cause it to go right into his eye.

"...I thought for sure that you'd be angry with me because of this...because of what I'd decided," she mumbles, and her voice is starting to sound a little hoarse and broken. "I know this is such a selfish reason that I'm doing all this. I know this isn't what I should be doing, that I should just...be the bigger woman in a time like this when we have finals at the end of the week and we ought to be focusing everything we have on studying for them...why? Why are you letting me get away with this when all you'd need to do is just drag me back home if you needed to?"

Fuutarou just shrugs. "Eh...I just don't like the sound of that. And besides, sometimes - I don't like taking the easy ways out. Sometimes it's worth doing things a bit less efficiently. Just, maybe, don't punch your sister in the face next time; I can't really condone that, so if you do it again, you're on your own."

Itsuki starts to pout into her classmate's chest, but for some odd reason, it ends up turning into a small smile instead, but Fuutarou will never know. She finally pulls herself away from him, with Fuutarou withdrawing his hand when he sees this to give her the space she wants, and when she looks back up at her tutor, the boy gazes back into the usual pair of calming blue seas.

"Just for your information, I _will _still be doing my best to study while I stay at your place," Itsuki smiles.

"As I hope you would. Huh, actually..." Fuutarou breaks off to ponder to himself. "What if this's all just a 500 IQ move on your part to get personalized one-on-one tutoring with me so that you can score the highest on finals again, kinda like how you did back during midterms? Eh, naaaaah, you're not that smart to pull that one off..."

"I am _right here_, you know!" Itsuki pouts for real this time. "But now that you mentioned it, I am not against such an idea."

"Glad to see you're enthusiastic about it, at least. But not tonight - I imagine you know why."

Itsuki nods back. "You are going to go talk to Nino, I presume?"

"Bingo. Like I said, I only briefly met with her and Yotsuba since I just wanted to make sure that they were okay."

"Then...you came to talk to me first?" Itsuki points at herself.

"Yeah. I figured between you and Nino, you'd be more willing to talk things out with me. And now that you have, it's clear to me that what you did earlier tonight was an honest mistake, and that your intention wasn't primarily to hurt anyone. Now I need to go see Nino's side of the story, and once I've done that, I want you two to come home together."

"Ehhh...I am not sure, Nino is...quite the stubborn princess..." Itsuki sighs. "But I suppose there is no other way at this point, is there?"

"Yeah, not really. I'm screwed no matter what."

"You, screwed? When _we _are the ones who are looking at academic failure if we do not pass our finals?"

"Well, if _you _fail, I lose my job, and that don't look so good on my resume."

"As if you _need _a resume!"

"Hey, it's nice to keep one around just in case..."

The two high schoolers beginning banter between them, Fuutarou and Itsuki begin heading back to Daikazoku Business Park so that the boy can make sure his classmate can return to his father's office and house safely. As they walk back, Itsuki points back up at the full moon, which is shining almost as brightly as the sun in the day.

"Tonight is a full moon, it would seem," she smiles again, turning to her friend. "Hey, Uesugi-kun, did you know that my favorite celestial body is the moon?"

"Moon? But you have these little star-shaped hair clips that you always wear, right?" Fuutarou asks, pointing out the hair clips in question.

"Ah, yes, I do, that is correct. I told you before that I love to go stargazing, so that is why. But even still, even though I do like the stars in the sky a lot, the moon holds a special place in my heart. I suppose part of the reason why is because it is the most significant celestial body you can see with the naked eye from Earth."

"What about the sun, though?"

"Well, you cannot look directly at the _sun_, that is dangerous!"

"True, true. So the moon is the next best thing for you?"

"N-Not just the 'next best thing', it really is very beautiful in its own right," Itsuki says, turning to Fuutarou and giving him an earnest smile. "Especially tonight."

Fuutarou looks down at Itsuki first, then up at the moon.

"...I guess it is, huh," he agrees quietly.


	55. Red To Black

**A/N**

**Very short chapter for today. Originally I had meant to include this chapter at the end of the previous one, but because I've been having a packed schedule lately, I've decided to release this as its own standalone chapter instead.**

* * *

Crickets are chirping in the night, and their nocturnal songs are carried about the peaceful park by the winds passing through the city tonight. Nakano Yotsuba sits with one of her older sisters on the same bench that Nino has stopped to sit in herself starting an hour ago, exhausted is she from constantly being on the run from her younger sister who's tracked her down like a hound. Of course she wasn't going to outrun someone like Yotsuba; her incredible physical prowess alone eliminates any chance that Nino could outlast Yotsuba of all people on mere endurance. Yotsuba is also mysteriously proficient at following people around; she might have a tough time initially locating the people she needs to follow if she doesn't have much information about them to go off on or if she must search for them first herself, but once she has them in her sights, there's no escaping her. At least, none of her sisters have a chance at outrunning her.

So Nino has resigned herself to this park bench to batch her breath, but now that she's seated herself to recover her strength, she feels sapped of any motivation to try to run away, since it's not like she has any chance in hell that she's going to shake Yotsuba off her trail. The suitcase that she's brought with her, packed with several changes of clothes and her vital belongings like her phone and purse, stands patiently next to her on the bench, as her initial plan upon running away from home was to check into a hotel somewhere - probably the Marriott, since it's the closest to the penthouse and Nino knows at least not to stay outside in the middle of the night for too long.

But now she doesn't care. Her frustration that's gripped her tonight, initially spawned because of Yotsuba's involvement in the matter of tracking her down, has burst into flames thanks to the detonation of her already pent-up anger at Itsuki from their fight earlier today and has subsequently raged out of Nino's weak emotional control like a wildfire in the middle of a redwood forest, the emotional flames fanned by the ember-filled winds of her emotions past that she hasn't been able to let go of completely over the past three months.

And now here she sits, on a bench in the middle of a park overlooking a man-made lake, forced to bask in a bed of smoking embers and peer out helplessly and irritably at the emotionally burnt forest that is her smoldering thoughts and sentiments. The fact that she can still feel the punch Itsuki gave her on her mouth doesn't help at all, though oddly the stinging pain she felt for a little bit following their punchout caused by the cut that Itsuki gave her lower lip has long since departed.

It's to the point where Nino can't even feel much of the gusts that occasionally roll through the park. Yotsuba is starting to rub her exposed arms a little now at the relative chill of the night, but her sister shows no such reaction, even though at the moment they're both similarly dressed in nothing but T-shirts and jeans, as Nino was too angry at the time of her departure from home to bother thinking about what clothes to wear before storming out.

It's to the point where even Yotsuba doesn't need to rub her arms to keep herself warm anymore.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the second quintuplet finally drops her hands slowly from her face, and she also slowly sits back up on the bench. Her eyes are still red from crying into her own hands a while ago when she first arrived at this bench to wallow in her own thoughts, but having already gone through this kind of a phase not that long ago, Nino hates that feeling of wallowing in her own anger, and that hatred is somehow greater than the anger that feels towards her entire family right now.

Oh, and that boy who calls himself her tutor.

Nino expects Yotsuba to greet her cheerfully as usual and urge her to return home when she sits back up on their bench, but...no such inquiry comes. In fact, the two sisters just sit there on their bench together, silently, watching the surface of the water of the lake vacillate with the draping of the wind over it. Now that she's managed to calm down, the second quintuplet, finding her current situation becoming more and more awkward as time drags on, can endure it no longer and must speak, though she makes sure to pick and choose her first words wisely.

"...you still mad at me from last time, Yotsuba?"

Her younger sister glances to her left at her older sibling slightly. "...what do you mean, from last time?"

"Don't play dumb with me, the time I slapped you the night we ran into those three guys who wanted to kidnap us and Uesugi-kun had to bail us out again."

"Oh, that..."

"Don't tell me you _forgot?"_

Yotsuba slowly raises her gaze up at the night sky above the two of them and merely shrugs.

"...I guess I must have. Sorry about that, haha."

"...how the fuck do you just _forget _something like that...?" Nino balks at her, half wondrously and half annoyed.

"Well, you did apologize to me for doing that eventually, and I knew that you were in a terrible mood that night. I mean, you got hurt, right? One of those bad guys stabbed you in the shoulder and all. And I tried getting in your way between you and Uesugi-san, so..."

"But just because I said sorry, you take that at face value and just get over it?" Nino runs her hand up through her own hair in disbelief. "I guess that's just Yotsuba for you..."

The quintuplet in question grins somewhat at her sibling. "I mean, you know me, right? I don't really get angry at much, if at all."

"Tch...guess so..."

"So why did you expect my answer to be any different?"

It's Nino's turn to glance back at her sister. "Because you're acting different tonight."

Yotsuba blinks back at Nino, lifting her head a little in surprise. "Different? How...how so?"

"Normally, when I sat back up just a few moments ago, you'd've taken that as an opportunity to ask me to return home with you. Yet, you just kept sitting here doing nothing. It's like...it's like you were waiting for _me _to start talking. I've...never seen you really act like that before. Usually you just blab about shit if that's what you wanna do, and you don't let what's going on around you stop you."

Listening to her older quintuplet sister carefully, Yotsuba again smiles, but this time with a noticeable degree of sympathy.

"That's...that's true, I guess. It's always a bit, uh, humbling to hear other people point out what I do to me, huh?"

Nino has begun to fold her arms while Yotsuba gives her an answer. "If you're trying to feel bad for me just because you saw me cry, I don't care. Your or anyone else's sympathy doesn't mean shit at this point."

"It's not...because I'm trying to pity you."

"Oh ho, it's not? Then why?"

Yotsuba returns her gaze back down to a normal elevation level, looking across the lake to the other side from them.

"A lot's happened tonight. Obviously you don't need me to tell you that, but..." she hesitates for a moment. "I don't...really know why myself either. I guess...seeing you two fight like that...it just...everything happened so fast, and it was just so shocking..."

"You certainly reacted fast at the time though," Nino points out.

"I did, but...as I was following you throughout the city, I did think about everything that happened. Especially ever since you stopped here, I didn't need to focus on following you around, so...I've been able to think about stuff today."

Nino scoffs silently. "So? Isn't there something you wanna say to me? Spit it out already."

"Um...there is, but..." Yotsuba raises an uncomfortable finger up to her cheek to scratch the latter. "...it's a bit embarrassing to say, now that I think about the kind of situation we're in..."

Gawking a little at her younger sister in growing disbelief, Nino feels her irritation coming back, though thankfully for a different reason.

"Yeah, you're _definitely _acting weird tonight. Just go back home already if you're gonna be acting weird; I won't get mad at you if that's what you're worried about, since...well, I don't think I need to explain why."

"But you know I can't do that. Not until I get you to come back with me."

"Then fucking tell me why you're acting so off today! If you didn't come all the way here to yap my ear off, why did you even follow me all the way here?!"

Yotsuba lowers her hand again. "...I just realized...I forgot to tell Uesugi-san that I can't study with him this week because the track team wants me to train with them for their next meet."

Nino's facial expression doesn't change for a few seconds, but it eventually gives way to a slow and steady facepalm.

"..._that's _what you're upset over right now...?" she sighs tiredly. She would like to have groaned, but she doesn't even have the energy for that. "Here I was, starting to feel a bit bad that the shit Itsuki and I caused at home was going to give Uesugi-kun a tough time since I bet he's running around right now trying to get us all back together, but it turns out that you would've made him bust his nuts over you anyway?"

Finally, Yotsuba perks up and grins playfully. "Yep, I guess so, haha!"

"Don't 'haha' me, Yotsuba! I just covered for your dumb ass tonight, you know that?!"

"Ehhh, not fully, though. Even if all this gets settled, the track team still wants me to train with them every day for the rest of this week."

"...wait, but this is finals week; all club activities are shut down so that we can study for finals, right?"

"Yeah, but that only applies to club activities on school grounds. The school can't do anything about clubs wanting to meet _outside_ of school, you know?"

"Hmph, so a bit of a loophole, then." Nino sighs a little and leans her back against their bench, refolding her arms. "So you haven't changed much either, huh."

Yotsuba's smile fades a little, but it still persists as she casts her own gaze out over the lake like her sister does.

"No...I haven't," the fourth quintuplet freely admits. "I still can't help myself when it comes to helping people out, I still get involved with too many clubs and too many people, and I'm still a big fat idiot who still gets single-digit scores on my tests, even practice ones. But I'm trying to change, though! I've been scoring a bit better on the latest mock exams that Uesugi-san's given us!"

"Yeah, but you still need to work on the whole 'I'm helping out the track team so I can't study as much as everyone else' part," Nino snickers, but realizing that she's starting to enjoy their conversation, she hastily suppresses her amused grin.

"Aha, yeah...I still need to work on that bit." Yotsuba sighs a little herself. "It's just that...I made that promise to Eba-senpai, the track team captain, a few weeks prior, so it's not like this just suddenly came out of nowhere..."

"Even still - " Nino was about to advise her sister to consider canceling her commitment to the track team so that she can focus on her studies, but again she halts herself from going further and quickly salvages her dialogue, realizing that this is something she'd rather let Fuutarou handle since she shouldn't have any stake in Yotsuba's situation. "Well, if that's your decision, then whatever. Can't say no to people who ask for help, right?"

Tussling her hair a little, Nino waits for Yotsuba's reply, but it doesn't come as soon as she anticipates. So she glances over at Yotsuba to see what the matter is, and the latter is still gazing out to the man-made lake before them, with a pensive and brooding look in her darkened blue eyes. Starting to feel like she's the one putting Yotsuba on the spot now, Nino starts growing a bit distressed for doing so.

"...just ignore that, I was just being sarcastic," Nino mutters, weakly flicking her hand a little in a pitiful attempt to wave her last spoken remark away. "You can tell I'm still in a bad mood right now."

Yotsuba shakes her head, though. "No, no, it...it wasn't because of what you said."

"Oh. Then...if not me, then...?"

"I just...you just reminded me of a conversation I had with Uesugi-san a while back...I think this was right before our Golden Week vacation to Hawaii. It was similar to what you said, so...I ended up thinking about it a little bit just now."

Their tutor, huh. The mention of his name makes Nino want to feel sick to her stomach - or, at least that's how she would have reacted had this been several weeks prior. Now, though, she feels intrigued, and she hates the fact that she's starting to feel curious, but talking with her sister like this tonight is distracting her from the heavy tension that she's put herself through earlier that day, so she indulges in this spot of curiosity just for tonight.

"Uh huh. So what was that about?" Nino asks as casually as possible, trying to sound nonchalant about it.

"He basically told me that...that I have to be careful when it comes to helping other people out. He told me about something called an 'opportunity cost' I think, if I'm getting that right; apparently it means something like, uh, the cost that you'd need to pay for doing something - or in other words, stuff that you can't do because you're already doing something else."

"Heh...that guy, always wanting to teach us _something _even if he's just talking to us normally..." Nino rolls her eyes. "But I guess in your case, it means that since you've promised the track team that you'd practice with them for a meet, you can't study as much with us, right?"

Yotsuba nods. "At the time, I didn't really get what he meant. No, no, that's...that's not true, I knew what he was saying, what he was trying to tell me. But I didn't listen to him and kept doing what I was doing. But now, now that today happened, I just..."

To Nino's horrified surprise, Yotsuba then puts her _own _face into her own hands, though not completely so that her eyes are not hidden, as her elbows slowly descend until they rest on her knees. Her blue eyes do not look like they are about to weep either, unlike Nino's from earlier.

"...I guess you could say that it's all catching up to me now."

Yotsuba's words hit home too much, so much so that Nino can't come up with something else to say to her younger sister at first. In fact, Nino doesn't know how to carry on that kind of conversation, for all the years of social experience that she's got under her belt.

Now that Nino thinks about it, though, as this awkward point in their conversation forces a few moments of silence between them, the second quintuplet realizes that she's interacted with the fourth sibling more than these past four weeks or so than they had for the past several years. Ever since the quintuplets began hatching out of their shells and growing up to leave their collective quintuplet nest, the girls have established relationships among them, relationships that were more well known for better or worse among the quintuplets as a whole. For example, Ichika and Miku hang out often together, as for the most part they are usually on the same wavelength, and Nino is oftentimes at odds with Miku and Itsuki, as today can painfully attest to.

Brushing the hair that's being blown into her face out of the way, Nino glances down over at Yotsuba, but rather than making eye contact, she lets her gaze remain angled downwards instead, unsure of where to really look before she restarts their conversation.

"...now that I think about it, this's the first time we've ever really...hung out like this, huh," Nino murmurs quietly, and her words make Yotsuba lift her face out of her hands in interest.

"I guess...now that you put it that way, yeah, this might be," Yotsuba nods in agreement. "Though, we did 'hang out' together that one night when, you know..."

"Okay, let's not count that for obvious reasons."

"Aha...yeah, probably not."

But Yotsuba hesitates again.

"...but I still want it to count, though," she smiles weakly over at her older sister.

"Huh? But...why?" Nino gives Yotsuba a terribly confused look. "Like, never mind most of the shit that happened that day like me getting fucking shanked in my shoulder, I hit you that night, didn't I? Even if I did say sorry to you afterwards once I'd calmed down after that weekend, like...don't you still feel bitter towards me for that? 'Cause that's what I feel whenever Miku has to say sorry to me, her apologies never really seem genuine, though I guess I already know why..."

But Yotsuba shakes her head. "No really, like I said before, I don't really mind. I've almost forgotten that you'd slapped me at all, to be honest."

"And I'm asking you, why?"

The fourth quintuplet finally resumes eye contact with her sister.

"...because you're my sister," she says quietly. "Ichika always tells us that time's going to fly by when we're at this age, right? And that we should cherish any and every memory that we make? Well, I want to include even the bad ones. Whether we have good times together or bad, I still want to remember and cherish them all. Even something like when you hit me, I still want to be able to look back on that with you and laugh at the whole situation, even if it was pretty serious at the time. I don't want to think about a time or a memory we share and have to feel sad or bitter about it, and I think it's safe to say that we all already have our fair shares of sad times to think back on, so...anything that I don't necessarily _have _to feel bad about is a good memory to me; any time that I spend with any of my sisters is what I want, even if, like you said, the two of us in particular might not've hung out like this in a while, just on our own."

Listening to her sister talk, Nino can't believe that there would ever come a time when _Yotsuba _of all her sisters would be the one to help her compose herself like this. Seriously, since when did Yotsuba develop a serious, mature side to her? Where did _this _all come from? Who is she, and what happened to the _real _Nakano Yotsuba when Nino wasn't looking?

And it's not just Yotsuba, though Yotsuba behaving like this is the most jarring: Miku, before today, anyway, has also been acting more mature in their own one-on-one conversations that they've made over the past several months. All this serves to make it plainly obvious to Nino that her sisters truly are growing up and maturing, and that she's the one being left behind in the Nakano quintuplet nest.

"...must be nice, being able to say stuff like that..." Nino mumbles aloud before she can stop herself.

"...say stuff like this? What do you mean?"

"Well...just...you know...being able to speak your thoughts so casually like that."

"I wasn't...being 'casual' about it, though..."

"Okay, maybe...maybe not _casually_, maybe that's the wrong word here. More like, um...just...just saying what you wanna say."

"But don't you do that already?"

Yotsuba's innocent words slap Nino back in the face, a lot harder than the latter expected. Perhaps that's karma for hitting Yotsuba the first time.

"...never mind. Forget I said anything..." Nino again waves the dead end of a conversation away with her right hand.

Having realized to herself that Nino talking to her extensively like this means that she can probably start to convince her to return home, Yotsuba sits back up with Nino and turns to face her.

"I know it's hypocritical of me to say this, but can you come back home? We've had a good thing going for all of us studying together; it's going to be a waste if we all separate now, with finals right around the corner."

Nino snorts, shaking her head. "Hey, at least you recognize it, but still...no, I can't go back yet. You heard us arguing as we left the house, didn't you? Itsuki and I can't reconcile, at least not any time soon; we've had such a falling out this time around that it'd be hella weird if we came back all of a sudden. That, and Itsuki's still a bitch for slapping me first. Besides, even though the fight between me and Itsuki was obviously pretty serious, I don't want to be told to come back home by _you _right now, considering that _you're_ going to be practicing with the track team all week this week anyway."

Shrinking dejectedly, Yotsuba casts her eyes down on the sidewalk underneath her feet again, accepting that there's nothing really she can say to Nino, now that she's pointed that out.

"...then...then what will you do now?" the younger sister asks the elder.

"Find a hotel to stay at, and...I suppose try to study as much as I can on my own," Nino mumbles, slowly getting up to her feet to stretch her sleepy limbs out. "Even if I've talked things out with you here, I just can't stand having to face Itsuki right now, and I'm sure she feels likewise. I don't care if you try following me around still, but don't expect to be able to stop me, Yotsuba. I mean it."

Not waiting for her sister to give her a response back, the second quintuplet, having fetched her phone from her suitcase, grabs the suitcase handle and sets off from the bench, leaving Yotsuba still sitting there as she scrolls through her phone's directory to find the number for one of the city's higher-end taxi services.

"Maybe your sister can't, but I certainly will. Turn around if you don't fancy her gettin' her head ripped off."

Nakano Nino freezes as her finger was just about to hit the call button to ring up a taxi, then spins around, letting go of her suitcase and clutching her phone tightly to see what's going on.

A tall man in a curious red leather jacket and conspicuously blonde hair is holding Nakano Yotsuba by the hair, having dragged her body a short distance from the bench on which the girls were just sitting on just a minute ago. Yotsuba is limp in his grasp; her eyes are still open, but they are glazed and listless, so freshly has she been knocked unconscious, and her knees and hands are scraping against the sidewalk of the side of the lake.

The instant Nino sees Yotsuba in the man's grasp, her Mystic Eyes, in the tremendous resurgence of her rebounding fury, flash into view with a vengeance -

"You - let go of her, you fucking bas - "

\- but only for a moment. The man in the red leather jacket doesn't wait for her to finish her thought as he opens a rune with a large seven-inch knife in his left hand, and the moment he stabs the rune with his blade, a receiving rune that has silently appeared in front of her abdomen flashes briefly with a sinister red light.

Nino sees the blood fly from her gut first before she feels the pain - in fact, she buckles to her knees first due to the shock of her fresh stab wound before she physically registers the pain. Even still, even as the man in the red leather jacket approaches her with slow, taunting steps, dragging the unconscious body of her sister with him, the second quintuplet, finding her breathing quickly becoming labored and heavy, tries her hardest to get back on her feet, clutching at the freely bleeding gash right next to her belly button.

"Whaddya know, you bitches really _are _quintuplets - same face 'n everything," the quintuplets' assailant chortles dangerously as he walks up to the stumbling quintuplet who's feeling her strength rapidly leave her for reasons she does not know. "Looks like _you're_ Nakano Nino this time, just like the pictures in your phone."

In her blurring vision, Nino desperately tries to summon her strength; she's supposed to be a mage, right? Just like the boy who tutors them. She's even got these magical eyes that proves that she's a mage. Shouldn't right now be one of those times when she's supposed to be able to draw on her hidden power or something to beat this guy?

Even as her Mystic Eyes are receding and bleeding out of view, Nino looks back up at the man who's parked himself right in front of her with his sister's hair in his hand, and as fiercely as she can, she lunges at him to tackle him.

The man's left fist meets Nino's head in midair. The sound that his knuckles produce against her face is akin to a large rock being dropped from a tall height against asphalt, and Nino certainly drops like one, the back of her head getting slammed into the ground from the force of the punch that's just punted her world from red to black.


	56. Interrogation

The jingling of a door chime signals Nakano Ichika's exit from a coffee shop not far from the Pentagon luxury high-rise, and there are no prizes for guessing which franchise.

Today's been a long day at work for the oldest quintuplet, so Ichika decides to treat herself with something she usually doesn't order: a Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino. Normally she doesn't fancy caramel - it's not that she dislikes it like how Miku hates chocolate, but it's just something she usually doesn't go out of her way to get. But now that she's giving it a try, it's actually quite delicious - perhaps she'll order it again in the future.

Ichika is accustomed to getting coffee from Starbucks or other trendy coffee shops deeper in the heart of the city, as her job has her travel to various locations around downtown, so she is thus used to the hustle-bustle of a busy international city: traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, various foreign languages being spoken just as often as the native Japanese, and advertisements as far as the urban eye can see. She's a city kind of girl, and she's proud of it - though she takes care to never forget that she wasn't always one.

Today's work dragged on somewhat longer than usual, but this is due to Ichika's own fault: she had initially cleared this whole week with her employer so that she could focus on her studies with her sisters, so her workplace was under the impression that she wouldn't be showing up this week, yet she did anyway on her very first day off, so they hadn't had anything planned for her to do. So when she came in unexpectedly, they had to find something for her to do, and when they did, Ichika ended up working for longer than usual anyway - not that her workplace could really complain about it. She did tell them that this was just for today; this shouldn't happen again for the rest of the week since today's circumstances were...unusual.

_Unusual _is underselling the situation that exploded at the Nakano residence earlier today. When Nino slapped Fuutarou's worksheets out of Miku's hands and Itsuki realized what had happened, Ichika felt an enormous pulse of magical energy resonate from Itsuki. It was akin to a bomb exploding in their house, a figurative one, but only Ichika could feel it - and any of her sisters who have also unlocked their latent magic talents too. That was _before_ Itsuki slapped Nino - the moment Ichika's magic senses were bombarded by the sheer magical energy release from her youngest sister, Ichika was genuinely afraid that something much, much worse than just two of her sisters having a messy punchout would happen.

Thankfully nothing catastrophic happened, and maybe in hindsight, Ichika didn't need to worry about such a thing happening, as that was the moment when Ichika witnessed Itsuki unlock her magic potential. That's the first time she's ever seen someone discover themselves as a mage in such a...dramatic fashion, now that she ponders it a little as she begins her lonely walk back home in the night, sipping on her caramel frappuccino in the night breeze that is progressively getting chillier the longer she's outside.

Ichika herself, as mentioned before, has never known exactly when she became a mage, or discovered her magic talent, or whatever the proper phrase is; all she knows is that she had this power vested into her right eye from a young age, back when she and her sisters could still be considered truly identical quintuplets, and that she's slowly over the years learned how it works and how to control and utilize it properly. Of course, she's still a far cry from a much more dedicated mage like Uesugi Fuutarou, for example, as she's never had proper guidance on how to use her magic talent and has focused more on living the life of a normal person, though Ichika does sometimes wonder to herself how different her life would be if she did have the choice to take one path for her life or the other...would she remain the same as she is now, or follow more in the footsteps of her tutor? Then again, knowing how tough Fuutarou's life seems to be, she's not so sure if following in his footsteps is necessarily the greatest of ideas.

In any case, that tangent aside, Ichika considers her other sisters. She now knows that both Miku and Nino have activated their magic powers; she's known that Miku has had hers for a while now, judging by Miku's sojourns to the bathroom following her sleep paralysis attacks in the middle of the night and sensing the subtle but creeping magic energy leakage coming from her room during those nights. And much more recently, Nino as well has developed her own, joining Miku and herself in the magic quintuplets' club of which most quintuplets in the family have no idea exists.

But both Nino's and Miku's developments were under the radar. Ichika still doesn't know exactly when Nino developed hers; the first sign that Nino showed that she was a mage now was back during that one weekend following the incident between her and Yotsuba, the weekend when their tutor treated them to a lunch at that Italian cuisine family restaurant or whatever that was with the tasty parfaits, and that was only because all the magical energy leakage from Nino's room during that time made it obvious that she'd become a mage at some point; it's just that Ichika is very curious as to when exactly she'd turned, though that just makes it sound like she's thinking of her sisters as nothing more than zombies or something.

So the fact that Itsuki's transformation, as much as you can call it a "transformation", unfolded in such dramatic fashion came as a big shock to Ichika, to the point where she took the opportunity to get out of the house herself as soon as she could, which was right before Nino and Itsuki stormed out of the house to run away, though not necessarily together. While she did help to mediate the situation immediately following the scuffle the two of them had, Ichika was legitimately frightened of what could happen and honestly did not want to have any part of it. She has no problems with getting involved with her sisters' problems when it comes to normal stuff, but this? If things went magical, how the hell would she be able to keep things under control?

Ichika's chest tightens up painfully. Even if she doesn't show it or tries not to most of the time, she really does pride herself on being the eldest quintuplet whom the rest of the siblings can look up to for guidance and mediation; being the one who can keep things under control is a responsibility she's oftentimes tasked with, and she's enjoyed the prestige that comes with it. So no matter what the situation, even when magic gets involved, she ought to have that same attitude of stepping in to keep her sisters together, just like their late mother wanted them to.

But this is twice now that she has been unable to do fulfill her duty as the eldest quintuplet, once at the warehouse and twice tonight. At the warehouse, she refused to use her magical talent to help get her sisters out of that dangerous bind - even if she has the excuse of not being very well trained in the art of fighting with magic or simply lacking martial arts knowledge in the first place, the fact of the matter is that she did not act because she did not want to reveal her identity as a mage to her sisters unless she _absolutely _had to, like to save one of her sisters from getting badly hurt, for example, and thankfully for her, Uesugi Fuutarou was there to bail her out in the sense that she ended up not having to reveal herself as a mage to her family.

And Ichika feels much worse about today, because it's not like there was a third party outside of their family and Uesugi that was involved in the matter; no, it was just among her sisters and no one else. Ichika has no excuse in this case to have not acted as the proper older sister she prides herself on being to do whatever she can to keep the situation under control and make sure things stay under control. She may have helped settle things down initially, but she wasn't there to stop Nino and Itsuki from ditching the house to go their separate ways as the final result of their fight, because she'd already been long gone from the house already.

And to make matters _even worse_, it's not as though Ichika hasn't been in high-tension situations herself either, and as a matter of fact, she's been in quite a few. Has she already forgotten about her private vigilantism that she's waged against people whom she deemed as threats to her sisters? Has she forgotten the fact that she's confronted other less-than-friendly and disagreeable human beings during her time as a Mystic Eye-wielding mage? And some of those people were actually scary people too, men who had sometimes had weapons on them or otherwise posed a very real danger to a young girl like herself. So why is it that she can face people like that but not her own sisters, especially Itsuki today?

The only reason for that that Ichika can think of is because they're her own sisters. Bad guys whom she's dealt with before are no problem since she doesn't care about them beyond the threats that they pose to her and her family, so she doesn't need to hold back against them or really worry about the consequences of dealing with them, since they're probably bad people in general anyway if they think that attacking an unarmed young girl like herself was an okay thing to do. Obviously she can't approach her own sisters with that same mentality, otherwise she'd be no better than the people she fought to protect those very siblings in the first place, and she certainly doesn't _want _to.

But is that really all? Just because they're her sisters? That'd be like saying just because they're her sisters, Ichika should let them stay up however long they want on a school night. Not that her sisters do that anyway because they're all good girls and they all at least go to sleep properly for school so Ichika doesn't need to worry about such delinquency from them, but still, the point is that along this logic, Ichika shouldn't get involved with the fight between Nino and Itsuki because they're her sisters and so she shouldn't do anything that'll hurt their feelings. But obviously she can't just do nothing; as their older sister, she needs to get in there and get involved, because otherwise if she doesn't, her sisters will begin to question her role as that eldest quintuplet whose job is to step in when things get heated to help calm down everyone down. As mentioned before, just because things are getting a little magical doesn't mean she should suddenly begin shying away from the situation like she's got nothing to do with it.

As if to taunt her, the sight of Itsuki's red Mystic Eyes flashes in Ichika's own.

Her youngest sister has never acted like that in her life, not from what Ichika is able to recall. Sure, Itsuki has gotten angry at the rest of them for various reasons, mostly because they love poking fun at her eating habits, but even when she had gotten seriously angry, all she would do is yell at Nino for a little while and that would be the end of that. Today, Itsuki seemed like a whole 'nother person, like someone else had taken over her body and acted in the name of Nakano Itsuki. Perhaps it was just the combination of Itsuki's extreme behavior, her Mystic Eye activation, and the situation at hand in which it all occurred, but Ichika just can't shake the lingering sense that she got hit with at the time that still persists now that Itsuki, at that moment, was the most dangerous person on Earth...and the fact that when Itsuki at that time cast her gaze upon Ichika herself for a split second she felt something wrap around her neck, almost like a hand that's tried to choke her out, does no favors for her jumbled thoughts on the matter.

Could she just chalk it up to base survival instinct, then? That Ichika wanted to evacuate from the area because her instincts were screaming at her to get the hell away from her youngest sister? Even if that were the case, the eldest quintuplet still doesn't feel very good about admitting that, since that still insinuates that she just wanted to run away from the situation and not help get her family back together.

The caramel frappuccino is starting to taste more bitter than sweet, but that's not its own fault. So this is it, huh? Finally the time has come for her and her sisters to enter a new period of their lives, one that would last for the rest of their lives, in fact: a period of magical involvement, when the quintuplets would no longer be able to live their lives ignorant of their true identities as mages. Ichika was the first to discover this, and as the oldest sibling, she has long wondered how long her family could live normal lives. Perhaps Nino was right about their tutor, at least partially, that his entrance into their lives would impact them heavily; as a fellow mage, Ichika should have anticipated things beginning to turn out like this.

And it scares Ichika, frankly, just like how Itsuki's magical development today has frightened her. Ichika has very little knowledge of the magical world, so she won't know how to protect her family or keep them together during times like these when the problems that they get embroiled in begin to involve magic. She doesn't want to feel helpless, and while she's much more open to recruiting Fuutarou's help for matters she cannot handle on her own than someone like Nino, Ichika still doesn't want Fuutarou to be the lead actor in this show. Perhaps Ichika understands her younger sister's feelings towards their tutor a bit better now.

Before she knows it, the eldest quintuplet, whose legs have been on auto-pilot this whole time as she's dunked her head into the infinite basin known as her memories, has arrived at the last intersection that she needs to cross to read the Pentagon grounds, so she stops at the pedestrian crossing to wait for her turn to cross the street, despite the fact that there is no vehicular traffic in sight at the moment.

"I don't know if you've ever bothered talking to girls in your life, but I hardly think following a girl through the city like that's supposed to be anything like good manners," the eldest quintuplet barks out suddenly, turning around next to the large industrial pole that serves to hold up the traffic lights over the street that she intends to cross.

True to her sudden accusation, a young man in a dark hoodie jacket stops in his tracks about ten meters behind Ichika. He didn't anticipate Ichika suddenly calling him out like this and thus had no time to duck out of sight behind something to hide himself. Lowering her half-drunk caramel frappuccino, the sharp-eyed quintuplet, with her lips growing as sharp as her eyes too, glares at the man who's been stalking her this whole way.

"Bring out your friends, too. I know they're there with you."

The hoodied man just grins nefariously, since his cover is blown already, and he simply raises his hand a little to have his two crewmates step into view next to him, seemingly out of nowhere, as they deactivate their own shoddy Presence Concealment spells that Ichika has been able to circumvent somehow.

"Tch...bitch saw through our Presence Concealment, how?" one of the amateur mages hisses in annoyance, clearly overestimating his own magical talent.

"Doesn't matter how she did it when it isn't gonna fuckin' help her. No one's around, so let's get her quick before anyone else sh - "

The cocky hoodied man glances back at the high school freshman standing next to the traffic light, who glares back at him with a glowing golden eye.

All three men's bodies jerk a little like they've been physically shaken where they stand, and the muscles in their necks go a little slack to make their heads hang a little, like they've had a little too much to drink tonight, on a Monday night of all nights. Their eyes are also glowing an eerie gold, all six of them. While the hoodied man who's been stalking Ichika out in the open is gazing down at the ground, listless and inactive just like a machine that's sitting idly without anything to do, the two mages are struggling to regain control of their bodies and break free of the immobilizing spell or whatever Ichika's just cast over them to stun them in place.

"Wh-What did you just to do us? And what the hell is that eye? Is that eye doing this?!" the enemy mage growls at the quintuplet.

"No, wait, I think - I think Boss told us something about this. Mystic Eyes, I think they were called? This bitch's gotta have one! There's no way she'd be stronger than us, we didn't even sense a magical signature off her for all this time!"

Ichika doesn't care much for these men's yapping, but that second mage did mention someone they refer to as "Boss", which means there's only one thing to do.

"Tell me who this 'Boss' of yours is," Ichika commands, taking another sip of her caramel drink. "Tell me everything you know."

"Our boss is a dude named Shirazumi Rio. He's a mage like us, but he's the strongest of us all. He's been rounding us up to scour the city for these quintuplet girls or whatever and to traffic drugs into the city," the second mage answers immediately, but as soon as he's done talking, he immediately cries out, "Wait, fuck! I didn't mean to say that! You bitch, are you putting a suggestion spell on us right now or something?! What the hell are you doing?!"

"Wouldn't you like to know. Anyways, keep talking - did this 'Shirazumi Rio' boss of yours specifically tell you to hunt me down tonight?"

"Yes, those've been our orders whenever we're not doing other shit like traffic drugs or test our drugs out on random idiots that we find. The guy in the middle saw you in the city tonight, and so he called for backup to help him detain and capture you," the first mage answers this time, and he, too, groans angrily at this forced interrogation. "Dude, we gotta fight it, man, we can't just keep feeding her info like this! Shirazumi's gonna fuckin' skin us alive if he finds out shit's been leaked!"

"But how the hell we do fight it, though!? It's not a spell, she's not using a spell!"

"Then do you know who the rest of my sisters are? Where we live? What they look like?"

The first mage again snaps to attention to speak against his will. "We don't know yet; we've been trying to find out information about you girls for the past couple of months as per our orders from Boss, but we just can't seem to find anything. We thought it'd be a cakewalk since, y'know, how many freakin' quintuplets do _you _know walking around, right? Usually it's just twins and that's about it. But we haven't found shit! Besides you, we don't know what your sisters look like, who they are, what they do - nothing! It's frustrating, dude - as frustrating as it is _being forced to fucking talk!"_

"I'm sure it is," Ichika mutters, doing her best to act nonchalant about the matter when in reality her active and glowing Mystic Eye is now beginning to get strained from overuse; she cannot maintain this interrogation for much longer, so she must ask just one more set of questions and end it before something dangerous happens that not even Ichika knows. "What about Uesugi Fuutarou? What do you know about him? What does your boss know about him?"

"We've heard Boss talk about him a few times but he hasn't given us any orders involving him; only that if we were to ever run into him, we ought to let him know about it - if we manage to get away from him alive, that is," the second mage answers this time. "But I've overheard Boss talking about how fun it'd be to kill him the next time they meet."

Squinting her right eye to deal with the accelerating pain, Ichika pushes her luck and asks one last question: "Did their first fight involve one of my sisters? One of the quintuplets?"

"Uh, I think so, Boss mentioned something about seeing one of the quints there and how he would've loved to capture her right then and there or something, I don't know beyond that."

"Alright, thanks. Forget everything that just happened here and never work for Shirazumi Rio again."

And Ichika releases her Mystic Eye's power.

Like puppets whose strings got suddenly cut, all three men crumple instantly to the ground, with nothing but gravity acting on them as they collapse into heaps on the sidewalk. None of them are moving, not even twitching, once they've come to rest on the pavement, and Ichika pays them no more heed as she turns around to quickly cross the empty street after looking both ways and hurries back to the high-rise before anything else can happen for the night.

As soon as she steps into the elevator and hits the button for the thirtieth floor, the eldest quintuplet herself crumples onto the floor, leaning exhausted against the elevator side across from the doors. That's the longest she's ever held her Mystic Eye for when the average amount of time she usually ever has to use it is only a few moments, if only to ask just a question or two. She's practiced using her Mystic Eye in the past just to see how long she can hold it, so she knows that she's not meant to hold it for too long, and she doesn't fancy finding out what happens if she does, if the scraping pain she feels inside her own eyeball is any indication for her _not _to do so.

Feeling sweat now dripping down her forehead, which she hasn't felt until now because of the adrenaline pumping in her blood vessels, Ichika quickly reaches into her bag and pulls out a handkerchief to wipe away the sweat so that Miku or whoever is still at home doesn't start asking questions she'd rather not answer. The elevator is very fast, given that this is a very recently built luxury high-rise, so she doesn't have much time at all to clean herself up before heading to the front door, but she manages it and stows her handkerchief away in her bag as she steps out of the elevator and practically runs to the front door to swipe her passcard and get inside before anything else can happen.

"Oh...welcome back," Nakano Miku greets her oldest sister as she pulls off her shoes and walks into view of the living room. Miku is studying on her own at the glass table, having stayed here instead of going up to her room to study so that she can also wait for her sisters to come back home - the ones who are willing to come back home, anyway.

"W-Where's everyone else? Still mad at each other?" Ichika asks, making a bit of an improper remark all things considered, but Miku doesn't seem to take offense to it and nods a little.

"Nino and Itsuki, yeah, but Yotsuba's still out there with Nino right now."

"They really ought to be getting back; at least Yotsuba if Nino's still mad about today," Ichika sighs, stopping by the glass table in the living room. "It's already, what, about to be nine o'clock? And we haven't even eaten dinner yet, have we? I should've thought ahead and ordered takeout for us at least..."

"I can cook for us tonight if you want me to - " Miku begins to offer, but Ichika raises a hand at her to stop her.

"Sorry, normally I'd be okay with you making dinner for a night, especially since Nino probably isn't gonna be back for a hot minute, but given that we've got finals at the end of the week, I'd rather not us get sidetracked by stomachaches and all that because you messed up your cooking. Sorry, but I'm getting us takeout."

Pouting a little, Miku can't bring herself to protest Ichika's logic and returns to her studying a bit dejectedly.

"By the way, can't you just call Yotsuba to see where she's at right now? She's got her phone, right?" the eldest quint asks her only currently available sister.

"Well...about that, Fuutarou met up with her and Nino and called me to let me know that Yotsuba has her phone...but she forgot to charge it, so..."

"Oh God, again? And at a time like this, too..."

"Fuutarou said that she and Nino are fine right now; it hasn't been that long since he called. And you know Yotsuba, she can just run all the way back here in no time."

"I guess that's true. I'm gonna go put my stuff away and go take a shower; it's been a long day today..."

So Ichika puts her bag and belongings back in her room and undresses, not bothering to take a towel from the bathroom first to cover herself up after she's undressed and simply waddles through the house buck naked, caring very little that one of her sisters can see her walking around in the nude like this if Miku merely looks up from her work at the glass table.

Stepping inside the shower stall and drawing warm water, Ichika gives the largest sigh that she's given in recent memory and stands underneath the showerhead, letting warm water pour down her body. The hearty warmth helps the oldest quintuplet relax - it would be even better if she were able to take a proper bath so that she can sit down and soak in the warmth - but she knows she can't do that, as she needs to focus on studying, lest she let all the hard work and effort that her tutor's put into teaching them go to waste.

The rejuvenating shower facilitates blood flow into her brain, which helps rapidly ease the pinching pain she feels in her right eye. It also makes it easier for Ichika's thoughts, heavy and laden with stress both physical and mental, to turn again like the gears in a machine, which in turn gets her thinking again, specifically about the information she's gained from those men who've tried stalking her back to her house. Now that she thinks about it, Ichika realizes that if she hadn't sensed the two mages following her, she would have led them straight to the quintuplets' home, since she was so preoccupied with her own thoughts while walking back home.

Shirazumi Rio...she's not sure if Fuutarou has mentioned this name specifically to her, and if he has then perhaps she's just forgotten since the name isn't immediately familiar, but she knows for a fact that Fuutarou has warned them of an enemy mage somewhere out there in the city who's coming after them and that he's the one Fuutarou is protecting the girls from. Not only do the girls have _him _to worry about, but apparently as she's found out not even half an hour ago, but the girls also have his cronies to worry about, too. By extension, those men at the warehouse two and a half months ago were probably collaborating with Shirazumi Rio too, now that Ichika thinks about it.

One of the hostile mages she interrogated with her Mystic Eye tonight complained about how they haven't been able to find anything on the quintuplets and how it's been frustrating for them specifically because these are quintuplets they're looking for. Indeed, now that Ichika thinks about it in hindsight, quintuplets are supposed to be extremely rare, right? Twins are rare enough, let alone triplets or quadruplets - but _quintuplets?_ Ichika realizes that she's never had to think about herself and her sisters quite in this kind of retrospective manner since they've all grown up so closely with each other that them being quintuplets has long stopped being something interesting to them and has become more of a fact and less gossip.

On second thought, now that Ichika ponders this curious aspect of her interrogation further, that really is strange - all their lives, the quintuplets have never really been bothered by others about their collective identity as quintuplets. Well, hold on, it's not quite _that _extreme - the sisters _have _been marveled at before when they're all in one place together in an environment where they're surrounded by other people, so it's not like they haven't been gawked at like they're a bunch of zoo animals on exhibit before. But that's understandable, at least - what Ichika can't seem to get is why she and her sisters haven't been stopped on the street about their identity as quintuplets. Quintuplets are supposed to be extremely rare, right? Ichika herself certainly can't think of any other quintuplets out there, so shouldn't there have been, like, paparazzi and news reporters or something coming after them? Maybe not nowadays, but when they were younger? Not to give themselves more credit than they deserve, but Ichika feels like quintuplets being born could be a thing that'd be big news on the media, just given her own experience of consuming modern media outlets. Maybe such a thing happened when they were babies, right after they were born, which would be the most logical time to get hounded by such people when the news of their births was fresh and recent. And if that were the case, the eldest quintuplet feels even worse for their late mother, who must've had her hands full having to deal with such people.

Her own thoughts on the matter aside, Ichika focuses back on the facts: she and her sisters have not been badgered much at all about their whole quintuplets thing outside of a closed environment. All throughout their school years, regardless of the school they've attended, the Nakano girls have never needed to deal with such harassment. While Ichika is thankful that they've been spared such treatment, it does still come off as strange that it happened nowhere near as it probably should have; even stranger is that while they still attended Black Rose Academy, a supposedly prestigious school that was full of petty, gossipy teenage girls who were high off their own self-importance that they derived from their families' social standings and/or financial wealth, they did not receive such treatment. They weren't even referred to as quintuplets when the girls were alone, though when two or more of the Nakanos were together, they'd sometimes be addressed as such.

Ichika washes her short hair with shampoo and conditioner before rinsing her body off and stepping out to dry herself with a big bath towel. Beginning to dry her hair with a blow dryer to get rid of whatever moisture is left in it that her towel can't quite dry off manually, Ichika gazes into her own eyes in the huge mirror of the bathroom.

At least she's been able to confirm what happened during that incident when their tutor protected Itsuki from this Shirazumi Rio guy and brought her home safe; this tells her that Fuutarou does not intend anything malicious against her family, at least not right now, so it's probably reasonable to assume that Fuutarou is on their side.

But what if it's all just an act? Fuutarou himself told the girls that mages by nature should not be trusted, on the night when he rescued her and her sisters from the baddies at the warehouse and revealed his true identity to them. What if he has some kind of ulterior motive like Nino keeps claiming he does and is merely bearing with everything that's happened so far and will happen for the sake of a more overarching goal?

Ichika sets down her hair dryer to lean over the sink, her elbows pressing down uncomfortably against the hard marbletop. Just as Nino was starting to warm up to their tutor, even if today would threaten to suggest otherwise, now Ichika herself is beginning to have doubts? It's as if the quintuplets' doubt towards their tutor and classmate is a virus; Nino was infected at first, and now Ichika too? But especially tonight, now that she's gotten a bit of information off the men who tried stalking her, Ichika's mind is kicking open tons of doors in search of answers that she just isn't finding, doors that merely lead her to even more questions instead, and these additional questions are punching holes in her once amiable, easy-going friendship and trust of her tutor and classmate named Uesugi Fuutarou.

Perhaps all the questions that are popping into her head can be aggregated into one big, general inquiry: what is Fuutarou's true relationship to her and her sisters? Whether Nino meant it or not, her conjectures about the timing of Fuutarou's entrance into their lives do hold some weight. The part about his contract that he'd been hired to protect the girls from potential threats is true enough, but what about her sisters' Mystic Eyes? Why is it that in the next three months since the beginning of his tutoring contract with them, all of her sisters save for Yotsuba have been one by one developing their own Mystic Eyes? She herself is an outlier of course, but that's three out of the five of them who've evolved into magehood after Uesugi Fuutarou became their tutor, which is a solid majority - and when Yotsuba eventually and inevitably develops her own, then that'd be an even more solid four out of five. It also doesn't help that Fuutarou has freely informed the quintuplets that he's developed methods of tracking all of them, presumably because it'll make his job of safeguarding them easier so that in case any of them get kidnapped or something along those lines, he can more easily find them and recover them before something bad happens to the girls. But what if there's something more that he plans to do with that? And not to mention that he and their father, Nakano Maruo, clearly do not maintain a good relationship, if what little of it that they saw back down in Hawaii was any indication...

Is Fuutarou _really _there to tutor them and protect them?

Ichika washes her face with cold water in a feeble attempt to wash away her thoughts along with her fatigue, but that doesn't work out for her too well as she looks back up into her reflection that's still just as tired and confused as it was before it got dunked with two handfuls of cold water. Giving a deep sigh and drying her face with her bath towel, Ichika keeps her face buried in the folds of her towel for a few moments longer than necessary.

She doesn't want this. She doesn't want to become suspicious of Fuutarou. She doesn't want to give him a hard time like Nino's done for the majority of the past three months when his life is already full of hardship to begin with, even if the girls themselves can't see or understand what's he's going through fully. Just like what she told Miku the other week when they had Kiku over at their house to look after her for the day, Ichika wants to keep the most recent status quo going; she wants to keep hanging out with her sisters _and _Fuutarou, whether it be because of studying or not. She's grown comfortable with Fuutarou's presence among the quintuplets, for he provides another aspect of conversation and entertainment that the girls didn't know they liked, despite initial first impressions from both himself and the girls. Maybe it's because the girls have attended all-girls' schools all their lives, and so they've never regularly talked to boys their age, but then again, Fuutarou didn't seem like all that interesting of a guy at first, right? But as they've gotten to know their tutor more and vice versa, before the girls knew it, their tutor became one of their closest friends. To his credit, Fuutarou was also figuring out how the girls like to behave and converse and adjusting his own speech to better accommodate them, since Ichika gets the feeling that his behavior around the girls isn't a hundred percent natural, but it doesn't seem like Fuutarou himself minds all that much anyway.

The too-long, didn't read version is that Ichika considers the current situation among the quintuplets and Fuutarou to be the best that things will get; this is the peak of their collective relationship, a time when Nino doesn't absolutely hate his guts and everyone is willing to study with him and hang out with him, and Ichika doesn't know if it can get any better than this - actually, scratch that, that question's already been answered with her starting to develop doubt towards their tutor in Nino's place. But she doesn't want to do that; she doesn't want to become the new Nino and take over the role of the main antagonist in their family. And it'd be especially weird considering that Ichika was one of the girls who'd always been pretty nice to Fuutarou consistently.

**_You can't trust him._**

Ichika lowers the towel in her hands. It's that voice again.

_**You know he's a threat.**_

Doing her best to ignore it, Ichika proceeds to wrap the bath towel around her body, but of course it wouldn't be that easy.

_**Just say it. You know what to do.  
**_

"Do I?" Ichika suddenly hisses, having enough of the voice in her head. "Because I clearly don't. But if you do, or you think you do, do what you want tonight. But harming anyone is strictly prohibited, am I clear?"

The voice doesn't speak again. Frowning deeply, Ichika exits the bathroom, having kept her voice down so that Miku won't hear her talking to herself, and walks out to the living room, finding Miku still studying at the living room.

"Still studying? You should get some sleep soon," the eldest quintuplet suggests, nodding up at the big clock built into the wall above their flatscreen TV.

Setting down her pencil, having finished her last practice problem right as Ichika suggested going to sleep, Miku leans back, getting up to her feet slowly and stretching her arms and legs out.

"Well, we still need to eat dinner, right?" Miku points out to her eldest sister, who jumps a little, having completely forgotten about food.

"O-Oh shoot, I totally forgot about dinner...let me get dressed, I'll order takeout right now. Do you have anything in particular that you want tonight?" the eldest sister asks, hurrying towards the stairs to go to her room.

"Er...not really...I'll just have whatever you're having," Miku shrugs. "I'll get some light snacks for us in the meantime while our food gets here."

So Ichika gets dressed in some pajamas in her room and orders takeout from a nearby ramen joint that she and her sisters have visited occasionally on their walks back home from school, which happens to deliver late at night as well; meanwhile, Miku fetches some matcha-flavored wafers from the snack cupboard and two cooled water bottles from the refrigerator to take back with her to the table, where she waits for Ichika to come back from ordering takeout.

"What did you order?" the third quintuplet asks, hearing her sister trudge back downstairs to rejoin her in the living room.

"Oh, just ramen. I didn't order anything to fancy, and I didn't order too much, considering how late it is right now. I don't you don't mind ramen."

Miku shakes her head. "Not really, it's been a while since we last had ramen. I'm not sure how healthy it is eating ramen this late at night, though..."

"I mean, it's not, but not much we can do right now when Nino isn't here, like I said before." Ichika takes a seat down next to her younger sister and decides to pass on the matcha wafers for now, opting to just wait for their dinner to arrive. "And eating ramen for dinner just this once isn't going to ruin our diets, and it's not like this is going to become a regular thing."

"But what if Nino doesn't come back tonight? What if she stays at a hotel like Itsuki's doing right now?" Miku asks. "And no one wants me to be cooking for too long, I get that. What, we're just gonna be eating takeout and delivery until Nino comes back?"

"W-Well, I'm sure I can find us some healthy takeout options. That, and you can practice your cooking every once in a while, but like, don't expect anyone to be a big fan of eating whatever you make..."

Ichika braces for the inevitable pout that Miku usually makes whenever someone disses her subpar cooking, but to her quiet surprise, Miku merely pulls her legs up in an upright fetal position again, as she's prone to do whenever she enters a pensive mood, and hugs her legs tightly against her chest again.

"...I'm getting worried again," she murmurs, nibbling on a matcha wafer.

"About the others, right? Yeah, it's pretty late now, isn't it...considering what's been happening lately, too..."

"Hopefully Fuutarou can help sort things out for us, even if this isn't something he should have to do..."

"You know he's the kind of person who'd do it anyway. This is Fuutarou-kun we're talking about here," Ichika remarks as she twists open the cap of one of the chilled water bottles to take a drink. "Once he's set his mind on something, you can't stop him. He's going to see this one through until it's all resolved."

Miku then glances up slightly from the top of her knees and locks eyes with her oldest sister.

"...and what about you, Ichika?"

"Hm? What about me?"

"Why don't you go help him too?"

Ichika blinks back at Miku.

"...huh?"

* * *

Running at full speed, Uesugi Fuutarou brakes himself to stop at the bench where Nakano Nino was sitting at the time of his departure. After securing Itsuki at his own home, at around the same time that his father returned home from his venture downtown and listening to his sister scold him for coming home so late, Fuutarou checked on Nino and Yotsuba only to realize, to his horror, that their signatures were now missing. And worse, try as he might to get his rune network to pick up whatever trails they've left behind, they've disappeared from the detection of his sensor runes. So he's teleported to the nearest active teleportation rune he's set up in this area and run over on the off-chance that the quintuplets are still here in case whoever's captured them, most likely Shirazumi Rio, is using them as bait to draw him out, but there is no sign of any one of them in this park now.

Clenching his teeth in frustration, Fuutarou is mentally kicking himself - this is the first time in a long while that he's fucked up _this _badly. Not only did he not look after himself with his busy-ass work schedule that's finally caught up to him and forced him to sleep in his own students' house on what should've been a proper tutoring day, but because of that, he's failed to prevent a conflict among the quintuplets from exploding into a situation like this, which then invited what's practically the worst-case scenario to occur, with two quintuplets totally missing and unable to be accounted for.

Why aren't his sensor runes working as they should? Even if Nino and Yotsuba are taken captive and forcefully relocated elsewhere, he should still be able to track their exact coordinates; hopefully this isn't the case, but even if they were killed, he'd still be able to track them, since a mage's energy signature still persists even after death for a period of time before expiring completely, so there'd at least be a trail for him to follow. The problem is that there simply _isn't _a trail that exists that'll at least give him an idea of where they could've gone; Fuutarou is wholly in the dark as far as the quintuplets' whereabouts are.

The only explanation that he can come up with right now on the spot is that Rio must have found out how he's been monitoring activity in the city via his system of surveillance runes, and he's somehow sabotaged them to render them unable function as intended. The scary part is that if this is the case, Rio must have done so without letting Fuutarou know that his runes have been tampered with, which would explain why the cursory checks that he's given his runes while he was spending time with Itsuki earlier tonight didn't tip him off to the fact that Nino and Yotsuba were missing until it was far too late.

As his mind races, Fuutarou then realizes that the rune sabotage theory is probably the correct one: if Rio was the one who set him up the bomb that he found in the big drug cache in the middle of the city earlier, a bomb that had a magical detonation rune on it, then he'd know how to mess with runes of his own. As much as he doesn't want to, Fuutarou finds himself quietly acknowledging Rio's magical rune knowledge, which is rather surprising, given what his usual fighting style is like. But now isn't the time to be giving props to his enemy, now is the time for action. Every second that passes is another second that ticks down Nino's and Yotsuba's lives, and no one understands this better than a mage like himself.

Having noticed a blotch of blood on the ground upon his arrival, Fuutarou turns to it and hurries over to analyze it, setting a hand over it and casting a small blue rune of his own to see if he recognizes whose it is - and luckily, the faint magical signature that it exudes matches that of Nino's. Scanning the immediate area forensically, analyzing the blood and the manner in which it's been spilled, Fuutarou determines that it roughly matches that of a stab wound, more or less confirming that Shirazumi Rio had a direct hand in the kidnapping of the two quintuplets who were here. This can only mean that Nino is injured, and given the amount of blood that's been spilled, she's hurt quite badly, which puts even more weight on the back of his mind to add to what already existed upon realizing how bad the situation's gotten.

Just in case he gets lucky, Fuutarou quickly pulls out his phone and dials his father's number, scanning his area swiftly to make sure there isn't anyone else nearby to eavesdrop on him.

_"Yuh huh, what's up, kiddo?" _Isanari's usual deep a jovial voice greets him, but Fuutarou has no time to banter with him.

"This is urgent - Nino and Yotsuba are missing; they're most likely kidnapped by Shirazumi Rio and I can't track them. Can you open Dragon right now and see if you can find them?"

_"Yeah, yeah, got'cha. Gimme a sec..." _Isanari sounds casual, but Fuutarou knows that his father is taking this situation very seriously now too, because if the situation isn't critical, then he always takes the time to talk shit or blab about something irrelevant at the start.

"I can't stay here long since I have to try to pick up Rio's trail, but I can't find anything in this area; I suspect Shirazumi probably sabotaged the runes I have here to mask his exfiltration. Let me know if you find something."

Not even waiting for his dad to answer, Fuutarou closes his phone and continues to gaze down at the bloody patches on the sidewalk. His forensics rune has now picked up traces of the same magical energy that he's felt when he himself got struck with one of Rio's knife runes, so if there were still any doubt about who the perpetrator could be, there sure as hell isn't now.

"Seem ta be havin' a bit 'a trouble there, Uesugi."

The instant he hears this voice, Uesugi Fuutarou bolts up to his feet from his hunch over the blood and darts his hand into his storage rune that's appeared at the ready to provide his playing card ammunition. He _just _scanned this area for any nearby presences and signatures, so how the fuck is there someone who went under his radar completely like this when his scanning runes are strong enough to get past any Presence Concealment spell or other such stealth spells that he's come across? Actually, here are a few better questions: why can't he detect _any _sort of presence from this girl at all, not even that of a normal passerby, and why does he recognize her voice perfectly?

Now for possibly the worst question that he can ask himself: what is Nakano Ichika doing out here in this park in the middle of the night?

Nakano Ichika stops about ten meters away from her tutor, who's on full alert right now, gazing at her strongly with the intention of engaging in a fight if need be. The same divine golden aura, subtle but visible plain as day in this nighttime darkness, glows from her eye -

\- her left eye.


	57. Siege

**A/N:**

**Aquahaze675: If I told you that, that would be spoiling the story, no? Thanks for the kind words regardless.**

* * *

"...what do you mean by that exactly, Miku?"

The ticking of the clock in the background couldn't be heavier. Ichika has always found it strange that the clock in the wall above their television even has a second hand to begin with; thankfully it's not very loud at all under normal circumstances and can easily be ignored, but now, now that her younger sister is gazing back at her on her side of the glass table in the living room and with her Mystic Eyes to boot, the ticking of the clock is much, much louder than the eldest quintuplet remembers it being.

"Please don't play dumb with me, especially not at a time like this," the third quintuplet murmurs calmly, but her expression is only barely managing to keep itself calm for the time being; her eyebrows are furrowing harder little by little, and it won't be long before it turns into a full-on scowl. "I can sense a bit of magic coming from you this very moment. You can't hide it from me any longer."

Slowly realizing that the jig is up, Nakano Ichika leans back against the front of the single couch behind her, taking a deep breath to figure out what she ought to say. It's been a long time since she's last been in a conversation in which she doesn't know what to say right away, so unexpected was this development. Perhaps she ought to have seen this coming - she _did _sense her sisters start developing their own Mystic Eyes as of late, so it's only natural that their magic senses would grow stronger by the day since then, but it's just the circumstances that have led up until this point that have sidetracked Ichika from being able to see this one headed her way: the fight between Nino and Itsuki earlier today, Miku's normally subdued and passive personality and her tendency to be a wallflower in most situations that involve any kind of pressure, and of course, Ichika's own dealings with those stalkers just before she returned home tonight. She'd love to blame all these events for her lack of preparedness for this one-on-one conversation that she's about to have with her younger sister, but there would be no point in doing that now, would there?

"How long have you been hiding the fact that you're a mage from the rest of us?" Miku initiates again, seeing that her sister isn't willing to talk on her own so soon.

Ichika tips her eyes back up at her fellow quintuplet. Having bought herself some time with her silence to consider her following words carefully, she reasons that her best course of action is to tell the truth, since she can't see any immediate benefit to lying about it to one of her own sisters. Though, she's not exactly comfortable with just revealing everything about her magical life right here and now...

"Since we were little. Back when we were still...identical quintuplets," Ichika answers finally before Miku can pressure her again for a response. "Ever since then...yeah."

"Sounds about right..."

Ichika's eyes narrow somewhat. "...what do you mean by that? It's not like it's been a terribly long time since _you _first became one yourself, no? At least not to your own knowledge."

Miku slowly brushes her bangs out from in front of her eyes.

"I know it hasn't been that long since I realized I was a mage. Despite that, I can still sense that your magical energy is a lot more matured than mine or N - or anyone else's."

"You don't need to by shy about it; I already know about everyone else."

Miku's lips almost twist into a frown of dissatisfaction, but she stops it from doing so.

"Then back to my original question: why aren't you helping Fuutarou right now? If you've got so much experience as a mage under your belt, what with all the 'part-time jobs' you've been going to for the past year or so, why aren't you giving Fuutarou a hand right now?"

"Oh, that's easy. You _know _he's the type of guy who won't want help with this kind of thing," Ichika shrugs nonchalantly, taking her bottle of water and unscrewing the cap for a drink. "Even if I were here when he left, I wouldn't have been able to stop him. No one could have...we talked about this before, I think, right? That once he's made up his mind about something, he won't stop until it's done, especially when he thinks he's the one at fault."

Looking away, clearly disgruntled at Ichika's logical answer, Miku somewhat irritably nibbles on her third matcha wafer, forgetting for now that they've got takeout on the way for dinner.

"...don't give me that, Miku. _You're _the one who's looking to pursue a relationship with him, no? You should've already known that about him. Even Yotsuba probably knows by this point."

"Yes, I know he's like that. But if I were you - " Miku sharply turns to look back at her older sister. " - I would at least do everything I can to help him anyway. Even if he's the kind of person who wants to do things on his own like that, we're the exceptions. If we put enough pressure on him, he'll let us help him too, you know! Remember that time when you said you ran into him at Starbucks, and how you two got into a bit of an argument about how he still wouldn't consider us friends? Well, think about what he said to us after our midterms! He called us his friends anyway, didn't he?"

"Nah, I still don't think that would work. Even if you walked up to him and told him that you were going with him to help look for everyone, I think this is a serious enough situation where he'd want to do this solo. And besides, _you _were here when he woke up after everyone left, right? Why didn't _you _ask him to take you with him for tonight?"

"Because - " Miku starts to hang her head dejectedly. " - because - because I'm...I can't do anything. As a mage, that is. All I have are these Mystic Eyes and I don't even know what they do. I don't have years of magical experience like you do."

"Oh? That certainly doesn't stop someone like Yotsuba from going around helping all the people she can come across who needs help in some way, shape or form."

"Because that's Yotsuba, Ichika!"

"But we're quintuplets, aren't we? If one of us can do one thing, the rest of us should also be able to do it, right? So what's stopping you from getting out there and doing what she does?"

_"Because I'm not as outgoing or - or helpful as she is! _I don't have anywhere near as much stamina as she does, either!" Miku moans softly and presses the cups of her headphones against both sides of her jawline. "We're not all the same, Ichika. Ever since we entered middle school, hell, even _before _then, now that you've said that you knew about yourself being a mage since you were little, we've been growing apart. We've already passed the point of no return. This whole quintuplets stuff is all just a load of bullshit anyway - all it's ever going to be is a gimmick, and nothing demonstrated that better than what happened earlier toda - "

"Miku, look at me."

Something about her sisters words feel different, as though they are compelling her supernaturally to listen. Miku feels her neck act independently, and she looks back at her sister, whose right eye is now shining a divine golden hue. However, she's not meeting Miku's gaze directly either.

"I agree; normally the whole quintuplet stuff that we sometimes say to each other has gotten old by this point. But I wasn't trying to say that as a joke or as a cheap gimmick this time. The point I wanted to make was that we need to always remember what we are, and that's family."

This is the first time Miku has seen Ichika with her own Mystic Eye active, but she can't help but silently wonder why she only has one such eye while everyone else, herself included, has two as she continues to listen to her oldest sister.

"We all remember Mom telling us to stick together no matter what, don't we? And even if she didn't leave us with those words, we should figure that out on our own regardless, that no matter what happens, we gotta stick together, because at the end of the day, we only have each other. Yes, we've been through some tough shit. Yes, Dad doesn't really show up at home a lot. And yes, we'll have fights like this every now and then, even if this one's the worst one we've all seen among us. But you can't let all that get to you and make you forget about what's important to us. Blood has to be thicker than water, after all."

Miku feels the magical compulsion that's caused her to pay attention to Ichika weaken slowly over time, and she's able to force herself to look away finally.

"You're starting to sound a lot like Nino with that," she replies, almost under her breath with how quietly she says this.

"Haha, I'm aware. Don't worry, I've had my own fair share of Nino going on about that whole 'promise' she's made to us and stuff, but that's besides the point. We'll get over this just like how we've gotten over everything else, Miku. Trust."

"I don't know...this time, things feel different. If it were just like any other time when some of us've had an argument with each other, then I wouldn't really pay it any attention. But this time, magic's involved. And more than that, there's someone outside the family who's just as involved in it as we are. It just can't be that simple this time around."

"Yeah, maybe not. But no one said it was going to go the same as before. This'll likely be the toughest hurdle we as a family have had to cross up until this point. What I'm trying to say is that we'll get over this one too, just like all the other times."

"Okay, but...how are you so sure? How can you say that with so much confidence? Or are you just saying that because you have nothing better to say?"

Ichika sighs a little. "Didn't I just say, Miku? We're family. That's how I know."

"But families can break apart, and people can change. That's what Nino's been stressing over ever since Fuutarou became our, tutor, that we'd change beyond what she's comfortable with."

"Ours won't. I know you girls, Miku. You're all my sisters. You are all good people. It's just that every good person can have their moments of...being not so good. It's our responsibility to do our best to look past those or come to terms with those moments and move on."

A long pause follows Ichika's supportive words for her sister as the two independently but simultaneously wonder to themselves when their takeout will arrive to break up the awkward silence between them. Both of their Mystic Eyes have faded out of sight, so their traditional quintuplet blue eyes have retaken their places in the two sisters' ocular windows.

"...I just wish that I could do something to make sure that things turn out okay," Miku murmurs, finally resting her head against the top of the glass table and trying not to let her stomach begin to growl loudly, though she can feel the initial rumbles of hunger already.

"So that's the path you wanna take, huh? Now that you know that I'm a mage, speaking as one, I wouldn't recommend it at all; going down that path is _not _worth it in my, uh, unprofessional opinion." Ichika checks her phone for the progress on their delivery, growing rather impatient that their takeout is taking longer than usual to get to their place.

"I mean, by this point I don't think I have a choice now, do I? With everyone's Mystic Eyes activating except for Yotsuba's, it's like...there's no getting around the fact that we're all mages, and that we've always been. And these eyes, these Mystic Eyes - they're supposed to be strong magical abilities, right? I don't know about you, but...but I'm starting to lean more in the way of wanting to put them to use rather than never using them. That feels like I'm trying to hide the fact that I'm a mage, and I...I don't like that."

"Maybe not, but with how magecraft is, there's no shame at all in wanting to hide your magical identity. You can tell that I'm speaking from experience here."

"Yeah, I can _see _that."

"Heh, I'm sure you can. But I'm not the only one who feels that way; you know that, right?"

"...what do you mean? Who else are you talking about?"

"Fuutarou-kun, you dummy. I'm saying _he _doesn't want you to become a mage either."

"How do you know?"

"Because he's said before that he doesn't want to teach us about magic. That, and he doesn't want to talk about whatever magic crap _he _does as his main job outside of tutoring us. If he wanted us to become fully-fledged mages, you would think that he'd start teaching us about magic on top of our schoolwork, right? But he hasn't done that, and he's been adamant about not teaching us anything magic-related. So I'm inclined to believe that he's of the same opinion, that it's not worth getting into magecraft and all that."

Unable to refute anything her sister's said just now, Miku shakes her head still. Whether it's in denial or in helpless acceptance, she isn't quite sure of herself.

"Even still...I still want to help. Even if you say it's not worth it, I don't think it's right for Fuutarou to head out there on his own to fix what should be a problem within _our _family. He's not even being paid to do that, even if he says it's just part of the job." Miku looks back up at her older sister for the fourth time tonight. "And just how much of a mage are _you _to be able to say something like 'it's not worth becoming a mage' or whatever? I can believe Fuutarou saying that, and I don't doubt he's said it to us at some point, either. But what about you? Why should I believe you when you've been hiding the fact that you were a mage all this time from us?"

Smiling weakly, Ichika raises a hand up at her sister in verbal self-defense. "It's hard for me to explain at this moment in time; it's not like I was _trying _to keep all this a secret from you girls. Things just ended up happening this way - I'll be honest, I would've liked to tell everyone in a more organic way than this so that I won't take as much backlash like what I'm getting from you tonight. One day I hope I can explain everything, but I don't know when that time will be."

Miku pouts at Ichika. "Mages always have to be so secretive, huh? I can see the similarities between you and Fuutarou already."

"That so? I'll take that as a complement then, being compared to an actually accomplished mage like Fuutarou-kun," Ichika gives a much-needed chuckle.

"What, you're not a full-blown mage like he is?"

"Me? Oh God no. I'll tell you right now, we probably know about the same amount of magecraft, even if I've known about it for way longer."

"But I bet you're a lot more familiar with your own Mystic Eye and how it works and all that. Am I wrong?"

"No, no, you got me there. If anything, I'm just your regular-ass, average high schooler who wears lip gloss and chugs Starbucks coffee who also happens to have a Mystic Eye and knows how to use it to an extent. But that's all I'll say."

Miku is about to pry further and ask Ichika to explain her Mystic Eye, but then she remembers that Fuutarou already told her about the effects of Ichika's Mystic Eye, so she holds her tongue as she quickly adjusts the conversation.

"I just wish I could do something about this," she mumbles, growing more and more disheartened by the moment.

"Well, if you have the conviction, then I won't stop you. I just hope that you're ready for what you're going to get yourself into, because from what little I know, I don't think you are," Ichika warns in a nonchalant manner.

"You're not going to stop me, Ichika?"

"Mmm, I did say before at the school library that I'm concerned for you and everyone else as the oldest quint, so...I guess normally I _would _try to dissuade you. But now that you know I'm a mage...I mean, you're not really going to respect anything I say on this matter, are you? I sure don't expect you to."

"...I just wish I had the same drive as you or Yotsuba. Actually, it's not just you two...everyone else has more drive than I do."

"And sitting there just complaining about it won't do you any favors, you know. If you want something and you know for a fact that you want it because it'll make you happier, so long as you're not hurting anyone else along the way, you should go for it, right? If there's one thing that I can tell you with absolute confidence, it's that. Fuutarou-kun isn't going to become your boyfriend because you're sitting here at home pining about him."

"I-I'm not..._pining _for him...!"

"Oh, it's not? Kinda sounded like it just now," Ichika smirks as the doorbell rings, and she gets up to answer it for their food, leaving Miku in shambles sitting on the carpet at the side of the glass table where she's been for the past several hours.

* * *

Narrowing his eyes in Nakano Ichika's direction, Uesugi Fuutarou is on full alert. Something is not right here.

"...Ichika? Aren't you supposed to be at your part-time right now? Actually, it's late, so aren't you supposed to be at home right now?" Fuutarou ventures first in an effort to get a handle on this strange and newfound situation.

"Oh, I'm back home already, alright," Ichika laughs. Her laugh is eerie - it's very clearly Ichika's voice laughing, but it's not the way that she laughs normally. Rather, it's a kind of laugh that Fuutarou has a tough time imagining her making to begin with. Not only that, but her speech is jarringly distinct from how she usually talks. "Ain't got nothin' to worry about there, I don't think. It's just you 'n me here now."

As much as Fuutarou would love to get some answers about this second Ichika who's appeared before him now, he knows he can't waste precious time figuring out this new mystery before him. At least Fuutarou doesn't sense any malicious intent or killing intent coming from this Ichika doppelganger, which is strange enough to say given that she's the eldest of quintuplets. In fact, this Ichika before him isn't registering on any of Fuutarou's magical sensors, and to Fuutarou personally, it almost feels as though she might as well not even exist.

"Nino and Yotsuba are in deep shit right now. Do you know where they've been taken?" he asks directly.

"No," Ichika (?) answers, but it seems like Fuutarou's hail mary of a question that involves her sisters has gotten through to her, for the dryly amused smile that she had on her face quickly loses its place there. "At least, not _yet."_

Saying nothing, Fuutarou takes a step back to make way for Ichika, who approaches him at first, only for him to realize that it's not him that she's heading towards, but the blood on the pavement over which he was hunched until she showed up. Ichika, taking a knee before it, reaches down and touches the small blood splatters, and with no hesitation, she brings her left hand up to her lips – and swiftly applies the drying blood to the tip of her tongue.

Blood magic – this is the side of magecraft that the young high school mage is not as familiar with, the older and more established half of the magic world. But usually old-school mages would cast spells with blood, over blood, or likewise, not _taste _them.

But Fuutarou holds his own tongue, as curious as he is to ask about the situation. This is for the better, because clearly this Ichika is not quite the same Ichika that he normally knows, so to him, the Ichika who's with him right now may as well be another bomb that might blow up in his face, and he'd rather not send himself to the hospital a second time for the same reason.

Ichika gets up while smacking her lips and sucking her own tongue for a minute. She doesn't do this in a creepy way, like in the stereotypical slasher movie villain-style, lick-the-edge-of-your-bloody-knife kind of unsettling; it's like she's a wine connoisseur at a wine-tasting event, analyzing the quality of the samples she's trying. After that minute, she looks up and casts her gaze across the man-made lake in the park.

"They're at an abandoned warehouse," she says swiftly, curtly, much in the same way that Fuutarou himself speaks whenever he's on the job - the mage one, not the tutoring one. "I believe you all've been there before."

Fuutarou lets out a small snort under his breath. "Same one as before, huh?" he remarks before turning and swiftly dashing away to head for the nearest teleporter rune that he has in the area, since it'll be faster to teleport back to his home abandoned sector of the city than get there by foot.

But as he is running towards his first objective in his task to save the two endangered quintuplets, he keeps his magical senses up to try to see whether or not the Ichika he met at Nino's bloodstain in the park is following him. The fact that Ichika is now suddenly running at his side without him noticing at all tells him that it's probably a futile effort.

"Where are you goin'? This ain't the way to the two you wanna save," Ichika mentions quickly.

"To a teleporter rune I got nearby. It'll be faster getting there like this than running across a quarter of the city just to reach them," Fuutarou grunts back while in the middle of a brisk sprint. "But you knew that already, didn't you?"

The young mage hears the quintuplet next to him chuckle shortly.

"Then I'll see you there," she says, stopping short.

Stopping in his tracks as fast as he started, Fuutarou pivots on his feet and calls back, "If you're gonna come with me, you might as well - "

Nakano Ichika is gone.

" - use the teleporter, but I guess she doesn't need it," he finishes his awkward thought anyway before continuing to and reaching his teleporter to traverse the city instantly.

He entertains his newfound thoughts on the situation that is currently unfolding, in part because he needs something to distract him from the intensifying urgency that he feels in his chest. That Ichika was clearly not the one he knows - a doppelganger? A magical clone of sorts? It's not out of the realm of possibility, but that's only if he's taking into consideration experienced mages, which Ichika is definitely not, even with her own Mystic Eye active. As if he needs even _more _clones of the quintuplets who are already more than enough of a burden for him at this point.

But her identity isn't the part that he's most worried about; it's reasonable enough for him to assume for now that this alternate Ichika is tied to the original in some way, so he'll ask the real Ichika about the fake one later. No, what the young mage is more concerned about is the fact that this alternate Ichika is leaps and bounds further along in the field of magecraft compared to the Ichika he knows. That, and he had no idea about this Ichika Alter until literally a few minutes ago. Being the kind of mage who meticulously plans for all the contingencies and worst-case scenarios that he can think of and can adequately prepare for, having something unexpected like this happen is normally highly irritating since usually they don't go in his favor, but given the situation, Fuutarou is thankful at least that Ichika Alter didn't decide to just rip his head off on the spot, because she could have easily done something like that and he would have never seen it coming.

How did she even manage to creep up to him like that? As a mage, Fuutarou feels unnerved and, frankly, a bit humiliated. Letting someone sneak up to him like that is an amateur mistake, a mistake that harkens back to his early days as a fledgling mage trying to figure out the ways of magecraft, what little of it he understood at the time. So having that happen tonight doesn't do his psyche much of a favor when he's already feeling a bit down in the dumps about letting all this shit among the quintuplets happen in the first place.

No, wait. Upon second thought, Fuutarou realizes something: is this Ichika Alter even a mage to begin with? Well, that needs to be rephrased - does she know that she's a mage? His initial hypothesis is that this Ichika Alter is a separate aspect of the original that exists separate from her, and that this clone has either developed magecraft more so than the original or has gone down a different path, hence why he's calling her "Ichika Alter". But given that the original Ichika hasn't had much, if any, magecraft training, what are the chances that Alter has gotten any herself? Especially in a city like this, where Fuutarou is either the only or one of the only mages here? Of course, they may have lived elsewhere and moved into the city some time ago, but given their father and the rest of the quintuplets, he highly doubts that he's willingly let them learn magic at a young age.

And the way she was able to pinpoint the location of her sisters - she didn't cast spells to do it; she _tasted _her own sister's blood. A much more primitive form of magecraft, one could say, and not exactly a kind of technique that would be taught at your average magic classes at the Clock Tower or any other magical educational institution. And that level of Presence Concealment - it's so advanced that Fuutarou isn't sure if it should even be considered a magic spell at all. That level of Presence Concealment shouldn't be possible, either without some serious drawbacks or without the years of experience necessary to pull it off, but someone as young as Ichika Alter was able to maintain it just fine. Fuutarou ventures a guess that it's not a magic spell that she's using consciously at all, but rather something that's more central to her existence, though of course there's nothing he can do to prove his hypothesis now.

As he steps onto his teleporter rune behind a nearby convenience store just outside the park's west border, Fuutarou does let one last stray thought go through his mind: what are Ichika Alter's intentions? At first, she approached him like she was some slasher movie villain coming to confront him to have an epic showdown or something, even if that description is exaggerated, but then when he spoke to her, she mellowed out almost immediately and became serious when he did. Clearly she isn't trying to get in his way and that they share a common goal of rescuing Nino and Yotsuba, but where did she come from, and why did the original Ichika never tell him about a second Ichika running around in the city?

If she wants to save Nino and Yotsuba too, why did she come to him first? To get a sample of the blood that was spilled back at the park? The rest of the Nakano quints don't know still about the emergency that their missing sisters are in, so how the hell did Ichika Alter know? How did she know where to go, and how did she know that Fuutarou was already there, given the way she greeted him?

Perhaps whatever happens at the same warehouse as before will give him at least some of the answers he seeks...if he's lucky. Fuutarou is used to not getting the answers he wants, though.

After teleporting across the city and hurrying as fast as he can to the same warehouse that he saved the girls the first time three months ago, Uesugi Fuutarou activates his own Presence Concealment spell as he approaches the warehouse grounds and double-checks his runes to see if he has more luck finding Nino's and Yotsuba's signatures, which he still cannot. Hopefully this is because Shirazumi Rio sabotaged his sensor runes and not because Ichika Alter fed him a total lie, and he's about to find out soon.

There is no activity outside of the warehouse, and it doesn't appear that the warehouse is occupied. Fuutarou senses faint traces of magical energy around the warehouse grounds, so he knows that this is just a suggestion spell cast over the location to disguise it to potential passersby, and the traces of magical energy are so light that even Fuutarou himself would have had difficulty realizing that it was there if he didn't have prior knowledge of it. Normally he needs to scope out the situation first before deciding on what move to make, but due to this suggestion spell and whatever else magecraft that is set here, Fuutarou knows that the moment he steps in, his position will be compromised and revealed to Shirazumi Rio, assuming that he's here in person.

Where is Ichika Alter? She told him that she'd meet him here, right? Well, it was dumb of him to rely on her help anyway, given that he had no idea that she existed until a handful of minutes ago. Perhaps it was the impression that Ichika was giving him a hand that made him subconsciously assume that she would make good on her words, but even that's a stretch. He'll just have to do this without her.

Taking a deep breath, the high school mage dashes in through the boundary of the magical field. He half-expects the field to eviscerate him upon his entry, since defensive spells can harm unwanted intruders upon entry if their caster is skilled enough, but nothing happens. Not like he had much else of a choice for an entry anyway. Even still, he must assume that he is now known to all the occupants inside the warehouse, so he accelerates all the way to the warehouse entrance. Now is not the time for subtlety - and thus, he shoulder-charges through the door, augmenting his speed and strength magically to pull this action movie-like stunt off, and sends the door flying off its rusted hinges, his defensive spells that cover his body shielding him from potential counter-spells set on the door itself.

The door that he sends hurtling off its frame with his magically powered shoulder charge smashes directly into the most unfortunate soul in the warehouse, one of the handful of Shirazumi Rio's underlings who respond to the alarm that's been tripped by Fuutarou entering the premises. Caving the frontal lobe of his skull and brain inwards, the door bashes the man to the ground a few meters backwards, and he's long gone even before his back scrapes to a hard halt on the warehouse floor.

Taking full advantage of the initial chaos that he's sown among his opponents, Fuutarou springs into action: he wastes no time at all digging his hand into his storage rune and launching a plastic playing card at the first hostile he sets his eyes on with lightning speed and pinpoint accuracy. The top-right corner of the playing card pierces through the second man's frontal lobe, not unlike how the first victim tonight has died, and before the body of this second gangster can crash to the ground, Fuutarou performs a quick, short-range flash-step to continue his assault by sinking the knuckles of his right hand into the side of a third enemy.

_"Third Blossom, activate."_

Murmuring his incantation under his breath, Fuutarou seizes his knife mid-materialization, as if he's pulling it straight out of thin air, and immediately shoves it up through the fourth gang member's head from beneath the chin before yanking the blade out and shoving his dying corpse aside to set his eyes on the rest of the warehouse for his true rival, if he can even be called his "rival" of sorts.

He needn't even ask. A split second after he shoves the last underling's knifed body aside, the man in question, Shirazumi Rio powerfully jams his knife down to split the young mage's face in two if it connects, which Fuutarou does not allow. Ducking his head out of the way, the high school mage strikes back with a backhanded hook of his right hand holding his weapon, and Shirazumi blocks it in turn with his own.

"Surprised you found this place, kid," Shirazumi growls in a sinister fashion, as if he were a comic book villain welcoming the superhero into his secret underground base. "But that makes my job easier. Don't have to negotiate or bother trying to get word out to you, y'know? That takes time and effort - time and effort I'd rather put into _eating _people instead. And I got quite the menu on my hands, as I'm sure you know, hahahaha!"

"Then let me serve you the appetizer."

With his usual snarky remarks on deck along with his weaponized playing cards, honed and practiced like a figurative blade over the years, Uesugi Fuutarou suddenly shifts his knife at an awkward angle to defeat the knifelock between him and his enemy.

There used to be five men in the warehouse prior to the high school mage's entrance. Now, there are just two - the two mages of the city. While the warehouse itself has more or less remained the same in terms of its internal furnishings since the last time Fuutarou was here, that doesn't stop him - or Shirazumi Rio, for that matter - from attacking his opponent relentlessly, much more aggressively and violently than their first duel some weeks ago. Before, during their last fight, Fuutarou couldn't fight as he wanted: the basement in which the two of them first met didn't provide the space that he wanted, and even when they headed outside afterwards, he needed to worry about potential bystanders whom Shirazumi might've gone after to put him in at a disadvantage by grabbing a hostage.

Now, even though Shirazumi does have some hostages, who are currently sprawled in front of several large crates and pallets on the far side of the wall from the two men, Fuutarou has both the space and the privacy to let loose. The warehouse is big enough, and thanks to his opponent's own warding spells, Fuutarou doesn't need to worry about other innocent people accidentally wandering into this area for him to deal with. In addition, he has the advantage of knowing how Shirazumi Rio fights, and while the reverse is also true, it's only so to a certain extent; Shirazumi does not know how he fights when he's serious - and neither does he know the rest of his arsenal.

Adjusting the grip on his knife once again to a backhand stance, Fuutarou grips onto its handle tightly and narrows his eyes slightly to focus. Lots of things are going through his mind right now - the tutoring, the safety of the girls, the safety of his family since this warehouse location is not far at all from Daikazoku Business Park...and the accompanying sentiments that follow. Concern at the quintuplets' educational ability and their collective performance on their finals at the end of the week, worry over the safety of Nino and Yotsuba, stress over trying to get the girls to the end of the week in the first place so that they can even take their finals safely, and deepening anger at the deranged, cannibalistic fuckface in front of him who's making his job a hell of a lot harder than Fuutarou wants it to be. Five girls who are borderline failing their academics is a difficult enough responsibility for him to shoulder; he doesn't need _another _problem child making it worse.

The anger evolves just like the fight does as Shirazumi Rio manages to successfully tackle Fuutarou, who in turn defends himself by breaking Shirazumi's awkward tackle and kicking him with his own momentum off himself, sending him flying across the warehouse and crashing into several of the tall scaffolding rigs, one of which still held several old wooden pallets and empty boxes. As the deafening crashes rattle the structure, the adrenaline pumping through Fuutarou's system accelerates his anger's development: it's now turning into fury, fury at Shirazumi Rio putting the lives of his students and his friends in danger. And it's not just the quintuplets' lives that have been put in danger by this dude who always talks about eating people, and probably not in a joking manner: many of the drug abuse and kidnapping victims are likely tied to this asshole whose throat he's trying to slice open.

Fuutarou deciding to hang back pays off, since Shirazumi bursts out of the ensuing debris, partially in an attempt to catch his enemy by surprise if he's approached the debris zone and partially to get back into the fight faster, so high is he on combat adrenaline as well and whatever manner of drugs he's on. But rather than wait for Shirazumi to reach him, now that he has regained visual on his target, Fuutarou blasts off the floor where he stands with a stronger flash-step and slams his left shoulder into the bigger man with a sort of tackle of his own. The older mage clearly didn't expect Fuutarou to show such a burst of energy and thus gets thrown across the warehouse a second time, and this time his back flattens against the wall, shattering the fragile glass in the windows of the warehouse above him and making it rain glass shards down all over him.

Normally the high school mage doesn't care to play a hero. He's never felt like one, even after committing to the life of a mage at a young age, and that sentiment has never changed. He's committed dozens of atrocities in his career as a mage, even if he's only going by the number of human lives he's taken himself. It's not that he has anything against optimism and seeing the brighter side of things, but he prefers staying out of the light because in his experience, more often than not, the light can be misleading; it's just a better mindset in the long run to always be suspicious, always be pessimistic, always to assume that things will not go your way. But here, tonight, knowing that two of his students are in grave danger and one of them could even be critically wounded has changed his agenda. Knowing that this isn't the first time the quints have been put under fire only adds fuel to the fire, and the anticipation that it will continue to get worse unless Fuutarou steps up to do something about it right now when he has the opportunity to end it all fans the flames. No longer is this kill job tonight professional; now, it's become personal.

Fuutarou cannot put his medically-empowered street-fighting skills to use against Shirazumi Rio. Things like stopping an enemy's heartbeat, striking critical areas on a human body that give the most return for the effort put into them like hitting major blood arteries or the liver, will not work against him, as he is a mage and it will take more than just anatomical knowledge to defeat someone of his caliber. A serious weapon for a serious enemy, then - so as Shirazumi brushes the glass shards off his head before leaping back up to his feet, Fuutarou raises his right hand up slightly into the air.

_"Fourth Blossom...activate."_

Altering his incantation somewhat, the young mage grasps the air before him with his outstretched right hand while the knife that he holds in his left that he's used to battle Shirazumi Rio with fades away unceremoniously. But instead of thin air, Fuutarou clenches the bottom half of a tall, slender sledgehammer. Its lengthy handle is tightly and carefully wrapped with dark emerald and black grip tape, with the sledgehammer head dipped in jet-black through and through, but other than these distinct features, it looks like a perfectly ordinary sledgehammer that was bought from the local hardware store and slightly customized for cosmetic purposes.

Seeing Fuutarou brandish this sledgehammer at him deftly, Shirazumi can't help but give a pitying laugh. "A _hammer? _I can get a sword or a lance like last time, but a _hammer? _The fuck're you gonna do with that? You even got the muscles to swing that thing around, kid?"

"How about you come back over and see for yourself, just like what you tried doing before I punted your ass to that side of this fucking warehouse?" Fuutarou calls over tauntingly.

Shirazumi shakes his head, raising his knife again as another one of his magical runes appears before him. "Nah, I'm good. I'll just stand here and watch you _dance!"_

Shoving his knife blade into his rune and twisting like before, the deranged mage launches a flurry of remote knife strikes that pepper the space in which Fuutarou is standing, but as soon as the runes surround him, Fuutarou raises his sledgehammer again and smashes the top of the hammer head into the floor at his feet.

An immense, disruptive burst of magical energy that blasts from the head of the heavy-duty tool rocks the ground beneath Fuutarou's feet, and so do the incoming runes, which all get indiscriminately shattered as soon as the magical burst from the hammer head comes into contact with them. The moment he breaks his enemy's ranged attacks, the high school mage bursts off the ground and, like a stone thrown across the surface of a lake or river, skips across the warehouse floor with breakneck speed and drives the hammer into the wall where he sent Shirazumi flying to. Shirazumi himself barely evades the hammer assault, diving out of the way with a magically charged leap and having to roll to break his fall back up to his feet, so his own quick reactions cause Fuutarou to miss his mark. The sledgehammer still sinks into the wall of the warehouse, which ends up blasting that portion of the wall open, as though it's been breached open with a stick of dynamite.

His focus honed and sharpened to the point where Fuutarou cannot be distracted from his main objective of killing Shirazumi Rio, the young tutor locks eyes with his enemy again and walks briskly towards him, approaching him swiftly because he can't hit the shit out of the other guy without getting closer. He doesn't charge at him like he did just now since he's lost his element of surprise; Shirazumi will certainly be on his guard in case he tries something reckless like that again.

"Heh. Guess I forgot that you don't need muscles when magic's involved!" Shirazumi cackles madly, his eyes widening just as crazily now that he assesses Fuutarou to be an actual threat with that new weapon of his in his hands now. "Finally, a worthy opponent! Fuck those girls for now, I've got a _better _meal right fucking here, don't I?!"

"Then eat _this."_

Without warning, Fuutarou leaps into the air again and crashes his hammer down onto his hated enemy; he's walked close enough to the red leather jacket-toting mage that while the latter was distracting himself with his own insane words, Fuutarou could simply close the rest of the distance between them to get the upper hand in the fight again. Once more, Shirazumi just barely dodges the incoming attack, and Fuutarou busts out a sizeable hole in the floor where his target was standing just a moment ago, kicking up a large, scattered pile of broken tiles and flooring.

Having gripped the weapon with his left hand, Fuutarou is free to use his dominant right hand to swiftly flick more weaponized playing cards in his enemy's direction, which are cut down when they reach Shirazumi. He retaliates by laughing maniacally while beginning to spam remote knife attacks that inundate the space on what is now Fuutarou's side of the warehouse so that he'll have a difficult time maneuvering through _all _of them, even if he does manage to blast away the ones in his immediate area, so to counter, Fuutarou charges the hammer with more magic energy and releases it by again slamming the hammer head into the floor at his feet to dispel the runes immediately around him. This succeeds, but with much less payout than the first time since Shirazumi's solution to Fuutarou's counter is to simply throw even more knife runes in his direction as soon as the first ones are gone.

The high school mage knows from experience that magical battles of attrition like the one the two of them can potentially get into here are not worth fighting, so if Shirazumi is fine with hanging back and throwing knife attacks at him like this from afar, then he'll need to answer with another trick up his sleeves. Feigning an air of discomfort and looking around as though trying to figure out how he's going to navigate through this lethal maze of imminent knife attacks, he waits for Shirazumi to activate his attack runes, and he times his own counter so that Shirazumi can't reposition easily. He _needs _to make this work, because he's spent a dangerous amount of mana tonight fighting recklessly like this, and this hammer isn't normally a weapon he summons to fight with a lot.

Just as Shirazumi Rio commits to his mass attack, Fuutarou lifts up his hammer and hurls it with all of his might at his rival mage halfway across the abandoned warehouse.

Seeing the hammer fly straight at his face, the deranged mage simply sidesteps it, thinking that this is some kind of pathetic last-ditch attempt to hit him from downtown. Then he hears -

_"Threefold Blossom, activate."_

Shirazumi Rio heaves a little as he feels the six-inch blade of Uesugi Fuutarou's pocket knife sink deep into his back, and the sharp pain causes him to jolt and rip himself away, causing Fuutarou to carve the knife nastily across his back as the latter refuses to let go of his weapon. Suffering such a serious wound of his own, Shirazumi, now terribly alarmed at this ace up his opponent's sleeve that he didn't know about, roars as loudly as he can and slams the back of his left fist into Fuutarou's face, launching him up into the air briefly before watching him come down like a ton of bricks onto the hard, dusty, and grimy floor.

"B...Bitch...!" Shirazumi growls under his breath, realizing how close Fuutarou had gotten to either slicing his spine in half or stabbing a hole through his heart; for as powerful as mages can be, especially when compared to regular human beings, anatomical things like that don't care about your magical status or your mental debilitation.

Uesugi Fuutarou painfully pushes himself up back to his feet, but in just a short amount of time, both men are already exhausted. Shirazumi Rio was careless with the sheer amount of knife attacks that he set up to cut off all of Fuutarou's avenues of escape that he thought were possible, while Fuutarou spent most of his remaining mana calculating the localized teleport he would need to execute to put himself right next to his target by using his thrown hammer as a reference point in an attempt to assassinate Shirazumi Rio right then and there, but he barely missed.

However, the differences in their magical experience now rear their ugly heads. Being an older mage with presumably more battle experience under his belt, and having a reliable ranged attack compared to his rival, all Shirazumi needs to do in this situation is stab Fuutarou in the head from downtown and that will end this nighttime brawl. So he does just that.

"Fucking die already, you piece 'a shit," he hisses like an angry rattlesnake as he begins to twist the rune in front of him with his own knife yet again.

Except he can't turn his knife. At first, it feels like he's trying to turn a key in a keyhole that's jammed or clogged up, so when Shirazumi gets annoyed and looks down to see what is going wrong, he sees a girl's hand holding his wrist that he can barely feel now that he's looking down directly at it.

"Sorry ta ruin your fun, but I can't have this right now," Nakano Ichika drawls, not even facing the mage with the red leather jacket whose wrist she is holding and preventing from initiating his attack on the quintuplets' tutor. "Right now's sort of a bad time. Dunno how else to put it."

Shirazumi inhales sharply through his teeth down at the high school girl next to him.

"_You _again...I knew it, you're one of _them_, aren't you...?!" he accuses seethingly, throwing his eyes back over at the two unconscious quintuplets behind him.

"Wooow, took ya long enough ta figure that one out, dumbass. All that eatin' humans thing's really gettin' to your head, you should probably lay off it for a while."

Without another word, the red leather jacket mage rips his knife out of his rune. Somehow in doing so he also manages to rip his hand out of Nakano Ichika's grip - or perhaps she allowed this to happen. Either way, Shirazumi swings his knife backwards to bury the point into her face - or at least that was the plan.

Ichika reacts on a dime by swiftly digging her elbow painfully into Shirazumi's right side, her elbow strike strong enough to impact his liver through his ribs. This causes him to buckle where he stands, faltering for just a moment, and that moment is all Ichika needs to pivot, seize Shirazumi Rio by his long blonde hair, and chuck him towards the large hole that Fuutarou has punched in the far wall of the warehouse.

"I'm gonna fucking kill you the next time I see your bitch-ass! You got that!? There won't _be _a second time with _you!" _Ichika watches Shirazumi Rio shriek before he ducks out of the hole in the wall and out of sight into the night.

Having gotten back up safely thanks to Ichika Alter's distraction, Uesugi Fuutarou approaches her, who is still staring out the hole in the wall where Shirazumi has made his exit.

"You're not gonna go after him?" he asks her, which prompts her to turn to him with a slight scowl.

"That ain't my fuckin' job, that's yours," she points out.

"You sure helped me like it was yours too," Fuutarou counters.

"Doesn't change the fact that all this is your responsibility."

"Then who are you? Can you tell me that, at least?"

"I'm Nakano Ichika."

Ichika Alter turns to "her" tutor with a deeper scowl this time.

"I thought that much was obvious."


	58. Darkness

**A/N**

**Reuploaded since the site was a giant Pepega and didn't want to upload it properly the first time.**

* * *

2:35 AM.

Nakano Ichika gazes up into the ceiling of her dark, silent room with her phone still in her right hand, the digital clock on the screen blinking softly with the incessant reminder that she really ought to go to sleep if she wants to wake up on time to go to school properly tomorrow and study effectively for finals at the end of the week.

She and her younger sister Miku have stayed up much later than they usually would on a school night, waiting for their tutor to return and hopefully with good news. However, not only was he unable to get back to them until late into the night, but the news he delivered was less than ideal: he wasn't able to convince any of them to return. Strangely, not even Yotsuba apparently wanted to come back home for the night, and according to Fuutarou, Yotsuba had gotten into another bit of an argument that caused Yotsuba to become stubborn and book a room in the same hotel that Nino was staying at for the expressed purpose of convincing her to come home. Though, Fuutarou reassured the two quintuplets back at the penthouse that this argument was much less violent than the ones Nino and Yotsuba have had recently; it was more of a matter of pride, much like it was with the original feud between Nino and Itsuki. Although it seems like a stretch for Yotsuba to behave this way, these recent turbulent times for the quintuplets have set the stage for deviant behaviors from the sisters; if Nino and Itsuki have suddenly thought it appropriate to give each other solid punches in the face, then what's to say that Yotsuba hasn't finally had enough of Nino's nonsense and is toughening up against her?

So Ichika and Miku have since retired to their respective rooms to conclude an uncomfortable and, quite frankly, awful day. In case this hasn't been driven home yet, this is the biggest fight that the sisters have ever had among them; never mind the punches that were thrown in it, this is the first night in Ichika's relevant memory that the sisters have slept in different places, away from one another.

Though, that'll probably weigh more on Miku's mind than Ichika's.

For Ichika's part, she has more important matters to go over. How did Miku find out that she was a mage? Well, the answers to this should be obvious; Ichika is merely mulling over this in bed, naked underneath her sheets, because she's slightly tilted at how Miku brought it up like that. Ichika had set it up in her mind that she would hide her identity as a mage from her sisters as long as possible; ideally they shouldn't even find out about it in the first place, but in the event that they do, Ichika would have much preferred to reveal it on her own terms, like having her own superhero moment or coming out with some kind of grand reveal event. Just having one of her sisters point it out to her feels downright lame.

The eldest quintuplet's hand grips her phone a bit more tightly. That bastard...Fuutarou must have told Miku about the fact that she's a mage. There's no other way that Miku would've known so soon, right? She knows already that her tutor wasn't completely affected by her Mystic Eye from that one encounter at Starbucks, so he must have told Miku at some point afterwards without her knowing, which also means that Miku has been sitting on that info for some time, though how long exactly she won't know unless she asks, which Miku definitely won't answer, and fat chance Fuutarou would tell her either. Yeah, it _has _to be Fuutarou's doing; _he _must be the one to have divulged her secret to Miku and possibly to the rest of her sisters, because it's not like Miku's magical ability has developed and matured enough yet for her to sense Ichika's own magic signature, and Ichika's practiced cloaking it over the years so that her sisters wouldn't find out on accident.

Since Fuutarou seems like the likeliest answer, the question then becomes: why? Why did he decide to tell her sisters? Was it because he became suspicious of her after their Starbucks rendezvous? Not that she can fault him if this is the case; anyone in Fuutarou's position would react poorly to her. But why tell her sisters? What was he trying to accomplish with that? Was he merely trying to look out for her sisters by letting them know that their eldest sibling has something going on and that they ought to keep an eye on her? That sounds about right, actually, since it's not like anything drastically changed following that incident and life went on as normal until today, when Miku dropped the knowledge bomb on her tonight.

Raising her left hand to cover her eyes slowly to help her organize her thoughts, Ichika pulls her right leg up underneath the sheets, creating a small bit of wind current to draft inside that caresses her bare abdomen and legs momentarily. In hindsight, she should have seen something like this coming. She had known about her sisters' Mystic Eye developments, namely Nino's and Miku's - Itsuki's came literally out of nowhere so she couldn't predict that, but besides her, the fact that her sisters were on track to becoming mages themselves wasn't anything new to her. So now that she knows that Miku knows about her being a mage, and the first mage among the quints at that, what kind of an impact would this have on them as a family? Does Miku think differently of Ichika now, now that the cat's out of the bag? Ichika should've asked Miku whether or not any of their other missing sisters also know about Ichika being a mage, because if the others know, how differently do they think of her now? Her Starbucks incident with Fuutarou was been a good few weeks by this point, and the firstborn quintuplet doesn't recall her sisters acting out of the ordinary since then. Miku is capable of keeping a secret like this, so it doesn't surprise Ichika that Miku was able to catch her off-guard tonight, but surely someone like Yotsuba or Itsuki would have spilled the beans at some point since neither of them are adept at keeping secrets.

If all five of them were destined to become mages, then does this really...change anything? Maybe it would have affected them as a family much more if one or two of them didn't become mages, but at this rate, it's very likely that all of them will. Or...perhaps it's more accurate to say that they were all mages to begin with.

Unable to fall asleep, Ichika slowly sits up on her mattress, letting the top of the sheet fall off her voluptuous breasts, with her phone still in hand. Is she just overthinking this? Has she been going about this all wrong? She was afraid that she would shatter her own life and the lives of her sisters if they ever found out that she was a mage and she's been one for the past several years without their knowledge. But if her sisters have more or less carried on the same while knowing this, then...is there really anything to worry about?

Perhaps her sisters have all stuck to their late mother's last words of sticking together as a family through thick and thin more faithfully than she thought. All this time, Ichika didn't consider the promises that Nino and Itsuki made about them wanting to become their new stand-in mothers to be anything serious since for the most part, they weren't.

"...so how did it go?"

Ichika speaks quietly but firmly in the darkness of her room, illuminated only by the moonlight peeking through the curtains of the only window in the room, as if the moonlight itself wants a peep at Ichika's perfect model-like body.

The eldest quintuplet need not turn to face her audience, for there is someone already seated on the chair that normally sits tucked in underneath her messy, disorganized desk that would be more accurately called a makeshift wardrobe with how many more clothes there are on it than writing utensils and other usual articles of desktop paraphernalia.

Another Nakano Ichika, fully clothed unlike the one sitting up in her mattress on the floor next to her.

As the right pearl shines, so does the left.

"Uesugi's taken Nino and Yotsuba to the Marriott; they're safe now," Ichika Alter answers swiftly, the dim golden light shining subtly from her left eye reflecting off the desktop and the wall in front of her.

"What about Itsuki?" the original Ichika asks.

"Staying at Uesugi's place."

"Fuutarou-kun's place?" Ichika narrows her eyebrows in surprise. "Wait, why did she decide to go there?"

The other Ichika shrugs. "Beats me. All I know is that she's spending the night there for some reason. And if she's staying there, then she's probably gonna keep staying there 'til this whole thing blows over or something."

"Hmph, sure is weird. I'm guessing she just forgot her purse back at home or something..." Ichika finally sets down her phone on the side of her mattress. "So I was right in guessing that the reason why Fuutarou called us late was because some of them ended up getting attacked?"

"Sure were. You better feel lucky that you decided to let me out on a night like tonight; I don't know if Uesugi would've been able to handle everything tonight on his own."

"Tell me what happened."

Giving off a cheeky little grin, Ichika Alter brushes some of her bangs out of her left Mystic Eye.

"Long story short, Uesugi found the place where Nino and Yotsuba were attacked, at the public park northwest from here. I helped him track them down, and they ended up being taken to the same warehouse that y'all got taken to three months ago, remember that?"

"Yikes...what a sick joke. I bet that was intentional."

"For sure, given the kind of jackoff Uesugi's been having to deal with for the past few months. Anyway, we dealt with him, and Uesugi got those two to the Marriott, where Nino was intending to stay."

That would explain Fuutarou's call earlier that night and his alibi.

"Were either of them hurt?" Ichika asks tentatively.

"Nino got shanked in the gut and beat up pretty bad. She's lost a lot of blood, but Uesugi's treating her right now. He'll probably be there for a while to make sure her condition recovers."

Ichika feels her teeth clench a little when she hears this.

"What about Yotsuba?"

"Wasn't hurt as far as I saw, it was just Nino. She probably tried putting up a fight."

"Sounds about right. That was the same thing that happened when those two got attacked that one night, right before the weekend when we were supposed to go out and get parfaits together with Fuutarou-kun paying."

Resting her elbow on her raised knee to set her hand on the side of her head, Ichika lets out a sigh that sounds much calmer than she really is.

"Do you think he knows who you are?" she asks quietly.

Ichika Alter shrugs widely. "Fuck if I know. Only time'll tell, won't it? Besides, _you _were the one who decided to let me out because you weren't sure of how things would pan out tonight. And like I said, it's a good thing that you did."

"But if you had to guess, what do you think?"

"He shouldn't. Fuck, Ichika, none of your own goddamn sisters know I exist." Ichika Alter slightly turns in her seat, angling herself only a few degrees in her other self's direction. "So what're the chances that he knows?"

The original Ichika smirks a little. "Yeah, but you know all five of us are dumb as nails. While some of them are more perceptive than others and can figure stuff out more quickly, that doesn't change the fact that this is something - _you're _something that they'd all fail to notice. I mean, it's not _their _fault or anything, right? Given the circumstances...but anyways, my point is that Fuutarou-kun is a bit smarter than your average human being."

"Something tells me you're underselling that just a bit."

Ichika chortles dryly.

"One thing's for sure," Ichika Alter mutters as her left eye glows ever slightly brighter in the darkness of the room. "Uesugi's gonna have a _lotta _questions for you the next time you two meet up. I know you're already thinking ahead, but I suggest that you avoid him or at least stick with the others if you don't want this jig to be up so soon."

"Eh, what does it matter now. Miku knows I'm a mage, she told me so earlier tonight when you were out doing your thing. So that may as well be a step closer to them finding out about you, too," Ichika sighs while shrugging nonchalantly.

"Hmph. You act all cool and calm now, but I guess you've already forgotten about our little link, huh? I know you like joking around with the others about how you quints don't have any kind of magical telepathic link or anything like that, but little do they know about us."

"Well, obviously not when they don't even know about you in the first place. No but seriously, they'll find out about you too in due time. You can already tell, can't you?"

It's the firstborn's turn to turn to her other self from her own mattress on the floor.

"Things are changing out of our control now. Admittedly I didn't expect the situation to turn out quite like this, but it's gotten to the point where we can't go back to how we were, how we quintuplets were from before we met Fuutarou-kun."

"But you can't say that this wasn't expected. You should'a seen this comin' when you first became a mage yourself."

"I mean, along that logic, you might as well say that all this would've happened sooner or later. Maybe not in this exact fashion, but you get what I mean."

"Well, yeah, duh. C'mon, Ichika, you might be absolute dogshit at studying, but you're smarter than that."

_"You shut your damn mouth."_

A sharp hiss shoots across the room to pass through Ichika Alter's ears, the kind of hiss that is never meant for anyone else in this household to hear. Ichika's right Mystic Eye is glowing with full force tonight, outshining the moonlight that peeks through her window curtains as she glares back at her other self.

"I don't want to hear anything about bad studying from someone like _you _who never has to juggle school, relationships, tutoring, _and _work all at once, you whore. Not only that, but what _nobody _here knows, not even _you _either, apparently, is that I've been sneaking in studying time whenever I can while I'm at work."

Ichika Alter starts chuckling to herself while the original is still talking, much to the latter's heated annoyance.

"Why the hell are you laughing?" she demands, gripping her phone in her hand with the tightest grip she's had tonight.

"Because it's not often that I actually manage to push your buttons like that," the Alter remarks, and this time she turns fully towards the other Ichika, facing her. "I always try, but only rarely do I actually succeed in tipping you over the edge and get you to react like that, so it's funny whenever I see you react like that."

Much like how Ichika Alter began laughing while the other was talking, the original Ichika rolls her eyes with irritation and turns away from her other self, swinging her legs back onto her mattress, but the Alter isn't done yet.

"Besides," she mentions, her voice now dropping down to a low murmur, even more so than before. "Might I remind you that if you wanna turn this into a competition to see who's suffering more, you're never going to win when I'm involved, right? But that's enough from me; I suggest you calm the fuck down too before Miku senses your mana surge right now."

"I know, you don't need to tell me." Ichika groans a little. "And at least you aren't as bad as you can be on some nights. Must be because you ran into Fuutarou-kun tonight, huh?"

"Yeah, you're lucky the last person I ran into wasn't a potty-mouth gangbanger from the fuckin' dumps. Which is funny, since Uesugi himself lives in the abandoned sector, right?" Ichika Alter smiles rather deviously to herself. "I'll keep his personality for a little bit longer. It's actually pretty rare running into people like him these days - the world's goin' to shit if every person I run into's some degree 'a shithead."

"Fuutarou-kun wasn't lying when he said that the magic side of the world is ugly as sin, I guess."

"Yep. He's your tutor, right? You ought to learn from him."

"He said he's not going to teach us anything magical, though, so not much I can do about that."

"And that's a damn shame. You already knew that everyone was headed down this path, and that the only variable in the equation was when everyone would discover themselves as a mage. Why not get everyone prepped now, if you care about your sisters so much? I don't know about you, but you can't just'stay out' of the magic world if you're a mage. Even if you're a normie, there's a chance that you might get caught up in a crossfire between two mages and get killed or worse. What do you think ended up happening to those people who got kidnapped these past few months? I've seen a couple of 'em, y'know. It ain't fuckin' pretty, I can tell ya that much."

Ichika listens to her other self's words contemplatively, in stark contrast to her harsh words from just a few moments ago.

"You know, now that you mention that, one of the things Miku and I talked about earlier before we went to bed was how Miku wanted to learn magic from Fuutarou-kun," she notes quietly but aloud. "Well, more to the point, she says she wants to do something about this situation and not just have Fuutarou-kun go around doing everything. So now that I think about it...since Miku already knows now that I'm a mage, why don't I offer to teach her instead?"

"Hol' up, hol' up. You're sayin' you wanna teach Miku when you barely know jack shit about magic yourself? Unlike Uesugi, you're a sad excuse for a mage; the only thing you know how to do is use your Mystic Eye, and who the hell knows if it's the same as what Miku's got."

Vibe checked hard by her Alter, Ichika shrinks a little, beginning to feel miffed again. Ichika Alter rolls her eyes and gives a small sigh.

"Here, look, I'll give you a simper solution: why don't you just go help Uesugi a hand every now and then? It's not like you gotta tag along with him for literally every jackoff job he's got. Just for important shit like this, y'know? Something that's super important or super relevant to you, like if your sisters're involved or some shit. Because think about it, right? If Miku knows that you're a mage, that means you've gotta've been a mage for a while now, right? And you still haven't told them about your part-time. They're gonna think that your part-time's just a cover-up for you runnin' around at night being a midnight vigilante like their tutor. Hell, they might even think that you're collaborating with him, even if you're not. So you might as well get out there and do what you can, right? Not like you haven't done this before."

"Well, as much as I'd love to, I can't do that," Ichika declares softly as she casts her eyes down to the top of her blanket. "Miku also asked me the same thing, more or less, but Fuutarou-kun doesn't want anyone to help him for things like this. This is one of those things where he - "

"Aaaaaand there's where I cut you off," Ichika Alter bluntly drawls, raising out a hand and swiping it down in the air in front of herself in a cutting motion.

"Wh-What do you mean? Fuutarou-kun's just that kind of guy! He's not that hard to read, you know!"

Again, Ichika Alter rolls her eyes. "Yeah, 'cause your sheltered ass hasn't seen him when he's under pressure, in the middle of a fight or some crap. What the fuck did you think _I _did tonight, huh, ya dumb bitch? How the fuck did I find out about what Uesugi was up to tonight, and what happened to Nino and Yotsuba? I went in there and fuckin' helped his ass. 'Cause without it, he wasn't gonna fuckin' find those two until they're both fuckin' dead or worse, and that's a motherfuckin' fact and a half."

Pushing herself off Ichika's desk chair, Alter takes pair of short steps forward and bends her knees to make herself level with the original, shoving her own face into hers until there are only a handful of centimeters parting them. The pair of golden Mystic Eyes mirror one another in the presence of the fragile moonlight.

"Uesugi ain't too proud to rely on help when he needs it, Ichika. For fuck's sake, you know this already yourself, don't'cha? Why do you think he accepted your invitations to him to sleep over here at your place? Not just once, but _twice? _It ain't _just _'cause he felt it gave him a convenient excuse to keep an eye on y'all; part of it was to get some actual fuckin' sleep 'cause God knows he fuckin' needs it at least every now and then; shit, you saw that the hard way earlier today, right? And when I met up with him at that park, he didn't once tell me to fuck off 'cause he _knew _I was his only ticket to getting to Nino and Yotsuba."

Ichika Alter narrows her eyes rather dangerously at her original.

"You fucking _know _that you can't hide the kinds'a feelings ya got for that guy. You can hide it from the others, but not me. Uesugi's become someone special to you, whether you wanna admit that or not. Even if you wanna keep denyin' that, what the fuck is so wrong with gettin' your ass out there and helpin' him out if that's what'cha wanna do? You went off on him the other week about how he didn't want to consider you and the others his 'friends', right? Then why are _you _the one being hypocritical right now if you see Uesugi as one? Don't friends help each other out during hard times? You could really take a leaf outta Yotsuba's book, that's for sure."

But Ichika, growing steely-eyed, glares once again back directly into her alter ego's own eyes, and she sits forward to challenge Ichika Alter's dominant position.

"Says the bitch who went all, 'But what if he hates you?' on me in the cafeteria that one time!" she hisses again.

Merely rolling her eyes, Alter snorts off to the side, unfazed. "You already _know _why, though. Not much either of us can do much about it. And what's the point of complaining about that now when you've never let me piss you off like that before? Or are ya tryin'a tell me that you've changed, just like how everyone else is?"

Then, Ichika Alter sharply turns to the door behind her, and the original follows suit, shifting her neck to look around herself to see what her alter ego is looking at.

"Speakin' 'a change, you feel that, don't'cha?" the second Ichika narrows her eyes tightly in the dark. "Looks like she's actin' up again."

"Yeah. It's been a while, I think, since the last time that's happened," Ichika mutters. "I thought it'd get worse the further her Mystic Eye developed, but I guess it's the opposite? I don't know how that's supposed to work..."

As Ichika is thinking aloud, her body double gets back up to her feet and swiftly strides across the room, not that she needs to take many steps, to reach the door and quietly opens it.

"Wait, what - what are you doing?" the original eldest quintuplet hisses for a third time, but this time she does so in a hushed manner, more to get the Alter's attention and less so because she's expressing dissatisfaction at her actions.

Ichika Alter stops at the doorframe, her face mostly out of view now.

"...did you already forgot who I met last?" she whispers back over her shoulder slightly before closing the door behind her and slipping out of view.

* * *

Nakano Miku snaps open her eyes, for a hauntingly nauseating feeling is already permeating her senses like a gas.

The mirror sea of blood welcomes her back with its usual eerie silence that Miku will never seem to become accustomed to, not that she _wants _to in the first place. This aside, though, Miku is immediately filled with dread as the main course to follow her appetizer of nausea, because she realizes that she has somehow arrived in this weird, disturbing dreamworld of hers without even going through the painful initiation ritual of feeling like her eyes are being clawed out of their sockets.

How? How did she get here without having to suffer through the pain first? The third quintuplet is developing mixed feelings on the matter; on one hand, obviously she's somewhat relieved since she was somehow able to skip that whole first part of wanting to gouge her own eyeballs out, but on the other hand, does that mean that there's something much, much worse in store for her now? But what could be worse than what she's already been experiencing? Miku moans lightly to herself under her breath, letting her dread seize control of her mind for a few moments as she tries desperately not to let herself think about what is to follow. She might have only lived on this Earth for sixteen short years, with the last few of those years living as a sheltered rich girl on the thirtieth floor of a luxury high-rise, but she at least knows that there's always a bigger fish somewhere out there in the world - and therefore, something much worse to suffer than what she herself knows.

Finally wresting control of herself mentally away from her crippling dread, the middle quintuplet slowly sits up on the surface of the bloody water on which she found herself lying when she came to. The oceanscape is bloody, dark, and miserable as ever: the black sky ominously hangs overhead blanketing an infinite sea of dark red blood, and the light _plinks _of drops of water dripping into the ocean all around her beat rhythmatically in the distance, though no matter where Miku looks, she can never seem to see where the water drops are coming from...or should she say, _blood _drops.

Shaking her head quickly and mustering her strength to focus her scattered thoughts and senses, Miku tries to tether herself onto whatever solid mental ground that she can make for herself. Logically, this must be the result of her Mystic Eyes developing; it would make sense for these disturbing dreams of hers to also evolve along with them, but again, the notion that they are evolving by removing one of the worst aspects about themselves is terrifying to Miku, since she doesn't know what to expect next. She doesn't remember waking up in the middle of the night like she usually does; she went to sleep and now here she is. Do her eyes feel any different? No, not...not really, at least not at the moment. The pain that usually pulses in them during nights like these is abnormally absent, and her vision is fine for the most pa -

\- her vision is _not _fine. As she pulls her hand up to look down at it to test her vision, Miku realizes that there are thick black lines marring her hand and fingers, criss-crossing like the cracks on a human palm.

These are the same lines that she's seen before, on that corpse that floats up to the surface to rear its chillingly beautiful head to signal the end of her stay here in this hellish illusion. Have these lines been there before? Have they _always _been there, and Miku has never noticed until now?

The longer she stares at these lines, the more unnerved and unhinged she feels herself becoming. These are just a bunch of black lines on her skin; yes, they're unsettling, but they don't seem to be doing anything. It's no more different than having a bunch of scribbes drawn on her skin with a black marker or highlighter, or that's how it ought to be. But for reasons that Miku can never hope to know in this moment in time, looking at these lines causes the hair on her skin to stand up everywhere on her body - her arms, legs, back of the neck, and anywhere else where she might get goosebumps, and not the good kind.

Miku's right hand that she holds up in front of her eyes begins to tremble. These tremors aren't the usual ones that may occur as a result of holding up one's hand in the air for a bit too long, and Miku knows that she needs to stop looking at these damn lines on her hand. But she can't tear her eyes away - it's like she can't stop looking at them _because _they're causing her so much stress. This isn't just some variant of trypophobia that Miku is currently experiencing; the quintuplet may not be able to identify exactly what it is, but she at least comprehends that this is something much more profound than just a condition or a phobia.

_"Eeeek!"_

Like a jump scare in a horror game, except she feels much more than the jump, Miku is forced to tear her gaze away not because of her own will, but because her eyes are struck suddenly, almost without warning, by the same stabs of pain that she knows all too well. Rather than torment her before this vision, they have followed her inside and torture her now, though most likely Miku has brought this upon herself by staring at these strange black lines that muddy her skin. It wasn't just her hand that was infected with them, either; her peripheral vision has seen these lines cover her arms and legs - which means the rest of her body is probably covered with the same lines too.

Having used her other hand to cover her eyes to cope with their sudden pain, Miku pulls it off her face and glances down at it too, only to find her palm now smeared with a light layer of blood. She's not even surprised by this at this point; in a world that's filled with nothing but blood and where she's covered in these sickening lines that causes her brain to feel like it's liquefying inside her own skull, having some blood spill out of her mutated eyes isn't even shocking anymore. It probably isn't the first time it's happened either, to be frank.

Even still, just because she's not as affected by her eye sockets bleeding doesn't mean she doesn't mind it, and Miku is already thoroughly tired of this place, as if she wasn't sick and tired of it before. Is there a way out of here? Where's that corpse that floats up to the surface before her that's her ticket back to the real wor -

A shadowy figure stands over her.

When did that get there?

What even _is _this thing?

Miku's senses go from not very surprised to completely shocked in the most severe whiplash of emotions she's felt in her life; so shocked does she get that she is rendered unable to think of anything or register the rest of the neurons in her brain that go off, trying to tell her to get away from this thing as quickly as she can like her life depended on it, so she ends up remaining seated on the surface of the blood ocean, staring lifelessly up at the shadow that now glances down at her.

It reaches out a dark and hazy appendage down to her, like a hand that is reaching down to pluck her eyes out.

Pluck her eyes out.

Remove her eyes.

Eyes.

Nakano Miku screams at the top of her lungs, shattering the world in which she'd been dragged into to messily return back to her own. Thankfully, she realizes that she's back in her own room again, so she manages to cut her scream short, but she still descends into a pit of frantic sobbing and tormented sniffling as her only other sister in the house quickly barges in and turns on the lights, having been woken up by the sudden shriek in the middle of the night and responding quickly to investigate.

"Miku, what's wrong? What's wrong?" The eldest quint hurries over, seeing the pitiful state that her younger sister is in and pulling up to her bedside, but she wisely keeps her hands to herself and refrains from being overprotective to see how Miku will react. Instead, she kneels down at the bedside and waits patiently for Miku to cry her fill and calm down enough to speak on her own.

"...it's nothing," the thirdborn replies softly, her voice cracking almost instantly the moment she begins talking.

"'It's nothing' my _ass_, Miku, you've never done this before, screaming in the middle of the night like this. Don't take this the wrong way, but it's a good thing you did this while the others aren't here."

Miku sinks her head even lower, with her peachy-red hair draping down completely over her eyes to hide them from the prying ones from her older sister knelt at the side of her bed. She totally agrees with Ichika, but at the moment, she can't bring herself to say much, and so she remains muted, sitting up in her bed hunched over with her hair still curtaining her eyes. After staying with her for a few minutes, Ichika, deciding that it's best if she leaves Miku alone, especially in light of their interactions the the previous evening, moves in to give her a quick hug and a comforting pat on her head before bidding her good night again and retiring to her own room, turning off the lights and closing the door behind her as she departs.

Also closing the door to her own room, Ichika strides straight over to the chair at her desk and seizes Ichika Alter, who's seated in it again, to pull her off the chair and up on to her feet.

"What the _fuck _was _that _for...!?" the firstborn seethes under her breath so that Miku can't hear through the walls that are notoriously known among their inhabitants for not having much soundproofing. "I thought you were going in to _help _her. So what the flying fuck was _that _all about...?!"

"Hey, calm your fuckin' tits, lady, I didn't expect her to react like that either," Alter spits back, and seeing the frustrated look on her alter ego's own face, Ichika forces herself to dial back her own rapidly accumulating rage, though she has to bite the inside of her lower lip to do so successfully. "I swear I went in there to help, honest. You know whose personality I got right now, so while I might'a been goin' around like a douchebag for a while before tonight - "

"Okay, I get it, I get it. Sorry for...for grabbing you," Ichika apologizes quickly while letting go of herself. "It's just...Miku never screamed like that before out of all the times I've seen her wake up in the middle of the night like this."

"Yeah, and for good reason."

"Did you find out something? What's going on with her?"

"Well, obviously it's her eyes. You can feel the surge even from here, can't you?" Ichika Alter points her thumb in the direction of Miku's room. "Her eyes are developing _fast. _Honestly, I'd say it's going _too _fast. She can't control it at this rate, and we won't know what'll happen if she can't keep it under control. Her screaming in the middle of the night like this'll be the _least _'a your damn worries if it gets outta hand."

"But I never went through something like this, right? You would know; do you remember me going through the same thing that Miku is right now?"

"'Course not, dumbass. What makes ya think that what happens to one 'a you's gonna be the same thing that happens to another?"

"I mean, come _on, _we're quintuplets! Identical ones at that!"

"Oh for fuck's sake, listen to you right now. Aren't _you _the one who always laughs at the others whenever they make a joke about you all being quints?"

"Hey, cut me some slack! This is the kind of stuff that things like being identical quintuplets would actually matter, or at least it sure sounds like it would!"

"Well, sorry to disappointment, but clearly that's not what ended up happening. Miku's got the short end 'a the stick, and that's all we know. So either we can leave it there and hope that Miku can get through it just fine, or call in a professional."

At the mention of this "professional", Ichika becomes steely-eyed again, her facial expression once more devolving into a deepening scowl.

"...how likely do you think it is that Fuutarou-kun's a double agent right now?" the original Ichika wonders aloud quietly. "I might be talking out of my ass here, but what are the chances that he really does have an ulterior motive in working with us?"

"Sorry, hold up, I thought Nino was at the Marriott right now."

"And right now isn't the time for jokes. I want your opinion on the matter, now that you've met him for the first time tonight. Is he the kind of guy to betray us later on down the road?"

Ichika Alter shrugs widely. "Fuck if I know, bitch! I only got his personality; that doesn't mean I know literally everything there is to know about him. He sure as fuck seems like an upstandin' guy. Doesn't say much, goes right into fighting, gets the job done. But you and the rest 'a the girls know him way better than I do; what makes ya think that I got any different of an answer?"

"But _you're _the one who runs around out there. _You're _the one who acts more like a mage than I do. Why do I need to remind you of this?"

"And why do I need to tell you that we know nothing about what other mages are like? How the fuck does me doing more mage shit than you matter more in this case than you actually interacting with his ass? If I could read him that easily, he wouldn't be much of a mage now, would he?"

Sighing deeply, the alter ego crosses her arms and turns to face Ichika at an angle, her glowing Mystic Eye closer to her than the other.

"You sure got a lotta conflictin' feelings for Uesugi, Ichika. On one hand, you treat him as someone more than just a friend you made at school or some shit. But on the other, you're startin' to not trust him as much as before, now that shit's startin' to hit the fan with your sisters. If you plan to make an enemy out of him, I suggest you do so at a better time than this, at least."

"I don't _plan to make an enemy _of him, I'm just suspicious, that's all!" the first quintuplet insists. "The fact remains that all this stuff started happening _after _he began tutoring us, you know! Even he must see that, right? Since he's a smart guy and all!"

"Yeah, well, 'just being suspicious' is a light way to put it when you just said that you're afraid Uesugi might _betray _you later on. _Betraying _is a bit of a strong word, isn't it?"

"You get what I mean!"

Ichika Alter shrugs nonchalantly. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Either way, it's late as fuck right now, and you're gonna end up sleepin' in class just like Uesugi today, so get some sleep already."

Scowling one last time at her alter ego to close out the night, Ichika removes the clothes that she's hastily thrown on to go see Miku earlier in her room and crawls underneath her blanket naked again, as is her habit.

"Honestly, I'll just call the school today and tell them that we've got some family matters to take care of. People're gonna get suspicious if they see me and Miku come in without the other three. If only one of us were missing, then obviously we'd all still go to school, but right now's a bit more of an emergency..."

"Aight, whatever..."

* * *

In Room 805 of the Downtown Marriott Hotel, Nakano Nino groggily and slowly opens her eyes to witness the darkness of her room. Upon seeing the pitch black of her room where no lights shine, not even from any surrounding appliances or a digital alarm clock, Nino instinctively and sharply inhales and squeezes her eyes shut again.

Nino has always had somewhat of a fear of the dark. It's not bad enough for her to make a big deal out of like she would for other things like blood or needles, and it was more prevalent when she was younger, but it never really surfaced to the knowledge of her sisters since her bigger fears of the other aforementioned things was more noticeable. That, and since Nino was usually with at least one of her sisters at all times back then, her fear of the dark was mitigated by the comforting company of her siblings.

But it has always lurked in the back of her mind, as if waiting to strike whenever Nino is at her most vulnerable. She's fine with the darkness in her own room, since it's a place that she knows the most intimately out of any place in the world with only one or two exceptions, but in a situation like this where she has no idea where she is, what she's been doing, or where she's ended up, she is forced to say hello to her old friend, darkness, as it holds dominion not only in her hotel room but also in the very core of her mind.

And as if that weren't enough, a sharp stabbing pain has been thumping in her gut ever since she's woken up. At least the pain gives her something else to concentrate on other than her old creeping fear of the dark, but not to the point where it can break her partial sleep paralysis. So Nino silently lies in bed, waiting as patiently as she can for her body to slowly regain control of itself through her sleep paralysis and dealing with the pain as best she can.

The comfort of the bed and the sheets that she's in, however, makes enduring the darkness and the pain a lot more bearable, enabling her to collect her thoughts more cohesively. That's right...she was stabbed in the gut by that tall guy in the red leather jacket and knocked out right afterwards, but she doesn't remember anything beyond that. Her head has also been aching with a blunt pain where it connected with the ground earlier that evening, but it feels numbed, like it's not hurting as much as it probably should.

Yotsuba...where is Yotsuba?

Her sisterly concern for her fellow quintuplet sibling injects her with the strength that she needs to finally break out of what's left of her sleep paralysis and her waning fear of the dark in her room, and she manages to carefully sit up in her bed, clutching the painful part of her abdomen as she does so. Her eyes have adjusted to the darkness of her room so that by the time she sits up, she can at least see that she's in a hotel room somewhere and that it looks completely normal, which means she probably hasn't been taken somewhere suspicious or creepy...probably. The suitcase that she took with her with the intention of staying in a hotel like this one is standing faithfully at the foot of her bed.

Looking around carefully, peering into the darkness, Nino finds to her relief her sister Yotsuba also sleeping peacefully in a separate bed to her right, albeit with some troubled breathing, but other than that she seems to be resting fine. She quietly hopes that she hasn't had a knife shoved into her gut like she did.

Nino then takes a glance down at her gut. She's felt some kind of rough fabric over her stomach where she'd been stabbed, which she can only assume is a layer of bandages that's covering up her wound.

There's only one person that she knows who would have done all this. There's only one person that she could guess who would have not only saved them from that asshole in the red leather jacket, but also taken them somewhere safe and treated their wounds. Not only that, but he even recovered her suitcase and left it with her here.

And sure enough, as Nino slowly turns to her left, that person is now seated in one of the chairs of their large and spacious hotel room at her bedside, deep asleep with his arms crossed and his head resting against the top of the chair's back. His breathing is labored and heavy, channeled completely through his nostrils - evidence of his work staying up late throughout the night stabilizing the quintuplets' conditions and ensuring that they would not be disturbed again by malicious agents this night.

Turning away from him, the secondborn gazes down at her lap, remaining silent. She remains this way for a good ten minutes or so.

Another ten minutes pass. After this second set of ten minutes, the door to the hotel room quietly shuts. Nino's bed is now empty, and the suitcase that sat at the foot of it is gone too.

Uesugi Fuutarou sighs quietly in his chair.

"For fuck's sake, Nino..." he groans softly.


	59. Promises I Can't Keep

**A/N**

**PortosCpt and Coffeeandanxiety: I don't consider myself a talented or skilled writer, just some dude who's wasted the past eight and a half years of his life writing mediocre fanfiction. However, with all due respect to the original manga, to hear someone say that they like one of my stories better than the source material is a huge confidence booster to me. Thanks for reading.**

* * *

"...no, I want you two to stay where you are. Given what went down last night, I can't risk having even more of you hurt; two are already enough as it is."

Nakano Yotsuba's hearing wobbily focuses itself as she awakes quietly in her hotel bed. Her head feels incredibly sore, specifically the back of her head, and on top of it she has an unbearable headache that begins to pound the inside of her skull the moment she wakes. She's not sure whether her headache is caused by the soreness in the back of her head or vice versa, but what she does know is that she hasn't had a headache this bad that she can remember.

"I'll head over as soon as Yotsuba's up. Oh, speaking of which, looks like she's up now, so we'll leave for your place soon, hopefully. I'll explain everything again together with Yotsuba, since she'll wanna know what happened too, obviously."

Disconnecting the call, Uesugi Fuutarou, having walked briskly over to the fourth bedridden quintuplet after seeing her stir and awaken, pockets his smartphone and stoops a little next to Yotsuba, who tries to sit up wearily upon seeing him approach her, but she clasps her head and whines softly with pain as her splitting headache thumps her head even harder.

"Easy, easy now," Fuutarou warns her quietly, lowering his voice considerably. "Headache? Is it a headache?"

Yotsuba manages to nod, and her tutor helps her sit up in bed slowly so as to not worsen her condition.

"...I don't think I've ever had a headache this bad before," the fourth quint mumbles with a strained voice.

"It's that bad, huh. Here, sit still for a second."

Following her classmate's instruction, Yotsuba tries to sit up with her back straight as much as possible, though the slight fuzziness in her head on top of her already existing afflictions make it a challenge for her to have good posture. Thankfully Fuutarou's big hands gently landing about the back of her head do much to distract her from the soreness, and even more so when she begins to feel a soft warmth start to emit from his hands where they press against her head.

"Tell me how the pain is. Getting worse? Getting better?" the high school mage asks for feedback while he applies his magical treatment to his patient, who nods shortly with affirmation.

"It's getting better already. It's...it still hurts a lot, but...it's not as bad as before."

"And if I stop?"

Fuutarou cuts off his mana flow to his hands to terminate his magic treatment, and Yotsuba winces again, her posture faltering once more as the pain returns, the same as before.

"Ow, ow - it, it went back to how it was..."

So Fuutarou reapplies his magic treatment, though he warns the quintuplet, "Alright, but I can't keep this up forever since we need to go soon."

"You don't need to keep doing it, Uesugi-san. If we need to get back home, we should leave first. This isn't anything I can't handle."

Fuutarou glances down with hesitation at his classmate. "I dunno...looking at this while I was treating it the first time, it seems like you got hit back here pretty badly. I'm surprised you can even sit up like this, let alone wake up this quickly."

Yotsuba tries to pout up at her tutor, but due to the pain, it comes out as more of a grimace instead, which is something Fuutarou has seen out of the quintuplets a few times throughout the months that he's known them.

"But you said we needed to leave as soon as possible, right? Did I hear you right when you were on the phone?"

"Yeah, but once you're feeling better enough to walk on your own, which I'm not sure if you can even do."

"I definitely can! I just have a headache, that's aaaaaaaa - !"

Pulling the covers of her hotel bed back to get herself out of bed, Yotsuba manages to swing her legs out to plant her feet on the carpeted floor at her bedside, but as soon as she tries to get up to her feet, her headache exacerabates fourfold, and Yotsuba is forced to collapse back down on the bed, and Fuutarou, watching her carefully as she tried to get up, catches her and eases her back down so that she can sit on the side of the bed properly.

"You sure about that?" Fuutarou asks again to a somewhat embarrassed Yotsuba, who's shaking her head not to answer her classmate but merely to try to clear her head, albeit with no positive results. "I can carry you back to the penthouse if I need to - "

"N-No! What're the others gonna say if they see you walk in with me on your back or something..." the fourth-born moans. "Ichika already teases me enough for still wearing panties that I've had since elementary - "

"I'm not gonna lie, Ichika's probably right about that, you should really go out and buy some new ones."

_"That's none of your business, Uesugi-san!"_

"I know it's not, but that doesn't change the fact that that's kinda weird." Sighing heavily but secretly relieved that Yotsuba is at least feeling fine enough that she's able to have a nonsensical conversation like this, the high school tutor reapplies magic treatment for Yotsuba's pain for the time being so that Yotsuba can recover more quickly for the two of them to leave.

"...just what on earth happened last night?" the quintuplet asks the inevitable question finally. "And...and where's Nino...?"

"I'll explain everything that I know on my end once we meet up with the others back at your place," Fuutarou says calmly. "As for Nino, she's not here. But she's safe, so don't worry about her."

"...what...what do you mean by that? She's not here, but she's safe?" Yotsuba's face contorts with a mixture of discomfort and worry. "Surely you _have _to know by this point that if you tell me something like that, Uesugi-san, I'll still worry about her regardless? I mean, what do you think I was doing last night before I blacked out somehow?"

Sighing again but shortly through his nose this time, Fuutarou frowns too. "Well, I wish I could explain in more detail, but between looking after you and her, it's been pretty difficult."

Yotsuba doesn't really know what Fuutarou is getting at, but with the way he's wording his thoughts, she gets the feeling that she's not meant to understand.

"I don't really get it still. You told whichever of my sisters you were talking to over the phone that it's dangerous for them to get out of the house, but when it comes to Nino, you're okay with her being by herself out there somewhere? Do you even know where she is right now?"

"Surprisingly, I do. But for my own reasons, I don't want to disclose her location."

"Huh? Wh...Why not?"

"Because now, this really is _my _responsibility to deal with her."

"_Your _responsibility...?" Yotsuba mulls over her tutor's words for a moment, but she quickly understands. "Wait, is this still because you think you're responsible for her fight with - "

"No, it's not that anymore. That's already done and dusted." Fuutarou begins to massage Yotsuba's head gently, and the latter's will to keep up a conversation falters with her friend's comforting touch. "This time, it really is something personal between me and Nino."

But Yotsuba bolsters her mental fortitude as much as she can, unwilling to let Fuutarou's treatment distract her from her feelings that begin to bubble up to the surface.

"I don't believe you," she says suddenly. Her voice has gone a little hoarser than it was just now to match her current tone, and the young mage, accustomed to Yotsuba being on his side all the time, widens his eyes briefly in surprise.

"Don't believe me? What did I say that would make you doubt me?" he asks with a little smirk of amusement. "And besides, I didn't ask you to _believe _me, I'm just telling you how it is."

Yotsuba opens her mouth to rebut, but Fuutarou's response makes her realize that she must be coming off as unreasonable, given their history over the past several months. So she rethinks her own words and speaks again, this time with a more composed tone than what she otherwise would have put out.

"...sorry. I'm just...a little frustrated," she admits, letting her head droop a little. At this, Fuutarou's amusement grows, exemplified by a little snort that he gives.

"Hm. So even our genki-as-fuck Yotsuba can feel a bit frustrated, huh?"

"Why do _you_ sound like you're surprised by that?"

"Because I didn't think it was possible, honestly. No matter what you'd go through, you'd always keep your head up and power through. Ironically - actually, more like fittingly, over the past few months of me tutoring you, you have a tendency to bullhead your way through your studies too, always butting your head against whatever it is that you're trying to learn until you get it. It's not like you to let something get to you to the point where you'd admit feeling a little ticked off."

Listening to her tutor effortlessly break down her behavior, Yotsuba feels the frustration that she's been briefly harboring disappear, unable is she to maintain it now that Fuutarou has pointed this out to her.

"You're right," she says quietly, "it really isn't like me to be that way, is it?"

A certain silence befalls the tutor and student pair. Fuutarou isn't able to get a read on this sort of silence, which alarms him internally - he's used to awkward silences, tense silences, serene silences - but this one? He's not sure.

Thankfully, Yotsuba dispels this odd silence on her own by continuing to talk. "I don't know what happened last night after I, uh...blacked out, I guess, but since you'll explain everything when we meet up with the others, I won't worry about that. I'm just a bit frustrated because I spent all evening yesterday making sure Nino wouldn't run off on her own, you know? Like, when she makes a threat, she doesn't always follow through with it, but when she does, she sticks to it pretty faithfully. So I spent all that time following her around, only to wake up now and find out that she's gone again. Wouldn't you feel a little bit frustrated by that too?"

"The feeling of always chasing something, only to fail when you finally reach it?" Fuutarou smirks darkly. "Oh yeah, I know that feeling _real _well."

"You're not talking about our grades, are you?"

"Mainly that, yes."

"Mmmuuuu!"

"Hahaha..."

Yotsuba blinks up at her classmate. "Huh? Uesugi-san?"

"What?"

"...did you just laugh?"

"Yeah, I did. Why?"

"Er...well..."

"What's so strange about laughing a little? Is your head okay, Yotsuba? Do I need to treat it again?"

"Gosh, you don't need to take it _that _far! But no really, it's just - " the fourth quintuplet looks away. " - I don't think I've ever heard you laugh quite like that before, that's all..."

"Yikes, so I'm that much of a Debbie Downer that you girls can't even fathom me having a little laugh every now and then, huh?"

"No, no, it's not - "

"I've even laughed a bit with you and your sisters whenever we'd crack jokes while studying, and now you're saying you're surprised at me laughing...how could you, Yotsuba..."

_"It's not that!"_ Yotsuba whines a bit more loudly than usual in her determination to stop Fuutarou from teasing her further. "_This one was different! _You don't laugh like that when we're with everyone else! You sounded a lot more natural here, I'm just saying! That's why I said I don't think I've ever heard you laugh like this before, okay?"

"Aight, aight, stop yelling, you're gonna make your headache worse." Speaking of which, Fuutarou carefully ceases magic flow into his hands and pulls them away, in case a sudden termination of his magical treatment to alleviate Yotsuba's headache may result in more acute pain and undo all of his work. "How do you feel now? Better?"

Yotsuba rubs the side of her head near her left temple. "It...it's still there, but...at least it doesn't outright hurt anymore. It's more uncomfortable if anything."

"Okay, good. Can you stand?"

* * *

Back at the Nakano penthouse, on the thirtieth floor of the Pentagon luxury high-rise, the three original quintuplets of Fuutarou's tutoring posse, Ichika, Miku, and Yotsuba, are gathered back in their living room, Fuutarou having successfully escorted her back to their bastion of safety.

However, the silence in the living room indicates that Fuutarou himself is not present with them. Having delivered the fourth quintuplet back to the rest of her sisters, the girls' tutor explained the situation and the current whereabouts of their fifth sister and promptly departed to track down Nino and recover her first, since Itsuki is also safely squared away at the Uesugi office at Daikazoku Business Park. Since he has left, the three quintuplets still residing in the penthouse have spent this time digesting their current situation and the information their tutor has provided them. Obviously with what has transpired in the past twelve hours, they are under instructions to stay at home and forgo school and work today, so it's not as though the girls have much else to do but study for their finals at the end of the week.

And they really _ought _to be studying, but given the circumstances, they can be excused for not being in the mood for it right now.

Finally breaking the silence, Ichika, usually the icebreaker in these types of situations, speaks up, though unlike most times, she doesn't try to be upbeat about the situation at hand at all.

"...so things basically went from bad to worse, huh..." she sighs. Her two sisters don't reply at first either, merely glancing up at her when she speaks and looking away in their own directions once she's gotten her thought out there.

Just as well, because Ichika is still mulling over the situation a little herself. Fuutarou didn't mention anything about how he ran into Ichika Alter over the course of the night. As callous and confrontational Alter is, she wouldn't lie about what she's experienced if she decides to share them with her, so she can reliably take her alter ego's word for it that she did in fact assist Fuutarou in his endeavor to rescue Nino and Yotsuba.

This is giving her deja vu, because this reminds her a lot of the standoff they had between them earlier at the coffee shop: Fuutarou didn't tell the others about their run-in, most likely because he knew that revealing such information would disrupt her relationship with her sisters...though, as it turns out, it didn't stop him from telling Miku. To be fair, however, Miku's probably the best at keeping secrets among the girls with how quiet she is most of the time anyway.

Even though she knows that it's in her own best interest that Fuutarou did not mention anything about meeting her Alter, the firstborn quintuplet still feels quite miffed at her tutor's choice of behavior. To her, it almost feels as if he's throwing her a bone, and she resents that. Being a sort of self-made girl, a headstrong, confident young woman who's carved a path out for herself with her part-time job and all, Ichika doesn't appreciate being handed freebees or empty complements, but she is fully aware that Fuutarou mentioning the fact that she has another version of herself running around the city at night to her sisters now would only serve to further complicate matters, so she quietly but painfully swallows her pride.

For sure, though, Ichika has to expect Fuutarou to take her aside and speak to her in private to find out what's going on, but she's not pleased with how all this is unfolding, though exactly for what reason she's not quite sure of herself. She's just frustrated because she can't get a read on what Fuutarou is planning, and she feels an unreasonable urge to understand him not as a classmate or a student, but as a fellow mage.

Whatever the case, it was a conscious decision of hers to send her Alter out to assist him, and it seemed to be the correct one, judging from Alter's testimony. Maybe this time he's keeping the other Ichika a secret as thanks for the assist? Ichika almost wants to go to Fuutarou herself and demand him to tell her what's going on in his mind, but that wouldn't be what Nakano Ichika would do; that's not the kind of image the people closest to her have of her, and she's not keen on destroying that image herself.

As Ichika mulls over her own thoughts quietly and discreetly, the third quintuplet is doing the same, though it's more obvious with the darkened, perturbed expression on her face. Her sisters attacked? Again? At a time like this, when they ought to be studying for their finals? As if the fight that broke out between Nino and Itsuki weren't bad enough, now Nino and Yotsuba ended up getting attacked and almost kidnapped _again? _Miku had thought the fight between her two sisters already the worst case scenario; she didn't even consider the possibility that it could devolve even further down than that, so the unfortunate news that Fuutarou brought with him upon safely returning Yotsuba back home hit Miku like a ton of bricks when she first heard it.

At the very least, it would appear that all of her sisters are safe. Yotsuba was hurt, but apparently all she suffered was a moderate concussion to the back of the head, which Fuutarou was able to treat to the point where Yotsuba only has an uncomfortable headache rather than some of the other symptoms that concussions would bring with them, whatever they are. Itsuki is staying at Fuutarou's place due to her unwillingness to "give in" to Nino in the aftermath of their heated confrontation, and Nino, whose whereabouts their tutor did not reveal, is allegedly safe for now, at least from the enemy mage who assaulted the two quintuplets the previous night.

As for Nino, when Fuutarou first told them that she suffered a stab wound to her gut, Miku almost freaked out. She knows that given the nature of Fuutarou's contract with them, the girls ought to be prepared for something like this to possibly happen, especially given their first experience with getting kidnapped, but Nino getting shanked almost took Miku over the edge. Granted, Nino has already gotten injured like this when she took a knife to the shoulder, but at least Fuutarou healed it and she promptly returned home; that, and it probably wouldn't have been a fatal wound unless it was left untreated for too long. Now, even though Fuutarou assured them that he'd healed her stab wound completely over the course of the night, the secondborn not being at home physically tilts the third quintuplet hard because she can't look over in one direction and expect to see Nino, safe and sound, sitting on the couch or something.

Knowing that Nino could have been that close to death has finally struck palpable fear into Miku's heart. Why is it only now that she finally grasps the possibility that in their present set of circumstances, any one or more of them could die, and the rest of the quintuplets would have to live the rest of their lives without them? It's not like they haven't been put in danger like this before. Has she been _that_ oblivious to this obvious danger that at any moment, she could have lost any number of her sisters to that enemy mage who's been after them this whole time, as Fuutarou alleges? She herself could have been targeted and killed too, and that would have brought her surviving sisters much grief as well.

All the mornings that Miku and her sisters have found their classmate with his head in his arms at his desk at school, deep asleep even as class began...if it were not for all these countless nights of work on his part, how much more danger would Miku and her sisters have been in? They could cite these dangerous scenarios that they've been put in as evidence that Fuutarou has not been doing his job properly, but that's Nino's job to do that, not Miku's. Miku would rather believe that if Fuutarou did not spend all these sleepless nights keeping the city safe for her and her siblings, they would have been kidnapped for good and possibly even killed or worse long ago, and that thanks to his work, the worst that the quintuplets have had to experience thus far are the handful of incidents up until this point, many of which, if not all of them, were caused by the girls' own misdeeds anyway.

As she sifts through these uncomfortable, heavy thoughts, the third quintuplet feels a familiar sense of urgency claw at the back of her mind, the urgency that she must do _something_ to help Fuutarou. While she's sure that he's doing the best job that he can to keep all five of them safe, Miku can't help but want to be capable of defending herself and her sisters in the event that Fuutarou cannot reach them in time, sort of like how things seemed to unfold over the course of the previous night. And now that she's confronted her oldest sister about her own magical career that she's had for a while now, it seems, Miku feels her desire to become a mage herself skyrocket at an all-time high. If Ichika can develop her Mystic Eye and train herself in its usage enough where Fuutarou calls her a mage, Miku can do it too. There's no way she can't, for as Fuutarou said himself, they are quintuplets, and they can do whatever the others can. It also does feel a bit embarrassing to buy into that kind of quintuplet mentality, though.

Regardless, Miku makes a mental note to herself to summon up the courage and go ask Fuutarou to teach her magecraft no matter what. No matter how many times it takes her, no matter how many times her tutor may reject her, she won't give up until he gives in...of course, after this whole situation has blown over.

And finally, Yotsuba. Since she was knocked out for everything that Fuutarou shared with her sisters here in their home before leaving, she can't really dwell on them as much as her sisters probably will. So instead, she quietly hones her thoughts on whatever must have happened at the hotel room that Fuutarou brought her and Nino to after he rescued from from their would-be kidnapper, and on everything that happened that she herself can remember.

Once again, the fourth quintuplet realizes to her silent misery that she has once again burdened the boy she loves. Perhaps she can forgive herself for deciding to tail Nino around the city, but for that long? Did she _really _need to follow Nino around until it became dark out? She should have known better than be just as stubborn as the sibling she was tracking; she should have just called it quits and returned home in hindsight, because with how things turned out, she just ended up as another victim for this Shirazumi Rio person who's targeting her and her sisters.

Thinking of the situation in this way, Yotsuba is forced to contemplate what she holds dearer to her heart: her sisters or Uesugi Fuutarou. What happened last night was the result of her love and concern for a distraught sister of hers; she followed Nino around to make sure that nothing bad would happen to her while outside, but she clearly failed to account for the possibility that she herself might be in danger too, thus putting her tutor back into a tough position and an even tougher responsibility to rescue them from the clutches of their would-be kidnapper.

Would she have been willing to do the reverse, though? Leave her sister to be in danger on her own so that she wouldn't make Fuutarou's job as difficult by being another hostage that he would need to rescue? Yotsuba isn't sure if she's quite okay with that kind of a situation either. Technically, this would have been the correct thing to do, but just because it's correct doesn't mean it's right.

Since she's never been good with theoretical stuff and other such what-if's, Yotsuba reverts back to thinking about what _did _happen. Fuutarou must have treated whatever injuries she and Nino sustained overnight; she's sure that the two of them would be in much, much worse states had he not. Never mind their rescue, if it weren't for his specialized treatment, Yotsuba probably wouldn't have been able to walk back home with her own two legs either.

Speaking of treatment, now that she dwells on it a little, what _was _that kind of treatment? It felt like a head massage, but his hands felt much warmer than usual. Maybe he used a form of magical aid? It has to be, otherwise she'd still have an absolutely head-splitting headache. She wonders if Fuutarou had to treat her like this while she was out cold, too, but as she thinks this, Yotsuba recalls the time when he treated Itsuki's bleeding nose back when he rescued the quintuplets from their first kidnapping experience at the warehouse. Didn't he do something similar then, too? Healing Itsuki's nose with magic? Maybe magic healing like that was something Fuutarou only reserved for emergencies.

Since she is seated on the carpet next to the glass table with her knees up against her chest, Yotsuba slowly hugs her legs against her chest more a little more tightly. Now that she's dwelt on it, she can't get her mind off the soothing comfort of her tutor's healing hands when he worked to alleviate her crushing headache. Just on its own, it almost felt like she was in a spa with her head being massaged like that, but the fact that it was Fuutarou doing it made it feel even better. Yotsuba is almost embarrassed just thinking about it, as though it were some sort of guilty pleasure that she ought to keep a secret from the rest of her sisters. Though, a secret like this makes her acutely aware of the insecurities regarding her relationship with their tutor...

"...so now what do we do...?" Miku is the next to speak, which how much time has elapsed since Ichika last spoke.

"...what do you mean? We just have to sit at home here until this whole thing blows over, like Fuutarou-kun said," Ichika shrugs weakly. "Not much else of a choice we got, do we?"

"Well, yeah...I know that." Miku sighs lightly. "It's just..."

"Just what?"

"...it doesn't feel right, not having Nino and Itsuki here."

Forcing a little grin, Ichika unfolds her arms and reclines against the couch a little, trying her best to relax. "It shouldn't. Not during a time like this."

"The house already felt empty when I was here alone yesterday, after everyone bailed," Miku murmurs miserably. "I'll admit, there've been times when I thought this house just wasn't big enough for the five of us with what happens among us sometimes, but...when everyone else left, it felt weird...being here all by myself."

"So you want everyone to get back together as quick as possible, right?" Yotsuba nods, chiming in now that a conversation is striking up finally between her two sisters, which compels her to join in, if only to distance herself from her own dark thoughts. "It's like, y'know, we won't be ourselves until everyone's back together."

"Fuutarou's gone to go get Nino back, which leaves only Itsuki. Can we call her? See how she's doing, at least?" the third quintuplet asks, glancing back and forth at both of her sisters present.

"I mean, if Fuutarou-kun says she's safe and sound, we don't need to worry about her. Besides..." Giving a little sigh, Ichika reaches into her left pocket, which is not usually where she keeps her own smartphone, to pull out another one that isn't hers, but both Miku and Yotsuba recognize it as Itsuki's to their dismay. "...she didn't take her phone with her. As a matter of fact, she practically left behind the stuff that she probably needs the most."

"Wait - if she left the house with a suitcase of stuff, how did she forget her phone...?" Yotsuba gawks in half-amazement, half-shock.

"Itsuki can forget stuff pretty easily if she's tired or under pressure of some kind, and given what happened yesterday, this doesn't surprise me. Still, you're right, Yotsuba, she really shouldn't forget this kind of stuff...imagine what could've ended up happening to her if Fuutarou-kun _didn't _find her first and keep her safe at his own place."

Yotsuba forces a very weak-willed smile back at her oldest sister. "Well...the thing is, I don't _need _to imagine."

Ichika cringes a little at Yotsuba's response, realizing what she means by this. "...I guess so, yeah. Sorry, I didn't...mean to bring that up..."

Another awkward silence ensues following Ichika's last remark. The eldest sister notices that she's the only one who's in any mood to talk; both Miku and Yotsuba look incredibly deflated, as indicated by both their body language and facial expressions. Not that she can blame them, really, especially not Yotsuba, but she'd at least like to get their spirits up, or at least that's what her big sister instincts are telling her. But what should she say, then? What _can _she talk about?

While Ichika quietly considers her limited options for a conversation starter, Yotsuba looks up somewhat, though her eyes still aren't at a level where she can look her other sisters directly.

"...it's my fault all this happened, honestly," she mumbles, causing both of her sisters to look over at her. They're both quite spooked by the way the youngest quintuplet present is speaking because it contrasts starkly with the usual bubbly personality and tone that Yotsuba usually carries herself with. Miku is especially affected because as someone who's spoken with such a tone before, she knows perhaps better than the rest of her siblings what kinds of dark, disturbed thoughts may be running their course inside Yotsuba's mind when she says this. For someone like Miku, having such thoughts is normal, given her emotional track record. But Yotsuba? Someone like her should _not _be talking like that, not in a million years. This is further reinforced when Miku looks into Yotsuba's downward blue eyes, which appear almost listless and empty. Now _that's _a look that definitely do not belong in those eyes.

"W-What do you mean? How is any of this _your _fault?" Ichika asks up immediately, both out of concern for her younger sister and out of relief that she didn't need to break the silence herself again. "You just went out there yesterday to make sure Nino wasn't going to do anything stupid."

"...I know, but...but that doesn't change the fact that in the end, Uesugi-san had to save both me _and _Nino anyway," Yotsuba replies, maintaining her lowered voice. "I should have...been more aggressive in asking Nino to come back. I should have known something like this would've happened. Like, it was Nino and me who got in trouble last time, right? Back when we got attacked by those three guys and Nino ended up getting her shoulder stabbed? It was the two of us back then, and it was the two of us again!"

As Yotsuba's train of thought gets rolling, the tension in her voice and its volume both begin to accelerate along with it. Subconsciously becoming aware of this, Yotsuba lowers her head down even further and puts her hands over the back of her head in muted frustration.

"Wait, wait, hold on, Yotsuba, don't - don't be so harsh on yourself. Like I just said, this isn't _your _fault," Ichika repeats herself, leaning forward in her seat on the long couch. "You headed out because you were concerned about Nino doing something rash, right? If anyone, it's _Nino's _fault for not coming back home within a reasonable time period, or at the very least checking into a hotel like she ought to have."

"But _is _it, though? Think about it!" Yotsuba suddenly darts her head up at her older sister, who recoils just a little bit in surprise, not expecting Yotsuba to react like this. Has she _ever _acted like this before, come to think of it? "We all know Nino enough to know how she'd react to what happened yesterday, when she and Itsuki fought! Like, of _course _she'd act like that! So if you think about it, it became _my _responsibility to bring her back home before it became too late out! I just didn't realize it at all until now, now that I've had time to think about what I could have done differently. I mean, _I _was the one who chose to go out after her, right? I certainly didn't _need _to, but I did because I was worried about her, and out of the three of us here, I'm the most qualified to do something like track down Nino to make sure we knew where she was! As a matter of fact, I could have just woken up Uesugi-san and told him the situation! _That's _what we _should _have done, even though we didn't want to bother him when he was sleeping!"

Stunned by this extremely rare outburst from their younger sister, both Ichika and Miku find themselves at a loss for words or any semblance of a response, which enables Yotsuba to continue her self-depreciating rant of sorts as she sinks her head back down.

"This reminds me of what Uesugi-san talked to me about a while ago...I think it was just before Golden Week...he was talking to me about how I was going around helping a lot of clubs at school, and he asked me if I _needed _to do that, and that he'd prefer if I'd just focused on myself first and my studies. Now that I think about that, I think he was trying to tell me that I needed to learn how to say no...say no to all the people wanting me to help their clubs out and stuff..."

"...but, wait...what's that got to do with what we're dealing with now?" Miku asks, unsure of where Yotsuba is trying to go with this.

Yotsuba glances a little towards her immediate older sister. "I'm saying that in this situation, I didn't think about what I was doing. I was just...on auto-pilot mode. Just doing my own usual thing...following Nino around, thinking I was doing the right thing just keeping an eye on her. No, I needed to...I needed to do more. I needed to be more aggressive - er, maybe not _aggressive_, but definitely more assertive about trying to get her to come back home or get to somewhere safe for the night."

"But I still don't get it, why blame yourself for something you could've done differently when clearly everyone is at fault here?" Ichika wonders aloud. "Miku and I could have done a better job in mitigating the, uh, fallout, so to say, from the fight between Nino and Itsuki, but we didn't because we didn't think things would get _this _bad. For God's sake, _Nino _didn't need to storm out of the house like she did and refuse to come home on her own! _She's _the one who's mainly at fault here!"

"But like I said, that's exactly what Nino would do! Why are you expecting her to act any differently?"

It takes a moment for Ichika to process Yotsuba's words.

"Huh..." she straightens her posture somewhat, the look on her face relaxing a little with clarity. "...I didn't think you were like that, Yotsuba."

The fourth quintuplet has already gone back to staring intently down at her feet on the floor.

"...this is just like that time..." she groans softly. "...the time I got all of us...kicked out of Black Rose..."

This time, it's Miku's turn to rise to the occasion. "No, don't say that," she asserts strongly, snapping out of her own personal cloud of misery to drag Yotsuba out of hers. "You can't even compare that to what's going on now. Nobody was in actual physical _danger _back then, _and _it wasn't _you _who caused us to transfer out with you, that was a collective decision that we all made to stick together. Don't get this twisted, Yotsuba."

"Exactly. You're being way too harsh on yourself here; you're making yourself start to think that this is all your fault when it's really not," Ichika nods. "Sure, maybe you could have done a few things differently yesterday, but that basically goes for everyone else as well. Even though I know I did say just earlier that this is Nino's fault, honestly it's not just her fault; it's everyone's. There's at least something that all five of us could've done differently to avoid something catastrophic like this from happening."

Ichika pauses.

"And...if you're acting like this because you feel bad for what you've made Fuutarou-kun go through to rescue you and Nino...all I have to say is that he's not mad at you for this, Yotsuba. He's not the type who'd get mad at you over this. Miku, he wasn't mad or anything when he woke up and you told him about what happened while he was out, right?"

Miku shakes her head. "No, of course not. Well, he...he _was _annoyed that things had gotten like this, but he wasn't mad at anyone in particular. And speaking of which, he even said that he met Yotsuba at the park, right? He wasn't mad at you, was he, Yotsuba?"

But it would appear that Yotsuba is no longer in a talking mood, judging by the silence that follows Miku's inquiry. The two older quintuplets share a quick glance of uncertainty and concern at Yotsuba's lack of a response, unsure of how to handle the situation now.

"...since it doesn't seem like anything we're saying is helping you feel better, Yotsuba, we'll drop the subject," Ichika sighs heavily and gets up from her seat on the couch, pulling out her phone. "I'll order up some takeout since Nino obviously isn't here. For what it's worth, at the very least everyone's safe, despite everything that's happened, and we'll wait for Nino to come back home tonight or whenever Fuutarou-kun said he'll bring her back."

The firstborn thus leaves her two sisters as she retreats to her own room briefly so as not to disturb them with her phone call. Miku lets her eyes slowly turn to Yotsuba to check on her, but she still hasn't moved an inch ever since she put her face back into her knees while hugging her legs. Is that what she looks like whenever she assumes a sitting fetal position like that, too?

Not knowing what else to say, Miku mutters offhandedly, "...Fuutarou isn't mad at you, Yotsuba, honest. He cares about us too much to get to that point."

To Miku's surprise, Yotsuba lifts her head up just a bit at this, enough to the point where her eyes are now visible. But they still don't look back at her older sister.

"...I know he isn't, Miku," she croaks, her voice reduced to just a whisper now.

* * *

Bright neon lights. The fresh ocean breeze. The dusk of the setting sun as its top, the last visible part of it, is finally beginning to bank underneath the horizon, its dying rays of natural light peeking through the various bars of a nearby Ferris wheel.

Nakano Nino is standing on a small bridge connecting one half of a seaside amusement park to the other, one of a set of three such bridges whose responsibility is to connect the park to give its attendees access to other side at any time. Naturally, she occupies the bridge that faces the west, facing the sun that is all but set this Tuesday evening. The suitcase that she'd taken with her from the Marriott faithfully stands by her side, the only thing that's kept her company on her lone journey to the last recluse, the absolute final safe haven that she has left. And given the circumstances, perhaps this place is no longer so safe any more.

Nino has lost track of time ever since she arrived here. It hasn't been _that _long since she found this bridge and stood here to look out at the view. She wants to say that she's here to enjoy the sunset, but even she's not completely sure what she's doing...at least, that's what she tells herself. The ambient conversations and comfortable hum of passersby have ceased as the rest of the park's attendees have departed for the evening, though the park itself remains open for at least another few hours, so now, other than her suitcase, the only sounds that stop her from feeling completely alone are the whistling of the sea breeze, the groans of metal from the Ferris wheel in the distance, and the refreshing rolling of the waves lapping against the pier on which this part of this amusement park is located.

The second quintuplet is fully aware that her stubborn venture out to this amusement park, which isn't even located in the city, could have put her once again in grave danger. She's aware that she's putting yet another responsibility on her tutor's laundry list of responsibilities when it comes to the quintuplets' collective safety.

She knows that what she is doing is wrong.

She knows that what she is doing is stupid.

"...I'm so stupid..."

Nino says this aloud. Whether it's to herself, to the wind, or to nothing in particular, she's not sure either. She doesn't whisper this, murmur this, or mutter this - she says it out loud, loud and clear for others to hear, if there were any others to hear it.

As it were, there happens to be one person who hears it.

"We all think that at one point or another, don't we."

Nino doesn't flinch or even move a muscle, continuing to gaze out at the setting sun from her place on the bridge, leaning a little against the safety railing. To her left, spaced about five meters away, also stands Uesugi Fuutarou, dressed in his magecraft black.

The young mage slowly pulls off his headphones that he's got on, simultaneously pulling out his phone that they're connected to. The song currently playing reads "PROMISES I CAN'T KEEP" before the phone screen goes dark, and Fuutarou both pockets his phone again and slips his headphones back into their storage rune to get them out of the way.

Until the sun completely sets, the two high school freshmen stand together on this bridge, silently watching the beautiful scenery unfold before them. Maybe they understand that this is something that they normally don't get to see in the city, something that is more important than whatever the two of them are going through right now.

Finally, Nino speaks. She knows that she's got to be the first one to talk, because if Fuutarou wanted to talk, he would've already done so.

"You here to take me back home?" she asks. Her tone is soft, but her voice is audible enough to be heard over the breeze and the waves.

"Obviously," Fuutarou answers curtly and concisely. Neither of them have taken a glance at the other, preoccupied are they with taking in the evening beauty.

"Doesn't really seem like it, though."

"Can't blame me. The circumstances we're dealing with right now are, let's say...unique."

"Hmph...you're not wrong...though, I do have to wonder how you managed to find me here. Given what you told us about how you monitor me and my sisters, and given that this park isn't anywhere near the city, you shouldn't have found me here."

"I've got my ways. I wouldn't be a proper mage if I didn't have my fair share of secrets." Fuutarou raises hand slowly to adjust his snapback cap with his visor. "But for someone who's asking how I found them in a place that they thought I wouldn't be able to find, you sure don't sound all that surprised."

"Because I figured you'd find me here anyway, one way or another, sooner or later. You always do. It's your job, isn't it? And we all know you take your job seriously. Not to mention the whole mage thing you've got going on."

At this, Nino turns her head to cast her tired eyes over at her tutor and classmate, who does the same to meet her eyes briefly before both of them resume casting their gazes out at sea.

"...how's Yotsuba?" the second quintuplet asks, and her voice sinks a little when she mentions her younger sister. "Is she...alright?"

"She's doing fine; I brought her back home, so she's safe with Ichika and Miku," Fuutarou answers crisply. "Between the two of you, you were the bigger worry I had, given that you had the more serious injury."

Nino's mind focuses on the gut wound whose pain she can no longer feel. She's since taken off the layer of clean bandages that had been wrapped around her midsection to hide the wound, expecting the pain to stay with her all day, but she realizes that at some point, the pain simply vanished on its own as she was wandering throughout the park until stopping here on this bridge.

"...and...Itsuki? What about her?"

"Itsuki's at my place. She ended up forgetting her purse and phone back at your place, so I had her stay at my place for the time being."

At this, Nino smirks, then giggles a little.

"Yeah, that sounds about right. Itsuki's pretty forgetful when things like this happen," the secondborn chuckles. "Still, I'm glad. She didn't have to go through the bullshit Yotsuba and I did last night."

Listening to what little she's spoken ever since he got here, Fuutarou notes Nino's rather strange attitude and behavior, because they don't really match up with how she'd normally act towards him in situations like this. Nino _was _being nice to him up until yesterday, when he remembers her reverting back to the the old days when she used to be pissed off all the time towards him. Fuutarou's mind is already coming up with various theories that would explain Nino's current behavior here, but he mentally waves them away.

"Why did you come here? This isn't exactly what I'd call close to the city," the young mage sighs, fixing his standing posture and straightening his back a bit more to draw his full height.

At first, Nino does not answer. She continues to gaze out to the colorful evening hues of the sunset whose sun is now well out of view of the two classmates.

"...this amusement park's been around for as long as I can remember," she finally begins. "Mama took me and my sisters here once, back before she began getting sick. It was a lot of fun; it's one of my fondest memories from my days as a kid, because it was one of the only times that I ever remember Mama smiling."

Fuutarou says nothing.

"I don't know if one of my sisters already told you this...I feel like they would have by this point, but I'll just say it again just in case, but...we weren't always a bunch of rich spoiled bitches living off their dad's wealth. We used to be just as poor as you, if not more. As a kid, I didn't think about what it must've cost Mama to bring us all here for a day, but...now's a different story, obviously. I remember...at the end of that day, I asked Mama if we could all come back here again, just like we did then. She said yes, she'd bring us back, that it was a promise. We never did, because the next year, her health took a turn for the worse, and...well, it never recovered."

Nino slowly runs a hand up through her peachy-red hair, which is fluttering lazily behind her, lifted up by the breeze that's sifting past the two teens, and she takes a somewhat deep breath.

"Promises are important to kids, you know. Kids don't know a lot about the world, about life in general. So whenever they make a promise, or when a promise is made to them, they typically put their complete faith in it because they usually don't know what else to expect; they don't know what can go wrong unless they've already seen what _can _go wrong. So when Mama promised me that she would take us back here one day, I took that to heart. Even when Mama's health was worsening, I still held her to that, all the way up until she actually died."

Nino sighs shortly.

"I was hurt by that, naturally, but...I knew that I couldn't fault her for it. How could I? It wasn't her fault that she wasn't able to keep her promise of taking us back here. Besides, obviously losing Mama was the bigger issue for us than some dumb promise that wasn't relevant anymore. Even still, I couldn't ignore that...that kind of pain I felt when I realized that we wouldn't ever be able to come back here as a family again, _and _I had no one to blame for that."

"So you learned to point fingers and blame people for bad shit even as a kid? That explains a lot, actually," Fuutarou murmurs thoughtfully, as thoughtfully as words like this can sound with this kind of context.

"You're gonna talk like a jackass even during a time like this? Read the fucking atmosphere much," Nino gripes, but there is hardly any venom in her voice, and she resumes her little monologue anyway. "That aside...I made a promise to my sisters right after Mama died. I promised them that I would be the one to protect them, that I'd become our new Mama who would look after them and keep them safe. They all think that I made that promise only because I was trying to cope with Mama's death at the time."

Fuutarou again glances slightly over in Nino's direction, but this time she doesn't reciprocate.

"Why not clarify it to them? That there's more to your promise than they realize?" he asks quietly.

"Because it doesn't matter at this point; there's no use telling them anymore. It happened because of my unwillingness to let go of a promise that Mama made to me, and it should have died with her. But with me being the stubborn bitch that I am, which you know a lot about, I'm sure, I didn't let it go; I didn't put it to rest. Maybe you can say that I was only a kid back then, and we all make bad decisions when we're kids, but like I said, kids take promises to heart. I was no exception to that, and I haven't been able to let go ever since."

Nino now also straightens up her back and turns slightly to face more in Fuutarou's direction, looking at him directly.

"Right now, out of the five of us, I feel like I'm the only one who isn't growing up. Ichika's a really independent girl who goes out and does her own thing, working at her part-time or whatever she does. Miku's been studying hard with you, and her grades have been improving really fast as of late because of our midterm prepping. Yotsuba's working hard too, juggling both club stuff and her studying. Itsuki's also been studying as well, but she's gotten over her initial distrust of you and now her grades are improving, too. None of them have something that's holding them down, something that's holding them back. They're free to do whatever they want, to grow up however they want. Well, actually..."

Lowering her gaze a little, the second quintuplet reevaluates her words.

"...Itsuki's a bit like me in that she also made a promise to us sort of like the one I made, but the difference between us is that she uses her own promise to better herself. It's a source of motivation that she uses to study and get good grades in school. Mine's just a burden; mine's just a relic of the good old days back when the five of us were truly identical quintuplets with the exact same looks and even the exact same personalities. I'll admit, I liked those days the best, because back then, we were our own little tightly-knit world, where all of us could pretty much _feel _each other's thoughts and feelings, almost like we were straight out of an anime or something and had legit telepathy or whatever they call it. Hell, just look at my hair; I'm literally the only one out of the five of us who's kept it long like this because it's remnant of how we used to be back as kids. But Mama's death was the catalyst in our inevitable split; it would have happened sooner or later even if she didn't die, of course, but of course that's not how I wanted it to happen. Not so suddenly like that, not with such a bad memory to go with it."

Nino once more looks back up at Fuutarou, who has since returned to giving her his audience.

"Not unlike how you came into our lives three months ago."

Fuutarou still says nothing, so Nino herself returns to looking out at the rapidly darkening sea and pier.

"That's why all this time, I've been trying to reject you, trying to chase you out of our home. You reminded me of something that happened to me six years ago that I didn't want to have happen again. Because the reality that I wanted at first, a world in which the five of us could stay truly identical quintuplets just a bit longer, was never going to return, I settled for the next best thing, and that was to grow up together and stay together as much as possible; go through school together, experience our teenage lives together, until the day comes when it's finally time for us to go our separate ways. Ichika's always told us to cherish our time right now as teens as much as we can because it's not going to last very long, but I've known that even before she started telling us that, and I was planning on doing just that. I didn't expect to have someone like you show up to throw a wrench into the works like you did."

Raising a hand again back up to the visor of his snapback, Fuutarou lowers it a trivial distance.

"...I wasn't aware of that," he says, still with his quiet voice. "I'm sorry."

"Tch. Yeah, you should be," Nino spits a little, but again, her angry attitude sputters out almost as quickly as it flares up. "...but oh well, there's no way for you to have known. And me getting angry at you over this is only going to repeat history again, and the whole point of trying to chase you out was to stop exactly that. It just...it just feels bad, though, you know...?"

"What feels bad?"

"The fact that I can't...I can't keep my promise to my sisters anymore."

"Because I'm here, right?"

"Well, kind of, but...believe it or not, I'm not really thinking about you when I say this. Like, I don't really feel angry or pissed off about this now. I'm just...really sad. Everything that's happened...us getting kidnapped over and over, my sisters all growing up in their own ways and leaving me behind in the dust or so it feels like, all this magic stuff that's been happening like our Mystic Eyes...it's hard to keep track of it all. I don't feel like I'm in control of anything anymore. I'm actually just...so powerless to do anything. The promise I made to my sisters was already a pretty empty one even at the time I made it, but now it's literally just a waste of time even thinking about it. What good is a promise if I can't even make good on it? All I've ended up doing was doing the exact same thing that I wanted to prevent. No - I should have realized that sometimes, there are promises that you just can't keep."

Nino brushes a stray lock of hair out of her face.

"Like I said, you were just like Mama's death, a catalyst to speed up the process of the five of us going our separate ways. I should have recognized that and worked with it instead of trying to reject it, but I just ended up making the same mistake twice, and now I'm paying the price of feeling absolutely fucking useless and dumb. I mean, what do you think I did today, running away from everyone to come here to a place where only one person would ever realistically figure out?"

She turns to Fuutarou for a third time.

"You're probably super pissed off at me though, aren't you? For all the shit that I've put you through for the past couple of months. Especially today; not only must you have saved us from whoever that guy was that tried kidnapping me and Yotsuba yesterday, but you patched me up a second time, only to have me basically run away and force you to find me all the way out here in the goddamn boondocks in some random fuckin' amusement park somewhere. If you've got anything you wanna say to me, you better spill it now. This's gonna be the only time when I'll put up with being yelled at, and that's your only warning," she declares.

But as she watches, Uesugi Fuutarou, who's again glanced over in Nino's direction while talking, slowly turns away yet again, his perpetually exhausted eyes pointed down past the safety rail of the bridge on which the two stand.

"...I thought you came out here because you wanted to run away from home for good or something, given what went down between you and Itsuki," he admits softly. "I guess I didn't need to worry about that after all. I'm just glad you're feeling better...hopefully."

A long pause follows Fuutarou's spoken concern.

"...that's it?" Nino gawks a little. "That's...all you wanted to say?"

Fuutarou smirks a bit with the right corner of his mouth. "Yeah, that's it. Sorry to disappoint."

Nino snorts loudly, half with disbelief and half with choked amusement. "I can't believe you. I can't fucking believe you. I gave you a chance to get everything you had against me off your chest, and you blew it? Just to say sorry? What kind of a lame beta-ass bitch are you? You fucking digust me, holy shit. I can't fucking _stand _you..."

The young mage feels a soft bump against his right arm. Nakano Nino is resting her forehead against the side of his arm.

"...why are _you _apologizing?" Nino hisses through clenched teeth, tears now slowly making their way down her cheeks. "Why the fuck are _you _the one saying sorry? Why? Why are you like this? Why are you so fucking good at making me feel like a total piece of shit?"

"...it comes with the lifestyle," Fuutarou shrugs a little, as much as he can with Nino's head on his arm. "So I don't apologize for that. I _will _apologize for making you feel the need to cry, though, because that's not what I intended, either."

"And so? What're you gonna do to make up for that, then?"

Nino feels the arm that she's resting her head against move, and she looks up just in time to find Fuutarou's body enlarge in her cone of vision as her classmate pulls her in close. The two of them say nothing, but Nino eventually relents and properly returns her tutor's gesture, putting her arms around him as well.

"...I can't keep my promise to my sisters to keep the five of us together," the second quintuplet hoarsely mumbles with a voice so light that only one person in the world can hear, "but I know now, without a doubt, that you can. Promise me...that you can keep us all together instead."

"The only thing I can promise is that I'll give 'em hell. That's it."

Nino can't help but smile. She has no reason to feel this way, but...she is starting to feel a little nostalgic.

"Good enough for me. Thank you...Fuutarou."


End file.
